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This document is an unofficial translation of the original Hebrew text from HaAretz Hebrew newspaper. In the event of any discrepancy between the content of this document and the original text, the original Hebrew text shall prevail. This translation has been prepared in good faith by a non-professional translator and may contain errors. An official English translation is available at Haaretz.com.

By Shani Litman

Translation by Yaniv Aknin with the assistance of ChatGPT

Date of original publication: 25/7/2024

Original Hebrew text: Hebrew; Official English translation

In the library of Liat Atzili’s new apartment in the Karmi Gat neighbourhood of Kiryat Gat lies the book "Demon Copperhead." The book, by American author Barbara Kingsolver, is a kind of contemporary variation on the classic novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Atzili received a warm recommendation for it from her cousin. The book looks new, except for some black soot marks on the white pages. It was lying next to Atzili’s bed in her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on the morning of October 7, and she was about to start reading it. Nine months later, it is probably the most significant book in her library, even though she has not yet read a word of it because she still cannot concentrate on reading. It was the first object she brought with her from the scorched house in Nir Oz, which she was forced to leave, to the new apartment.

I met Atzili for the first time a few days after she returned from Gaza, in the first prisoner exchange, after 54 days in Hamas captivity. The kibbutz organised a special evening in her honour and in memory of Aviv, her partner and the father of her children, who was killed that Saturday while trying to defend Nir Oz, the kibbutz where he was born, raised, and lived until his last day. His body was kidnapped and is still held in Gaza.

Haaretz Supplement Cover, July 26

I did not know the couple before, but about three weeks after October 7, I interviewed their eldest son, Ofri, Aviv’s mother, Talma Atzili, and Liat’s mother, Chaya Binyan, who were temporarily staying in a hotel in Eilat. No one knew then what had happened to the couple. They only knew that Aviv left the house and disappeared, and no one had seen Liat or had any sign of life from her. They did not even know for sure that she was in Gaza. Ofri and his two grandmothers described a happy couple — both 49 years old, who had known each other since age 14. Aviv was a mechanic who was recently discovered to be a sensitive and talented artist, and Liat was a beloved teacher of history and civics. Young parents of three grown children, two of whom were in other apartments in the kibbutz that morning. The youngest, Aya, 19, was not in the kibbutz that Saturday. They loved to travel, surrounded by friends. It seemed like a happy and funny family, and I regretted not knowing them earlier.

Then Liat returned, on the penultimate day of the first and so far only hostage deal. The next day, the IDF officially announced what the family had feared earlier — that Aviv was killed and his body kidnapped. When Liat returned, I felt the need to see with my own eyes that she really existed. Now, seven months after her return, I asked to hear what she went through in captivity.

Her story is far from representing the ordeals of most hostages. Not only was she not held in tunnels, in an area that at that time had not yet been attacked by the IDF, and was supplied with a relatively reasonable amount of food, but her captors did not use physical violence against her nor treat her cruelly. The fate of most other hostages was not so fortunate. She insists that she was very lucky.

Atzili realised something unusual was happening that morning. But when a friend outside the kibbutz called to tell her about things she was seeing on social media, she did not believe it. "I said it couldn’t be true," she recalls.

In the first minutes, she stayed in the safe room with her partner, Aviv. "The number of sirens was crazy. And within a few minutes, we also heard rifle fire. Aviv said, 'There are people inside the kibbutz, I’m going out to see what’s happening.' He was a member of the readiness squad and had a gun at home. He went out to see what was happening, came back after a few minutes, told me that he and our neighbour were walking around the neighbourhood, and went out again. That was the last time I saw him."

Aviv Atzili. Killed that Saturday when he went out to defend Nir Oz

Liat stayed alone in the safe room, together with their dog. Around 11 a.m., two men in uniform, armed, entered the house.

Were they frightening?

"Not really. They had weapons, but they didn’t threaten me. They said, 'You have nothing to fear, we won’t hurt you, come with us.' They gave me time to dress and get ready, but I couldn’t use it because I was in shock."

Did you try to argue with them?

"No."

