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"Leaving Is Giving In to Hamas": The Old-Timers Who Stayed at the Kibbutz after October 7
(Ha'aretz) Meirav Moran - After Oct. 7, all the members of the kibbutzim across from Gaza were told to leave. Two months later, companies of soldiers are camped in the yards, but they're not the only ones living there. There are also a handful of kibbutz members who refused to leave, violating the evacuation order. They are sons and daughters of the founders of these kibbutzim, which predate the state. They have principles: do not abandon farmland, do not forgo your home, do not withdraw from settled ground, not even if the enemy threatens you with rifles and missiles. They remember being shelled as children, they grew up in antitank trenches, they experienced firsthand the evacuation of communities under fire, and they - some of them now over 80 - are not about to repeat that. Nurit Dvori, 75, was the first girl born on Kibbutz Be'eri. She and her husband Avraham, 79, have 15 grandchildren from five children, all of whom made their homes in Be'eri. "I am not afraid to be at the kibbutz," Avraham says. "The danger has passed at this stage....The invasion that took place here isn't going to happen again." Yankele Koffman, 70, a member of Kibbutz Re'im, didn't leave his home on Oct. 7. "I told them: 'You can bring the police, as far as I am concerned you can bring an army - I'm not budging.' Someone has to turn on the water in the fields, right?...We sowed potatoes and wheat and got the field crops back on track....Everything is budding and green and growing the way it should in this season."