As we walk through the greenery, it is eerily quiet bar bird song and the mewing of hungry, stray cats. Dozens of fire-damaged homes, which were simple, one-storey buildings in Nir Oz, have now been torn down, leaving just rows of the reinforced concrete safe rooms, which failed to keep people safe.
The Aharons want some damaged houses to be left as evidence of what took place. “We really support that,” Achi says. “People should see what happened, should see the destruction, the pure hatred that happened here.”
The couple point out where a teacher, Maya Goren, was killed while in the kindergarten and the makeshift memorials where three of the seven members of the kibbutz security team were killed after battling Hamas gunmen.
The findings of the Israeli Defense Forces investigation into what happened at Nir Oz underscored how the army – left in a state of disarray by the unprecedented simultaneous assault on more than 20 communities and multiple military posts – completely failed to come to the rescue here.
On 7 October, the first soldiers arrived in the kibbutz some 40 minutes after the last Palestinian attackers left. Nearly every household experienced killing, violence, including sexual assaults and rape, looting and kidnapping.
Dalit pauses to show me a tree planted long ago by her parents, who were co-founders of the kibbutz, known for its farming and peace activists. They survived the 7 October attacks physically unharmed but died just months afterwards.
Next door is the small home of Shiri Bibas, the mother of ginger-haired boys Ariel, four, and nine-month-old, Kfir. The three, snatched from their home, became symbols of the Gaza hostage crisis.
“This is the hardest house for me because Shiri was a very, very good friend of mine,” Dalit confides. “She was like a sister. We even got pregnant together – me with my daughter and her with Ariel. They became best friends also. We used to laugh that they were going to marry.”
