November 24, 2023 

 

I am sitting at Ben Gurion airport awaiting my El Al flight to depart for Athens to connect back to Montreal. International flights were halted on October 7th when Israel declared a State of War. For insurance purposes, international flights are not landing in Israel for 49 days. It's early hours of the morning, and the usual hustle and bustle of the thousands of international passengers awaiting their early morning flights to Europe and all over the world have been replaced with numbered passengers all flying on El Al Airlines looking, most likely as I am, to connect elsewhere. As I look out at the airport runway, there is only one very familiar and comforting sight—the Magen David on the tails of El Al Airlines planes. Less than a week ago, I took a deep breath of relief as I boarded my flight from Paris to Tel Aviv. I had never felt so desperate to board an El Al flight after those hours at CDG airport in Paris. It was a feeling of finally coming home.

Speaking to the taxi driver who drove me to the airport this morning, we struggled to express our feelings. Not because of the language barrier. Because the emotions run so deep. His son, 24, has attended close to 30 funerals of friends since October 7th, many of them from the Nova Music Festival, which his son chose not to attend. This is just another aspect of this war that I realize will change a generation of Israelis. My friends and family who have young adult children are all talking about how their kids (ages 18-25) have attended numerous funerals of victims who were massacred and of fighters who have fallen. A generation that is learning to deal with grief and loss in waves that are in no way normal and will require support and therapy to ensure that they can lead this country out of this situation for a brighter future.

 

The ceasefire has just come into effect (7 AM Israel time) after a final barrage of rockets from Hamas if just to remind us of whom we are dealing with. The country is tense and anxious to see the release of the first 13 hostages, children and women, in 9 hours from now (4 PM Israel time). The sense of heartbreak over the "deal" for the release of hostages is palpable. As a Jewish people, we live by the ideology that if we save just one life, we save the world. While there is a sense that for a short time, the country can exhale once more as we see Israeli children, some of them orphans, returning home, there is at the same time a deep sense of disbelief and heartbreak that so many hostages will be left behind in the hands of Hamas.

 

No matter how much I prepared myself for the moment I walked into Kibbutz Shefayim to meet with the surviving families of Kibbutz Aza, No matter how many TV interviews I have seen with the families of victims or families of hostages, nothing but nothing can prepare you for the faces of the victims of Hamas—their faces, their expressions and of course their stories.

They all begin their story in the same way—6:30 AM on Saturday, October 7th or "Black Saturday," as they name it. The barrage of rockets, which the Kibbutzim around Gaza have experienced since Israel disengaged from Gaza and Hamas took over in 2007, resulted in the usual response. Families ran into their "Mamad" – their protective rooms. And then, it's different as each of them details that the nightmare begins when the barrage of rockets doesn't end, and soon they start hearing Arabic and gunfire on the Kibbutz. In so many cases, generations of families lived on the Kibbutz. They were not living together but in different parts of the Kibbutz. On Black Saturday, they were all in separate protective rooms, using WhatsApp to communicate. The fear and sheer terror they felt cannot be expressed in words. But the looks, the body language glossed over eyes. They tell the stories. Stories of the WhatsApp chain of a 44-year-old son with parents that come to an end at 11:30 AM after they send a message, "They have broken into our house." having to protect his children in his own protective room, he cannot run towards his parent's house to protect them. Their last words to their son, as in so many WhatsApp messages, were, "We love you." Unimaginable pain and anguish. A mother with three adult children on the Kibbutz telling us about her adult daughter who was kidnapped by Hamas and held in Gaza for 45 days. Not knowing how she is doing and not knowing whether she was injured when she was taken. The last WhatsApp between them describes the murderous terrorist breaking into the house.

 

Their sense of complete desperation and sadness is overwhelming. The trauma is unimaginable.

