Kibbutz Nirim Holds Oct. 7 Memorial Amid Explosions in Gaza
The community declined to participate in the official state ceremony, choosing instead to hold an intimate memorial for the nine people killed on the kibbutz on October 7, 2023
By Nicole Jansezian/The Media Line
Hundreds of members of Kibbutz Nirim gathered outside the kibbutz community center on Monday to mark one year since October 7, 2023. The residents, who have been displaced from their homes since October, memorialized the nine people killed on Nirim on October 7. As the ceremony took place, sounds of artillery fire in nearby Gaza could be heard.
Of the five civilians taken hostage into Gaza on October 7, three were released last November. The other two were killed in Gaza.
“It’s easy for the government to simply manage the conflict while we absorb the consequences of their insistence on functioning without diplomatic wisdom or an effective military solution,” Nirim resident Avi Dabush said. “We are the bloody proof that unresolved problems that are dismissed and left unresolved when politicians are complacent and blind will end in an explosion.”
“We are the heart of that explosion,” Dabush, who serves as executive director for Rabbis for Human Rights, said.
In August, Nirim told the government it would not participate in the official state ceremony commemorating the attacks. “The lives of kibbutz members and of all residents of the western Negev are not a movie, and the government of Israel is not a production company,” the kibbutz wrote in a statement.
Nirim residents are now largely based in Beersheba. Most plan to move back to the kibbutz once it’s restored.
One Nirim member who visited the kibbutz the day before the ceremony said it felt like a ghost town.
“The contrast of today, being here with so many people as opposed to the ghost town of yesterday, it was heartwarming and it felt a little bit like October 6,” Nirim member Adele Raemer told The Media Line.
Raemer said the majority of kibbutz members are planning to move back and are already “dreaming about the future.”
“Thriving there and living there well—that will be my victory, that will be my revenge,” she said.
The Virginia-based Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) is partnering with Nirim to rebuild the kibbutz’s community center and convenience store. CBN CEO Gordon Robertson announced the project on the evangelical media company’s 700 Club news show.
Three hostages kidnapped from Nirim were released in November, including Noralin “Nataly” Babadilla. Babadilla had been visiting the kibbutz with her partner Gideon Babani when she was kidnapped. Gideon was killed, as were the couple’s friend Doron Meyer, whom they had come to see, and Doron’s teenage daughter Mor.
Noralin Babani was released in November together with Rimon Kirsht Buchshtav. Kirsht Buchstav’s husband Yagev Buchshtav was also kidnapped. In July, the Israeli military announced that Yagev had been killed in Hamas captivity.
Channah Peri was also released in November after being kidnapped. Her younger son Nadav Popplewell, 51, was killed while in Hamas captivity after being abducted from Nirim. Her older son Roi Popplewell, 54, was shot and killed in Nirim on October 7.
The bodies of Nadav Popplewell and Buchshtav were both rescued from Gaza by the Israeli military in August.
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