HERZLIYA – I still can’t believe what happened.
Yehonatan Sadi begins to recount the tragedy of three weeks ago.
The man in his forties speaks fiercely, but sometimes lowers his voice when he talks about the massacre by Hamas terrorists. He says he’s still shocked.
Sadi, who lives in Kibbutz Mefalsim in southern Israel, was sleeping outside with her children when the militants attacked. The kibbutz is only three kilometers from the Gaza border.
Sadi was camping in an olive grove with her two youngest daughters. Sad has 8-, 10- and 13-year-old daughters.
Sleep was interrupted at half past six in the morning by the sound of air raid sirens and the roar of rocket fire. Sadi urged her daughters to stay calm. He estimates that Israel’s missile defense system repels the rockets.
At the time, Sadi still didn’t know that it was about something much worse than the rather ordinary rocket fire in southern Israel.
The daughters got inside the kibbutz with the help of a car driver. Sadi himself drove home in his golf cart.
Just as Sadi was about to enter the gate of the kibbutz, a rocket fired from Gaza hit more than twenty meters away.
– I thought I was going to get hit, but luckily the rocket went into a pile of dirt nearby.
Sadi moved to the safe room of her house with her family. Only then did it start to become clear what was happening. The rocket fire continued, but Sadi estimated that her family was safe. Then he received a message on Whatsapp that a friend’s car had been shot at. A friend’s son had seen Hamas terrorists.
Automatic weapons fire began to be heard.
– I realized that it was not about the weapons of our troops. The shooting lasted from seven in the morning until eleven o’clock.
The internet connection was lost about 20 minutes after the confrontation started, and Sadi and her family were left in the dark and stuck in their house for hours. Sadi says that the family watched movies to calm the mind.
At the beginning of the attack, Sadi’s friend flew a drone above the kibbutz. The drone filmed the cars of Hamas fighters curving towards the kibbutz. There were 8–10 cars in the convoy.
The residents of the Mefalsim kibbutz were lucky, according to Sadi, that an Israeli helicopter gunship happened to be there. The soldiers in the helicopter shot the attackers.
Sadi has seen the drone footage. The Israeli military has forbidden the release of photos taken on the morning of the attack to the media for security reasons, and therefore they are not included in this story.
On the map below you can see where the Sadi family’s home kibbutz is located.
According to Sadi, the security patrol of the Mefalsim kibbutz would not have been able to stop the terrorists if they had been able to break into the kibbutz. There were 12 members in the patrol that morning.
Sadi and her family finally got to safety only at four in the morning. Now the family is evacuated to a hotel in Herzliya near Tel Aviv.
Being in Evako will last a month and a half, Sadi estimates.
– We will return to our home when the threat has been eliminated. I believe that I will be able to return home a couple of weeks after the Israeli army begins the ground offensive.
According to Sadi, some of the approximately one thousand inhabitants of Mefalsim do not necessarily intend to return to their homes near the Gaza border. Sadi’s mother is Finnish, and therefore Sadi has dual citizenship of Israel and Finland. However, the family did not consider evacuating abroad.
“The army failed completely”
Sadi is bitter about the Israeli army.
– The army failed completely. The army should be there to help us in 15 minutes, but it took them four hours to arrive. The time it took for the army to come to help cost the lives of more than 1,400 people.
The volunteer kibbutz security patrols have ammunition for a 15-20 minute firefight. It is calculated in the plans that the army should arrive in that time.
Sadi praises the fact that the security personnel of the kibbutz managed to put the terrorists in camps. However, the decisive factor was the arrival of the army helicopter at the right time.
– Without the helicopter, this interview would not necessarily be done. Thanks to that, neither I nor my daughter are now hostages in Gaza.
Hamas terrorists kidnapped Sadi’s daughter’s schoolmate from the Kfar Aza kibbutz. According to Israel, Hamas took at least 229 hostages in connection with its attack.
Sadi wonders how this could happen.
– We have a border fence that cost billions of shekels and a lot of security technology that should give warnings when someone tries to get through the fence. This shouldn’t have happened.
– We have helicopters, missiles, anti-tank missiles, but where were they? How can a fence be broken with a tractor, and no one shot? Sadi asks, exhausted.
According to Sadi’s information, Hamas terrorists first attacked a small military base near Mefalsim and killed the soldiers. Because of this, the army could not be contacted.
Sadi demands from the army more force near the Gaza border in the future.
– I want the army to protect us. Dead soldiers are not responsible for what happened. Their commanders are. They were arrogant.
The shelters built by the state also proved to be insufficient in some kibbutzim.
– The state has built bomb shelters that are not safe, we know that now. The doors cannot be locked easily enough. In the Kfar Azan kibbutz next to Mefalsim, people were murdered in the safe rooms because they were not safe.
All houses in kibbutzim near the Gaza border have a safe room that should be able to withstand rocket fire.
– But their doors are not designed to withstand rifle fire.
Hamas had intelligence on the kibbutzim
Israeli intelligence failed to detect the Hamas terrorist attack in advance. On top of that, Hamas had detailed information about the kibbutzim.
The soldiers found a map of the kibbutz in the possession of the terrorists they killed near Mefalsim. It also turned out that Hamas knew, among other things, the locations of the kibbutz weapon depots.
Sadi estimated that the Palestinian workers in the kibbutzes had spied on the information.
– They had a lot of information that they could only get from the inside. Hamas threatens workers: Either you give us information or we will kill your child, grandchild or wife. That’s how Hamas works.
Yehonatan Sadi says that the things previously achieved in the Middle East peace talks can now be forgotten. He hopes that a democracy movement would emerge in Gaza. In his opinion, that is the only way to get better.
– If only there was a phenomenon like the Arab Spring in Gaza, and they threw the militants out. There can be no peace before that.
According to Sadi, it will take the Israelis a really long time to recover from the terrorist attack by Hamas.
– Neither my children nor anyone deserves such trauma. The shock lasts a long time.
Sadi has an unequivocal view of Hamas terrorists:
– They are monsters.
And now civilians are dying in Gaza as Israel accelerates its operation to destroy Hamas.
According to Hamas health officials, more than 7,300 people had died in Israeli bombings by Friday.
According to Sadi, many Israelis find it difficult to empathize with ordinary Gazans.
– Unfortunately, there will be many civilian casualties in Gaza. My heart breaks, but we have to do this. Most Israelis no longer care because our people were murdered. We don’t care anymore.
follows the latest events of the Gaza war in this article