SDEROT, Israel — It began as a pleasant Saturday morning. Leeor Katz, a 37-year-old dental hygienist, was visiting her husband’s family in central Israel for the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.
Then she started receiving texts from the Nir Oz kibbutz where she lived, just two miles from the Gaza Strip border: Fighters from the Palestinian militant group Hamas had entered the property and were burning down houses.
“They were walking freely inside Israel, in a kibbutz inside Israeli borders,” Katz said. “We never thought it would happen.”
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The text chain, on a messaging group for kibbutz residents, said people inside safe rooms were struggling to breathe because of smoke from the fires.
Katz did not realize that the attack was part of a sophisticated, multipronged assault by Hamas that saw its fighters kidnap an estimated 150 people and take them back to Gaza, precipitating a war with Israel.
Israel battled Hamas infiltrators for a third day and massed tens of thousands of troops near the Gaza Strip after the biggest attack in decades on Israeli soil.
At 8 a.m., Katz called her sister, 34-year-old Doron Asher, who whispered that she and her two children — 2-year-old Raz and 4-year-old Aviv — were in a safe room with their mother, 67-year-old Efrat.
Their brother, 51-year-old Ravid, part of an armed watch group on the kibbutz, had left to confront the attackers. His girlfriend and their 4-month-old baby stayed with a neighbor for a while before managing to escape the kibbutz.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday night that it was preparing a coordinated offensive in Gaza using air, ground and naval forces.
After a frantic few hours of messaging and trying to understand what was happening in her home, Katz called her mother.
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Her mother’s boyfriend, Gadi Moses, had left to go reason with the militants and had yet to return, her mother explained. Everybody else was still in the safe room.
That was the last contact Katz had with any of them. She kept calling, but nobody answered.
Urging restraint won’t work, given the scale of the Palestinian attacks. How far will further escalation go?
It wasn’t until hours later that Katz finally learned what happened, after a brother-in-law saw a video on social media of militants driving hostages — including her relatives — in pickups inside Gaza.
“I couldn’t watch,” Katz said. “It was too hard for me.”
Nir Oz has since been evacuated, as Israeli troops gather in villages near the border with Gaza in what appears to be preparation for a land incursion into the enclave.
On Monday, after an hours-long barrage of strikes on Gaza, the spokesman of Hamas’ armed wing announced “any targeting of civilian homes without advanced warning will be met regrettably with the execution of one of the enemy civilian hostages we hold.”
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Israel targeted Gaza City with airstrikes on Oct. 9, 2023.
(Sameh Rahmi / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Katz said she was “trying not to believe everything I hear.”
Waiting for any information about her family — her mother, sister, brother and nieces — she said, “I’m scared, but I’m trying to have hope.
“We’ve gotten no word from anyone. Not the army. Not the police. Not the government.”
Nabih Bulos is the Middle East bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. Since 2012, he has covered the aftermath of the “Arab Spring” revolution as well as the Islamic State’s resurgence and the campaign to defeat it. His work has taken him to Syria, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen as well as on the migrant trail through the Balkans and northern Europe. A Fulbright scholar, Bulos is also a concert violinist who has performed with Daniel Barenboim, Valeri Gergyev and Bono.