That was the moment she hesitated about taking Kingsolver’s book and didn’t take it. Later, she regretted it a bit during the long days of captivity in Gaza. "When they took me, I thought, what book now. It seemed stupid to me. I thought it would take two or three days, and it would be over. I don’t know why I thought that. And I didn’t take clothes either. I looked for my glasses, and they helped me look, but we didn’t find them. Then, when I came home after two months, the glasses were exactly where I remembered they were supposed to be. But at the moment, the brain doesn’t function."

What was going through your mind?

"I was sure they were taking me outside, and it was like the Holocaust. That they were taking everyone out of their homes to the big lawn, and then I didn’t know what they would do with us. And when I saw that outside, there was no one, only me, I was pretty shocked. They didn’t touch me, spoke to me in English and kept saying, 'Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you.' Then they took me to a car near the dining room. There was someone else from the kibbutz there, who was still a captive."

Their dog, she learned after she returned, was shot that day.

Their burnt home in Nir Oz. "When they took me outside, I was sure it was like the Holocaust"

When they arrived in the Strip, they separated her from the other captive, and she was taken to the family home of one of the captors. "His mother welcomed me. I didn’t stop crying, and she sat me on the couch, hugged me and said, it will be okay, it will be okay."

Did you try to say anything to them?

"At first, I told them, listen, I don’t know what’s happening with my sons, with my husband. I asked them to somehow inform them that I’m alive," she chuckles. "They kept telling me, in a few days, in a few days. I didn’t stop crying. They really worried that I would eat and drink. They said, 'We will take care of you, you’re safe here, nothing will happen to you.' They let me shower, change clothes. They washed my clothes."

Weren’t they afraid you would try to escape?

"No, and rightly so. Where would I run? The house was completely open, I could move around freely. They asked me if I needed anything, if I wanted to be alone in a room. They didn’t guard me at all. They understood I wasn’t going anywhere, because what would I do alone in Khan Yunis? We didn’t talk much because they didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Arabic. At the house were the mother and father of the captor, his brothers and sister, with her two children. When you come to a house with small children, it’s calming."

The two guards were about 30 years old, from the middle class in the Strip, each married with a child. "The wife of one of them came to the apartment with their newborn baby. We talked about spouses, children, brothers and parents, one of them told about his cat. We talked a lot about food because one of them really liked to cook."

On Sunday evening, Atzili was transferred to another apartment where there were several Hamas activists. There she met some of the Thai workers who were also hostages, along with another young woman kidnapped from Nir Oz. The Thais were taken from there that same night, and with Atzili and the other hostage remained two guards. "We stayed with them both throughout the entire period. They were about 30 years old, unarmed and not in uniform. We stayed in that apartment for about ten days, and then they moved us to another apartment. And that was it, our captivity period began."

Atzili and the young woman kidnapped with her came from the same kibbutz but did not know each other well beforehand. The fact that they were held together was a great comfort to them. They shared everything and talked about everything. But they did not only talk to each other. During the long weeks in the hiding apartment, Atzili testifies that a kind of trust relationship developed between them and the two guards. "It’s very confusing. Of course, I was scared, especially at first. But they kept telling us that Hamas wants a deal, that it’s going to happen soon and that their role is to take care of us, that their interest is that we be in good condition. Within a few days in captivity, it was pretty clear to me that they probably wouldn’t hurt us. I was very afraid they would transfer us to other people. From time to time, they raised the possibility of transferring us again, and I told them, "But you’re staying with us, right?"

