The phone rang many times in the early morning, but Segev Gross didn’t answer at first.
It was Saturday and Gross, who lives in Helsinki, still wanted to sleep, so he silenced the phone. When he finally woke up and answered, it was a shock.
The caller was a sister from Israel. This said that the kibbutz on the Gaza border where they had spent their childhood had been attacked.
– Sisko said that our father had messaged that he was in the safe room.
No information was received from the local authorities. Gross started scrolling through his phone. To find out what had happened.
– I saw a Hamas video in the media, and I recognized my home, the place where I had grown up. What was Hamas doing there?
The details of the events are still shrouded in mystery. of Israel the media and international news agencies have reported on the blatant violence of Hamas attackers against the Israeli residents of the kibbutzim in the border area.
Gross now knows that his father Yosef Gross75, eventually left the safe room for one reason or another and tried to escape.
He was killed by Hamas terrorists.
The father’s body lay on the ground for several days, as Israeli soldiers searched for survivors in the destroyed buildings of the kibbutz for a long time.
Nir Oz’s kibbutz has confirmed his father’s death, according to Gross.
Gross’ half-sister’s mother Shifra Noyta, who is like her own mother to Gross, was not found after the attack. The family fears that 70-year-old Noy was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists in Gaza like many others.
The attackers also killed and kidnapped Gross’s old school friends and their families.
Despite his shock and sadness, Gross, 37, wants to talk about the fate of his family and his childhood home in an interview with . He wants Finns to hear and know what has happened.
– I would not like to talk about this. But if not me, then who?
has seen photos of Gross and his family at the Nir Oz kibbutz. A person who knew Grossi for a long time in Finland confirms his background and the things he told.
The green place is black
Gross has lived in Finland for over ten years. His spouse is Finnish, and he himself is a Finnish citizen today.
So Finland is Grossi’s home now. The kibbutz in the Negev desert is his childhood home.
– I learned to eat, dress, play, read and draw there. That’s where my father taught me to swim.
Kibbutzim are generally self-sufficient and farming-based communities in Israel. The Nir Oz kibbutz was founded in 1955, and Gross’s father was one of the founders as a young man. At that time, only a few trees grew in the middle of the sand in the region.
Over the years, Nir Oz’s kibbutz grew into a green oasis where vegetables were grown, cattle and chickens were raised, and visual arts were made.
Kibbutz residents were like a family, and the whole village raised children together. Everyone worked for the community, each according to their own talents and skills.
Gross recalls that Nir Oz was like any other small village, but what made it special was that there were no cars. Gross and the other kids ran everywhere with bare feet.
– It was the best childhood.
Gross attended his elementary school in a kibbutz, and later moved to study in a bigger city. Even after that, he returned to the kibbutz every weekend.
Nir Oz and several other kibbutzim on the Gaza border were attacked by terrorists from the extremist organization Hamas, which holds power in the Gaza Strip, last weekend. They broke into homes and killed their inhabitants, entire families.
The attackers filmed and published videos of their bloody deeds on social media. American magazine The New York Times has verified one of the videos shot by the terrorists who attacked Nir Oz. According to the newspaper, the attack lasted at least eight hours.
German newspaper Bildin according to Nir Oz, 20 people were killed and 80 abducted. There were almost 400 inhabitants. The rest have been evacuated to Israel’s southernmost city, Eilat.
Editor of Antti Kuronen visited the Kfar Azan kibbutz this week, which is located twenty kilometers from Nir Oz. In the video below, Kuronen’s report from the scene. The footage can shock you.
Segev Gross has been scrolling through pictures and videos of Nir Oz for the past few days until he couldn’t anymore.
– Now the small, green place where I grew up no longer exists. It’s black, Gross says.
– It is important to tell everyone that what happened now in Nir Oz and elsewhere in the region is a different situation than it was before. It was a holocaust. I have no other word. Holocaust.
Life on the border
Nir Oz is located just a few kilometers from the Gaza border. Many Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip used to go to work during the day on the Israeli side of the border, for example at the kibbutzim.
Gross remembers from his childhood how Palestinian workers came to the kibbutz in the mornings. They worked and ate together with the Israelites. In the kibbutz school, the basics of Arabic were studied in order to be able to communicate with the neighbors.
When a Jewish boy turns 13, a bar mitzvah celebration is organized for him to mark his religious coming of age. Gross’ bar mitzvah was attended by several Palestinian Muslims who worked with his father.
– I wish my own family and all families in Gaza only a good life, he says.
Living on the Gaza border, you got used to frequent air raids. Gross says that upon hearing the alarm, the residents had 15 seconds to seek shelter or rush to the safe room, which was found in every building.
It was everyday and routine.
On Saturday last week, Gross’ father Yosef said in his last message that he was in the safe room and that everything was fine. Gross believes the father thought it was just Hamas’s usual, indiscriminate rocket fire.
A message to Finns
According to Gross, the attack by Hamas should not be thought of as a political issue. Last weekend it wasn’t about soldiers killing soldiers, it was terrorists murdering civilians. Regardless of political opinion, the events of the weekend are something that should not be acceptable to anyone, says Gross.
– I’m not trying to make everyone love Israel. But I want no one to accept this.
This is the message Gross wants to convey to Finns. As well as the fact that people evacuated from kibbutzim and abducted to Gaza need support and, for example, medicines through aid organizations.
The Grossi family is especially worried about the step-sister’s elderly mother, who is supposed to have been kidnapped and needs her medication.
The EU classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, and the Finnish government has strongly condemned its attack on Israel. Gross hopes from the parliament that Finland would also find ways to take even more concrete measures against Hamas.
Gross says that even though lives and a little piece of heaven in the middle of the desert have been lost, he has to try to learn to live with what happened.
However, he has many wishes:
– I hope that the crisis will end quickly and that the people who survived on the Israeli and Gaza sides will be able to build a new, safe life.
– I hope that Hamas would no longer exist and that people would not support it.
– I hope that the people who are missing get their medicine and are safe.
– And I hope that those who were murdered did not suffer much.
Sources: Reuters, AFP