 

If it wasn't enough to relive Black Saturday through the stories of Kibbutz members, we travelled to "Otef Aza" (the area surrounding the Gaza Strip) to understand and see what happened on that Black Saturday. The perfect pastoral setting of the Kibbutzim around the Gaza border, which brought so many to live there over the years, is in complete juxtaposition to the horrors the Kibbutzim witnessed. As we got off our minibuses at Kibbutz Aza, wearing bullet-proof vests and helmets, the first thing that hit me was the smell. It was faint but there. A burnt smell…over 40 days after Black Saturday. The massacre that happened at Kibbutz Aza is unimaginable. Civilians sitting in their "Mamad" – protective rooms, were met with gunfire, grenades and Rocket Propelled Grenades. Neither their homes nor protective rooms were built to withstand this type of firepower. And when the terrorists weren't successful in breaching the doors of the "Mamad" to massacre anyone inside, they simply removed the tires from cars, set them on fire and rolled them into the homes to burn everything inside. And all this while terrorizing the citizens of the Kibbutzim, raping women, torturing children. 

On October 6th, Kibbutz Aza had 400 members. Sixty-four members were murdered on that Black Saturday. Another 18 were taken hostage, including seven children. On a kibbutz, this close-knit, October 7th, touched each and every Kibbutz member.

The terror and massacres repeated themselves throughout the kibbutzim in Otef Aza, Sderot and other municipalities. The images and videos speak for themselves.

 

 
CARS AS FAR AS THE EYES CAN SEE

Only about a kilometer away from Kibbutz Aza, off the main highway, where once sat plush farmlands, a makeshift car compound has been created to store thousands of cars. On Black Saturday, cars became the final resting place of hundreds of victims of Hamas's massacre. As partygoers were fleeing the Nova music festival, Hamas used their full firepower to kill all who were on the road. In the Kibbutzim, municipalities and the city of Sderot, Hamas targeted cars on the road, police vehicles, ambulances and first response vehicles to make sure that no one could get to the massacres taking place in the kibbutzim. RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades) were launched at cars to stop them in their tracks. Hundreds were killed, maimed, and injured in vehicles. The makeshift "car yard" is a temporary storage for these vehicles today as each vehicle is painstakingly searched for DNA, blood, bodies and body parts.

The cars will eventually be buried, as per Jewish law, to pay final respect to those massacred by Hamas. It's just another element of the cruel and inconceivable terror Hamas caused on Black Saturday. The videos and pictures I share will never tell the horrors those cars have witnessed.

 

 

Not far from the car yard at a junction, a temporary soldier station has been set up by some of the tens of thousands of volunteers who mobilized to support the war effort. The "Cnaanit" food truck, cooking thousands of hamburgers and hotdogs for the soldiers daily, was the brainchild of Montreal's own Laurence Witt. With the support of friends, Laurence mobilized in the early days to provide food for soldiers preparing for the war and now at war. Today, the junction has a makeshift "shopping" centre in a large tent, where soldiers can pick up essentials for free. Everything from underwear to toiletries and even Tzitzit (one of the most popular items requested by soldiers entering Gaza). Goods are donated daily by the truckload and delivered to the junction to be given away. 

Across from the Cnaanit food truck, a religious band has set up their instruments and microphones, singing Hebrew songs to lift the soldiers' spirits. A Jeep pulls up with four female soldiers in full uniform and weapons. A fighting unit of the IDF. Where else in the world would you see such a scene? The entire gambit of the Jewish world at one Junction, caring for each other, showing that love overcomes all barriers. As the Religious band leads us in "Am Israel Chai," I am more convinced than ever that we will win this war. We will be stronger and overcome and rebuild the Jewish world to be better for the future.

Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva is designated as one of Israel's six national crisis centres. Located in the Negev, Soroka serves a population of over 1 million citizens of the southern region of Israel, including Arab populations and the Bedouin community. 

On Black Saturday, the CEO of the Hospital received a routine call from his COO that rockets had been fired from Gaza and to prepare the hospital for an emergency, almost a routine action at Soroka. By 7:30 AM on Black Saturday, after 12 injured casualties are rushed through the emergency doors of Soroka, the CEO declares a Mass Casualty Event.   This meant that every available Doctor was to come to the hospital and prepare to receive casualties in the Emergency Rooms.