The guards allowed the hostages to watch Al-Jazeera broadcasts on TV every day, and so they partially learned about what happened on October 7. But Al-Jazeera did not talk about Nir Oz, so they did not know what happened to their loved ones, and they had no idea about the number of hostages and those murdered in the kibbutz. "I didn’t know what happened to Aviv. I corresponded with the children right up until I was kidnapped, but I didn’t know what happened afterwards. That was one of the things that drove me crazy — how did that day end? What happened in the end? Al-Jazeera talked a lot about Be’eri and the military base in Nahal Oz. The two who guarded us said not much happened in Nir Oz, and they didn’t know anything about my family. They didn’t talk to us about the horrors, about the rapes and murders. When we told them there was looting, that we saw it, they looked surprised. And they kept saying, 'We don’t understand why they kidnapped you, you’re women, we don’t fight women.' I said, okay, you don’t understand why they kidnapped us, but you’re the ones holding us. They had nothing to say about that. When I felt safer, I told them, take us to Abasan, it’s a town in the Strip close to the fence, right opposite Nir Oz. I told them — from there we’ll manage. I also said my father would pay a lot of money if they returned me. And they said, 'If it were up to us, we’d help you. But you know if we do that, either the IDF will kill us, or if not, Hamas will kill us'".

Many of the hostages reported severe hunger distress while held in Gaza, but even in this regard, Atzili was lucky, as she was held in Khan Yunis at a stage when food supply was still relatively reasonable. One of her stories sounds almost unbelievable. "They were shocked that I’m a vegetarian and asked me, So what do you eat? I said I really like pizza. So one of them rode his bike and brought pizza from Crispy Pizza in Khan Yunis. Later, we asked for fruits and vegetables, and they brought them. Eggs ran out pretty quickly and couldn’t be obtained anymore. There were days when suddenly there was little food. It’s very strange that suddenly you don’t control what you eat and when. But we didn’t suffer from hunger. They tried to make sure we had enough."

Over the days, the hostages began to have long conversations with their guards. They spoke with them in English. "I understood that what would help me survive was as much communication with the captors as possible. They wanted us to see them as people, and we wanted them to see us as people. So very quickly, conversations began about family, about our lives, and it worked. I was completely dependent on these people. I wanted them to like me, I wanted them to know me, I wanted them to care about me. That’s how you survive."

She credits this approach, which may have saved her life, to the captive who was taken with her in the car on October 7. "There was something about his behaviour, the conversation we managed to have before we were separated, that helped me understand that even in captivity, I need to be as much myself as possible."

Do you know their names?

"I know what they told me their names were."

What did they tell you about themselves?

"One said he was a lawyer, the other a teacher. Both were married and each had a child. The wife of one of them came one day to the apartment with their newborn baby. We talked about our children, spouses, parents, and siblings. They talked a lot about their lives. One of them had a cat, so we talked about our cats. They talked about weddings, about everyday life. We talked a lot about food. One of them really liked to cook, so they talked about all kinds of dishes: maklouba, stuffed vegetables, all kinds of salads."

Atzili asked them why they were in Hamas. "I somewhat understood the place of Hamas in their lives. They talked a lot about poverty in the Strip, about how hard it is to get out of there. Both really wanted to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, and they are people considered middle class, both from Gazan families originally, not refugee families, but landowners, and yet they said they couldn’t afford to leave the Strip. They asked us wistfully if we ever ate at McDonald’s. We answered yes, what’s the big deal, it’s disgusting. They said in commercials it looks so tasty."

Did you talk about politics?

"Yes. There were things I was surprised they knew. On one hand, they knew a lot about Israeli politics and the army. On the other hand, they showed crazy ignorance about other things. For example, we talked about Sabra and Shatila. I told them that it wasn’t the IDF that massacred the Palestinians. I explained that yes, there are those who think it is the responsibility of the IDF, what happened, and I agree that the IDF should have prevented it, but it wasn’t the IDF that carried out the massacre. And they were surprised and said — so who did?"

Another conversation where Atzili felt she was enlightening her captors was about the Holocaust. As a history teacher and guide at Yad Vashem, it’s a subject she is used to teaching. The jaw-dropping conversation she recounts took place between her and one of the guards, who until that moment had been less talkative. "At first he was very embarrassed to speak English, and as time passed he gained confidence. There were a few days when my captivity partner and the other guard were sick and slept a lot, so it was just the two of us and we talked freely. He told me he read about the Holocaust on the internet and asked me to tell him more. I told him, and in the end he said, it’s terrible what happened to you. I said yes, pretty terrible. He said, "I didn't know so many Jews were murdered."

