Israel’s BE’ERI In Be’eri, a kibbutz close to the Gaza border, where Hamas terrorists ambushed the little town Saturday morning, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and leaving dozens of dead, there is an overwhelming smell of death permeating the air.
Body bags are still in the streets days later. Homes and cars that have been entirely destroyed and have their doors hung open depict not just one village but an entire nation that has been caught completely off guard.
Israeli Major General Itai Veruv escorted journalists through the now-unrecognisable streets of Be’eri and declared, “They came to murder, kill, and kill.
“There’s no kibbutz there anymore,” claimed 25-year-old Liel Fishbien, who escaped the attack after spending 22 hours hiding with his grandmother in her Be’eri house. “Everything had been destroyed.”
Fishbien was held hostage together with her younger sister Tchelet Fishbien, 18, and her boyfriend, who she had just started seeing. Around 100 people were slain, according to Israeli rescue services, and more were thought to have been taken hostage.
Fishbien claimed that he and his grandmother sought cover after hearing what sounded like missiles shortly after 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, but that they lost communication with his sister, who works at a kindergarten, about 11:30 am
“Her final words were, “Be careful and quiet. They reside nearby,” he declared.
Fishbien, a musician who works as a technician at the Tower of David and resides in Jerusalem where he also provides drum classes, claimed that up until this past Saturday, he had been considering going to Japan to pursue music studies. In addition, he wanted to explore Buddhism and go to a monastery.
Right now, “we have no plan,” he declared. Just getting through this.
“They abandoned us to die”
The Israeli government, according to Fishbien, let his family and the hundreds of others who lost loved ones in the incident down.
They abandoned us to perish. It’s just what happened, he said, adding that he doesn’t “define myself as left or right.”
He expressed his “sadness that innocent people are getting hurt,” both in Israel, where at least 1,200 people, including 189 soldiers, have died, and in Gaza, where at least 1,120 people have perished and more than 260,000 have been displaced.
Fishbien claimed to have seen the faces of some of the Hamas terrorists who had attacked his neighbourhood and claimed that some of them appeared to be “14-year-old children.”
He declared, “Children shouldn’t walk into places killing people. “They ought to live better lives.”