On October 7, 2023, Dekel Shalev, her husband Oshri, and their three children escaped Kibbutz Be’eri with their lives. The family has since settled in Colorado and receives, with gratitude, donations to help them rebuild their lives at their GoFundMe page. In her own words, Dekel tells the story of their ordeal.
My grandparents are founders of Kibbutz Be’eri, and I am the third generation to live in Be’eri, where I was born and raised.
On Friday, October 6, 2023, we held a big festive event to celebrate the 77th anniversary of the founding of the kibbutz.
Early the next morning, Saturday, October 7, my husband and I and our three children, then ages 6 ½, 4 ½, and 2 ½, found ourselves under siege in our home after we were attacked by Hamas.
We endured 13 hours, without electricity, food, water, or communication with the outside world. We endured 13 hours of fear and silence. We endured 13 hours during which we heard, smelled, and saw death beyond our door.
Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7
That morning, at about 7 a.m., we received the first message saying this is not an “ordinary” missile strike. The message said that terrorists had infiltrated the kibbutz, and that we needed to lock our doors. Under constant red alert sirens, I ran out of the safe room, locked up the house, and ran back into the safe room. We didn’t take anything with us, because we thought it must be a false alarm, or, at worst, an infiltration of two or three terrorists. Soon enough, we assumed, we would be told it’s safe to come out.
A few minutes later, we began hearing rapid gunfire and voices yelling in Arabic near our house. Our children cried that they want to leave the safe room, and we very clearly told them that if anyone spoke or cried loudly, they would hear us and come hurt us.
My husband and I looked to each other helplessly, saying a silent goodbye.
We couldn’t speak or comfort each other while armed terrorists invaded our home to loot, break, destroy, and try to burn us alive. The terrorists tried to open the safe room but without success because we put another lock on the door.
Dekel Shalev returns to her home Be’eri.
After 13 hours, three IDF soldiers arrived at the door of the safe room. They seemed even more confused than we were. At first, we refused to leave, because my neighbor had written to me that there are rumors of booby-trapped doors.
One of the soldiers told us “Your house has caught on fire. If you do not come out now, we must continue evacuating other houses”.
And so we went outside.
Under heavy fire, as Molotov cocktails were hurled in our direction, we ran barefoot, partially dressed in pajamas. As we were running, we were being shot at. The soldiers signaled that we should drop to the ground on the road and then on the lawn to avoid the flying bullets.
We ran to a neighboring house, where we were united with two other families and hid for two more hours.
At 9:00 p.m., rescuers arrived in the form of two brothers from the Kalmanzon family. They had heard about the horrors at Be’eri and took it upon themselves to get to the area and help rescue families.
They got up on a small military jeep, saying “Women and children first, men after.” Five adults and 9 shocked, screaming, crying children clambered into the jeep.
We drove to an open field outside the kibbutz gates. There, we lay on the dusty ground for two-and-a-half hours, in the open air, under constant gunfire. All that time, we were hearing sirens and the anguished screams of dozens of kibbutz residents, who were unable to process the events of the day or what had happened to their loved ones.
At first, we were told we were waiting for buses and transport trucks to come take us away from the kibbutz area.
Only at 11:30 p.m., when it became clear that no one could or was willing to approach the area, did a force of soldiers who fought by the kibbutz arrive and ask the dozens of people to line up and start boarding military jeeps, with priority given to the elderly and families with small children.
We boarded a military jeep with an open top and we drove to Netivot, with dozens of rockets flying above our heads. The whole way the road was lined with burned and overturned cars, smoke, and bodies. From Netivot, we traveled on buses to a hotel at the Dead Sea, where we arrived at 2:00 a.m. It had been nearly 24 hours since our ordeal began.
The next day, bruised, scratched and hurt, I stepped out of our hotel room and began to hear from friends how their husbands—the fathers of their children—had been murdered. I heard how so many of my generation had been orphaned in an instant. I heard of kidnapped parents, of kidnapped siblings, and of children burned alive. I heard of what happened beyond the walls of our home.
Kibbutz Be’eri after October 7
We live in a row of four attached houses, arranged side-by-side, sharing common walls.
In the first house, a father and his ten-month-old baby were murdered, shot at close range.
The second house was burned, but the woman living in it miraculously survived. The third house was our home. In the fourth house, the caregiver of the elderly resident was brutally murdered.
What we and our children heard that day, I will not describe. But close your eyes for a moment. Imagine the walls of your home. You can hear what’s happening on the other side of the wall, can’t you? Especially if someone is screaming in pain and horror. That’s what it was like. Those were the walls of my home on October 7.
In Be’eri, 102 kibbutz members were murdered. That’s 20 percent of kibbutz residents. Thirty-two people were kidnapped and taken hostage. Ten of them are still in captivity, but only 3 are still alive: Ohad Ben-Ami, Eli Sharabi, and Tal Shoham. Of my age group, two were murdered and two are still in captivity. Of my small school class, with only 10 children, Yuval Rabia was murdered at the Psyduck music festival, along with his brother and fiancé. Yarden Bibas was kidnapped along with his wife Shiri, and their two children, and they are still held in captivity.
Life after October 7
We arrived at the Dead Sea hotel with nothing. We spent a month there.
It was impossible, at first, to go back to Kibbutz Be’eri and retrieve our remaining belongings.
It was hard because the atmosphere was one of deep mourning. People were passing out from distress all the time and everywhere. Families of 5 or 7 people were all sharing a room. There was no privacy to mourn or process.
Every day, we received messages of people missing, kidnapped, murdered. Every day, there were messages of daily funerals. Some people were hurt in body, but all were hurt in mind and soul.
For a month, we lived with the living dead. My husband and I decided we wanted to leave Israel and find a safe place for our family to live.
It took four weeks for our documents and passports to arrive so that we could leave Israel.
We came to Denver in early November. We stayed with my family, who hosted us for the first month until we found a place of our own to try to begin healing.
I left behind a large family who are refugees in their own land—my parents, three sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins, and my husband’s family.
I left behind my grandmother and my grandfather, who has now survived two Holocausts. Every time we speak, he reminds me that it’s possible we may never hug each other again.