Atzili, a history teacher, found herself talking with one of them about the Holocaust. "He said he read about it on the internet and asked me to tell him more. I told him, and in the end he said, 'It’s terrible what happened to you. I didn’t know so many Jews were murdered.'" On the other hand, she qualifies, both believed in global jihad. "They said the goal is for the whole world to be Muslim, that they want us to return to the countries we came from."

On the other hand, Atzili is quick to qualify, it was clear that the two were devout Muslims who believed in global jihad. "We talked about the two-state solution. One of them agreed it should happen, but told me — it’s temporary. In the end, the whole world will be Muslim. They said that’s the goal. That although today the leaders of Arab countries and Israeli Arabs don’t support them enough, one day that will change. They talked a lot about wanting us Jews to leave Israel, to return to the countries we came from. We explained to them that this is not really an option."

Did you feel that this perception came from deep religious belief?

"With one of them I felt it was really what he believed. With the other, I got the impression he was more grounded, that he knows ideology and belief are separate from reality."

Did you feel fear around the fact that you are women and they are men?

"At first we were very afraid something would happen, that we would be sexually assaulted. But then we understood it was okay, that they kept boundaries."

After a few weeks, when the hostage release deal matured, the guards tried to trick them. "They said all kinds of nonsense, that we were on the list, that we weren’t on the list. They lied a bit and tried to fool us, but they weren’t good at it. We caught on pretty quickly and then they apologized. I don’t know how much they really knew what was going on."

In the days when the deal was being discussed, there was not always electricity, so watching Al-Jazeera was only possible a little. "They talked about the deal a lot, about a month, until it happened. We felt they were always talking about the same thing. Usually we asked to watch TV in the afternoon and evening. Then one day we asked to watch in the morning, and suddenly they weren’t talking about the war, but about the elections in the Netherlands and a volcano eruption in Iceland. It was a kind of moment of, wow, other things are happening in the world. It really made me happy. I have a good friend who lives in the Netherlands, and I thought, when I get out of here I’ll ask her about the elections, I’ll be able to show some knowledge about politics in the Netherlands."

One of Atzili’s stories sounds almost unbelievable. "They were shocked that I’m vegetarian. They asked, 'So what do you eat?' and I answered that I like pizza. So one of them rode his bike and brought pizza from Crispy Pizza in Khan Yunis. Once they wistfully asked if we ever ate at McDonald’s. They said in commercials it looks so tasty."

Two days before they were released, Atzili and the hostage who was with her were transferred to a place where hostages designated for release were gathered, in one of the hospitals in the Strip. "It was a bit chaotic. They told us in advance that they would come at night because they were afraid we would be lynched. And indeed they came at night, blindfolded us, and one of the guards took us out of the apartment and put us in a car."

How did you say goodbye?

"Before he left us he said, good luck, may God bless you. We thanked him. There was a pat on the shoulder. After all, we spent time together. On one hand, what they did to us was a terrible crime, and they chose to be partners in it. On the other hand, we received humane treatment from them that allowed us to get through this period okay overall."

Ruins of Nir Oz, in October. The hostages saw on Al-Jazeera the demonstrations for the release of hostages but had no idea about the number of hostages and those murdered in the kibbutz | Photography: Olivier Fitoussi

Atzili does not know what happened to her captors. When I ask her if she would like to know, a long silence falls. "I don’t know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes I’m curious, sometimes I prefer not to know. I don’t wish for their death. But they made the wrong choice. It’s clear to me that their worldview is fundamentally wrong. But even here in Israel there are people whose worldview is fundamentally wrong. And with all the ease with which I talk about it, I really was extremely lucky."

After leaving the apartment where they were held and parting from their captors, the two hostages were transferred to Nasser Hospital, where they met other hostages and were updated on details that shocked them.

You didn’t know there were other hostages?

