What happened on my kibbutz was apocalyptic

58-year old Itzik Ribak is speaking to Jewish News from his London home. Beside him, anxiously watching the news, is his wife Ronit, president of Wizo UK.

Ronit had messaged Jewish News, wanting to “share with you one story of many that sadly takes place now in our beloved country.”

Itzik is from the Ein Hashlosha kibbutz, very close to Gaza. It was one of an estimated 22 kibbutzim and moshavim infiltrated and seized by the Hamas terrorists.

An initial email before we speak talks of “looting, burning houses, taking hostages and murdering indiscriminately. Sadly, four members of the kibbutz have been killed, defending the community. One of the was Rami Nrgbi, one of my husband’s best friends from childhood. May they all rest in peace.”

Itzik tells Jewish News: “Our kibbutz is only two kilometres from Gaza; the gap between the fence of our kibbutz and Gaza is just fields. As soon as they got through the fence, they came into our kibbutz, without much difficulty.”

He says that the Palestinians had shot a lot of the cameras securing the fence, depriving the kibbutz security forces of live information.

Meanwhile, “they were infiltrating through the fence with motorbikes in the hundreds and just started walking into the kibbutz.”

He explains that as soon as the rockets had landed, and the alarms gone off, residents had rushed to their shelters, leaving behind a small group of armed adults on guard.

Ribak says that an incident of this magnitude has never happened in Israel since 1948.

“You can handle one or two terrorists, not scores of them. One of my closest friends was one of the people on guard trying to fight them. And then of course, they were gunned down. That’s how all these places have got taken over, literally taken over by the terrorists. Because once you get rid of the settlers with guns, the place is yours and you are roaming free. They loot whatever they can and kill whoever they can.”

He says that “most importantly, if you kidnap someone it’s only a couple of kilometres with a motorbike or pickup truck to take as many as they can.” To either he says grimly, take them as hostages or kill them.

“They were burning houses in order to get them to come out of the shelter. That was horrific for people. Hours and hours and it took forever for the Israeli army to get their act together because it was a complete shock in the middle of Sabbath and a big holiday. And because of very little intelligence, a lot of soldiers had gone home for the weekend. The army base near our kibbutz was taken over.”

He describes what happened as “inconceivable. Apocalyptic. The biggest shock is the intelligence. The second shock is that people are locked in places on telephones begging for help and there is no one to be seen. There is a big gap between what you see on TV and the reality from actual people on the ground that I was in touch with. The might of Israel the big high tech, and then flipping idiotic terrorists on motoribikes and bloody parachutes managing to get in.”

Ribak recounts another story from a kibbutz where the terrorists got into one of the houses, discovered an 81-year old woman not in the shelter and asked her if she had a gun.

“They took her mobile phone, tablet and then left her. She could smell petrol. They were pouring petrol over the house. She later said to her son ‘I don’t know where I got the courage to do what I did’, but she opened the metal window, which is extremely heavy, jumped through it in her pyjamas and started running through the kibbutz. Her house was on fire and she saw her friends house on fire. She knew the person inside it was dead. Burnt alive.”

Ribak says that this type of story was “multiplied several times across other kibbutzim. Everyone has their stories. Our hearts are with all the families of the dead, injured and kidnapped.”