A Mass Casualty Event is one that the hospitals in Israel all too often train for and practice. The last Mass Casualty Event at Soroka happened during the Second Intifada when terrorists boarded two buses only a kilometre from the hospital and blew themselves up, killing 16 and injuring 100. The hospital then treated 100 injuries, most of them light injuries. In the worst simulations, the Soroka Hospital Mass Casualty Event estimated a maximum of 300 injured being treated in a given day. 

On Black Saturday, Soroka Hospital received 680 causalities in one day. More than double the worst-case scenario ever practiced and the single largest Mass Casualty Event not related to nature (i.e. earthquake or Tsunami) in history. In fact, Soroka received double the casualties as the next closest hospital – Barzilai Hospital in Ashdod. At Barzilai Hospital, of the over 300 casualties, about 75 casualties arrived already being pronounced dead. When it became apparent that as part of the terror tactics, Hamas was kidnapping dead Israeli bodies into Gaza, the IDF and citizens began protecting bodies, and the safest place for them was at the hospitals. That way, they could be identified, and Hamas's psychological terrorism on Israeli civilians would not further traumatize grieving families.

Between 12 PM and 1 PM on Black Saturday, Soroka received 83 casualties. That means that every 40 seconds, a casualty entered the Emergency Room. By that point, regular protocols were set aside, and the hospital re-wrote history in dealing with a mass casualty event. By then, IDF helicopters were landing regularly, bringing injured into the Emergency Rooms. Typically, only the most critically injured soldiers are flown to Soroka to triage less critical injuries to hospitals further away from Gaza, not to overwhelm Soroka emergency rooms. No such triage took place on Black Saturday. 

No training or practice prepared doctors and administration to deal with the horrors of Black Saturday. The "protocols" for a Mass Casualty Event didn't contemplate how to deal with mass rape victims that were brought into the emergency rooms. Gynecologists had to be called into the ER to support the teams. Teams of administrative staff had to be set up for the identification of injured as so many of the casualties came in without identification, including two small children rescued from one of the Kibbutzim, who were dehydrated. They were being treated in the Children's trauma centre. Their parents stood bravely outside the Mamad, locking the children inside. The parents were brutally murdered by Hamas but saved the lives of their children, who spent untold hours in the Mamad until rescued later on at night and brought to Soroka.

Once again, in a profoundly sad way, through the incredible life-saving work of the staff at Soroka, the rest of the world will learn how to deal with Mass Casualty Events in the future.

The pictures of the blood-filled stretchers that carried the injured will never tell the whole story.

On Black Saturday, 680 casualties entered Soroka Emergency rooms. Teams cared for and treated them through untold hours that saved lives in real-time. Unfortunately, to date, 4 of those casualties from Black Saturday did not make it, but 676 were or will be released to rebuild their lives.

Everywhere you go in Israel, the crisis, trauma and sadness is palpable. Most won't ask you the usual pleasantries like "How are you?" and so many no longer say Boker Tov – Good Morning; just saying "Boker" – Morning. The families of hostages, the countless Shivas, and the ongoing toll of the war are a constant reminder that this war is not over and that this is a Just and necessary war, not only for the Jewish homeland but for Jewish communities worldwide.

And while smiles are hard to come by, and the stress, anxiety and profound sadness are on almost every face I came by, I also witnessed a resolve and strength that I can not describe. The resilience of the people is incredible. The country is united like never before, and in fact, in a strange turn of events, Israelis are worried about us in Montreal and are sending us their strength. They worry about us as we are worrying about them. 

Leaving Israel this morning, I know that we will win this war. We will overcome, rebuild, and be stronger as a people and more resilient for the rest of the world. We are a people that choose life! Not a people that choose to destroy life. We are a people that choose Peace. And while this may always be a weakness that our enemies exploit, history will show that light will always conquer the darkness and that we who choose life will be on the right side of history when this is all over. 

The Jewish people are united and resolute. We will be stronger in the end. Am Israel Chai.

 

 

 

 

Yair Szlak, LL.B 
President and Chief Executive Officer,
Federation CJA