Every year in early October, when the winds were strong, the residents of the Kfar Aza kibbutz near Gaza would make what they called peace kites and fly them as a symbol.
Oct. 7 was the day of the kite festival, and kibbutz residents had invited extended family to Kfar Aza the night before to enjoy the annual event.
Instead, it was carnage. Hamas militants stormed the kibbutz, terrorizing its residents. According to the community, at least 60 people were killed and 18 more taken hostage, some as young as three.
“They broke through all the fences and just moved from one house to another and killed unarmed people; civilians, children, women, my husband,” said Orit Cohen, whose father helped found the kibbutz.
Anxiety and worry
Her husband left his house and raced for his car to go help secure the kibbutz, but he was shot dead before he got to it, she said.
Though Cohen and her husband are separated, she says she was able to geo-locate where he was on the kibbutz through his phone, but says no one could get to him to save him.
In Tel Aviv on Thursday, Cohen and the traumatized survivors of Kfar Aza and hundreds of others gathered in a seaside park to fly the kites again. On each of 18 kites is the name of one of the hostages from Kfar Aza.
Aviv Kutz, the man who founded the peace kite festival, was also killed on Oct. 7. Cohen says his body was found in his bed with his arms around his wife and three children — all dead.
Now, the longing for peace has been displaced by anxiety and worry for the 18 community members who haven’t been heard from since Oct. 7.
“We just want them back. We have to have them to heal ourselves. We can’t bury any more people. Have you ever been to eight funerals a day,” Cohen asked rhetorically. “We’re a small community. Everyone knew someone.”
A father’s anguish
Roni Steinbrecher stood watching the kites in Tel Aviv with tears in his eyes. One of his daughters spoke to the crowd, ending her speech in tears.
Steinbrecher’s second daughter, 30-year-old Doron Steinbrecher, was abducted by the militants the morning of the attacks.
On his phone, her father plays a voice recording of the last words he heard her utter: “They’ve got me. They’ve got me,” she said, over the sound of frenzied voices.
“My greatest fear is that she won’t come back alive,” he said. Doron has a medical condition affecting her stomach, and Steinbrecher worries her health will deteriorate without daily medication.
“The uncertainty and unknowing is very difficult,” he said, adding it’s even harder for his wife, his two other grown children and his five grandchildren. “I have to be strong for everyone. I don’t have a choice.”
“We thought it would be over in a day or two, or a week,” he said. “But it’s been over a month now.”
It’s been five weeks since the attacks. Israel says Hamas and other militant groups hold at least 240 hostages inside Gaza. Four were released weeks ago in groups of two, as well as one female soldier, who was rescued. Two of those captured and still held are Israelis with Canadian citizenship.
Families worry bombings put hostages at risk
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared there will be no ceasefire in Gaza until the hostages are released. But some of the families say the military’s attempts to rout Hamas from a web of underground tunnels with an unrelenting bombing campaign puts the hostages at even greater risk.
Hamas has alleged, without providing any proof, that 60 hostages have been killed in Israeli airstrikes. It has released videos with three hostages, one pleading for their release and condemning Netanyahu.
Another video released by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Thursday night showed a woman and a 16-year-old boy berating Netanyahu. CBC cannot independently verify when the video was taken or if it was recorded under coercion.
Around 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the Hamas militant attacks early last month, the figure revised by the government on Thursday. Since then, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 11,000 people in Gaza — two thirds of them women and children under 16, according to the Hamas-run health authority.
Hospitals are overrun and an entire generation of children are being traumatized, living in Gaza only a short distance from the Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel.
U.S. diplomatic officials in multiple Arab countries suggest American support for Israel’s war on Gaza “is losing us Arab publics for a generation,” according to one diplomatic cable first reported by CNN, which was recently sent to the U.S. National Security Council, CIA and FBI.
On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken acknowledged for the first time that “far too many Palestinians have been killed” by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
Cohen and several hundred others evacuated from Kfar Aza are living in a Tel Aviv hotel.
At night, because they cannot sleep, she told CBC News, they hug and cry, sharing stories of the morning of Oct. 7, when they were locked down in safe rooms.
“We are all broken,” she said.
Hope for peace fades
Two weeks ago, several dozen kibbutz members tied red bandanas around their eyes and bound their wrists, sitting in a silent protest in Tel Aviv, to bring attention to the missing hostages.
“Bring Them Home Now” is the slogan for a national campaign pressuring the Israeli government to put the hostages first in its military campaign.
The hostage situation has complicated the war. Political kidnapping is an historically volatile issue in this region.
In 2006, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured and held for five years. He was released in 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 mostly Palestinian prisoners.
Featured VideoBlindfolded and bound, a group of people from Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel demonstrate silently in Tel Aviv to bring attention to the hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza. (Jared Thomas/CBC)
Some reports in Arabic media Friday suggest negotiations are ongoing to exchange some hostages for political prisoners. There’s been no confirmation of these reports from the Israeli government.
Many families have said they would support a deal to release Palestinian prisoners if that meant their loved ones returned safely.
Their fear and anger grinds deeper every day the hostages are held, making peaceful reconciliation a mirage.
“I don’t believe in peace anymore,” said Cohen, debating whether any of them will be able to return to the kibbutz.
“If Hamas will still be in charge, nobody’s going back. Then something has to change,” she said. “We will not suffer anymore for the rockets and I cannot go to sleep knowing that I might not get up in the morning.”
For now, the kites for peace are earthbound.