For eight hours straight on Simchas Torah morning, Kibbutz Alumim's emergency response team fought off dozens of terrorists

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

Kibbutz Alumim is a verdant paradise surrounded by flowering fields and orchards. Quiet paths wind along the green expanses and one-family homes are flanked by trees and flowering bushes. There’s just one problem with the bucolic picture: The kibbutz has no residents.

Alumim is one of the kibbutzim in Israel’s Gaza Envelope that was targeted and infiltrated by Hamas on October 7. Yet unlike the other kibbutzim that suffered devastating losses of life — some with a fourth of their members slaughtered or kidnapped — Alumim was the site of an open miracle. It was a miracle whose earthly emissaries were tenacious husbands and fathers, and whose supernatural details are cloaked in talk of rifles and bullets — but a miracle nonetheless. A small band of kibbutz members trained to provide security “until the IDF arrives” ultimately prevailed in an hours-long standoff, preventing successive waves of terrorists from reaching the residents. At the end of that terrible day, not a single member of the Shabbos-observant kibbutz had been killed.

The next morning, Alumim’s residents — after having spent up to 26 hours holed up in their secured rooms — were transported out of the region, which has been a war zone ever since. They’re currently staying at two Netanya hotels, trying to keep their spirits up as they track the unfolding war and wondering whether they will ever be able to return home.

As they wait, the security squad guards their homes, hoping for a decisive end to the war just a stone’s throw away in Gaza — and for some decisive answers to the mountain of disturbing questions about Israel’s October 7 debacle.