"One day we saw on TV the demonstrations for the release of hostages and on one of the signs was a picture of Ofir Calderon and his children. I was shocked. I said, what? Six hostages from Nir Oz? It seemed crazy to me. At the hospital, we met Shani Goren and Irina Tati. Shani filled us in because she spent a lot of time in the hospital and met other people from Nir Oz who were held there or passed through there on their way to release. Some of them heard Israeli radio in captivity. I was in shock from what she told. She didn’t know anything about my family. I asked her, do you really not know, or are you not telling me? She swore to me she really didn’t know."

What were the details that particularly shocked you?

"I imagined that as long as the war continued, the residents did not return to Nir Oz, but I didn’t imagine the extent of the destruction in the kibbutz. I didn’t imagine there was no school. I thought about 20–30 people were murdered from Nir Oz, statistically it sounded reasonable, but I didn’t imagine so many were kidnapped. And mainly, I didn’t imagine all the horrors. I knew they killed and kidnapped, I didn’t imagine other things. Luckily I didn’t know, because it’s knowledge you can’t bear in such a situation."

Did not knowing actually help?

"Yes. I didn’t know Aviv was not alive, I didn’t know anything. Psychologically I was protected. Other people went through completely different things. It’s clear to me that the way I went through this is what allows me to be where I am today and speak as I speak. I really understand people whose whole desire now is revenge and who are full of anger. We need to contain those voices. But it’s also important that there be other voices. It’s essential that there be other voices."

The day after she arrived at the hospital, Atzili was separated from her captivity partner, who was taken to tunnels ahead of her release. After a few hours she was left alone in one of the hospital rooms. "Around 8–9 p.m. someone said — it’s not sure you’re going home today. You’re the only Israeli in the hospital." I was very scared. I called him again, wanted to tell him to sit with me there, I felt I couldn’t be there alone. Then he suddenly said — want to go home? And then they took me out."

Atzili, after she was released from captivity. The very first moments of freedom were engraved as moments of terror | Photography: IDF Spokesperson

She was led to a place where the other hostages released that evening had already been waiting for hours. "I arrived feeling there was a catastrophe waiting for me. I was afraid to find out what happened to Aviv and the boys."

Close to release, the very first moments of freedom — until the meeting with the victim officer who told her what happened to her family — were engraved as moments of terror. "There was no relief and no joy, until the moment they told me the children were okay. That was the moment I suddenly managed to breathe. At that stage, the official version was that Aviv was injured and captive. Only 12 hours later did the official military announcement come that Aviv was killed in the kibbutz and his body kidnapped."

Did they wait to give you the news until you were out?

"The official claim is no. That once a final conclusion is reached, the family is informed. It doesn’t concern me. To receive that news while I was in the shock of returning was somewhere that protected me from the news itself."

That’s a lot to process at once.

"Right. Today I’m half a year after release, and there are things still hanging in the air. Aviv always said that a nightmare that ends is an experience. But captivity moved aside, and what became the central and difficult confrontation in my life is his loss. It’s clear to me that I have residues and scars from captivity, but that’s not the main thing. I won’t say it’s a footnote, but it’s not the main thing."

Atzili came to Kibbutz Nir Oz because of Aviv when she was 20. "A personal story will come," she says with a smile. She was born in 1974 in Kibbutz Shameret, daughter of Yehuda and Chaya Binyan, who immigrated to Israel from the U.S. as part of a Habonim Dror group. She met Aviv when she was 14, at the Madatz seminar of the movement. "We were in touch here and there, trips, seminars. We both did a service year and were communal members in Haifa. Toward the end of the year, the relationship tightened and we became a couple at 19." After discharge, they lived a bit in Nir Oz, then traveled the world. "We traveled for three years and returned to Israel because I wanted to study and wanted a child, at 26. By 30 I finished a degree and we had three children — Ofri, Neta, and Aya. We were kids with kids. In recent years Aviv kept telling me, how lucky you forced me to have kids early. Here we are, not yet 50, and our baby already finished high school and went to a service year. We were again a couple without small children. Everything was open."

At Aviv’s farewell event, the couple’s relaxed parenting style was mentioned with a smile. Someone said that at any given moment you could see at least one child flying through the air. "When they were five, seven, and nine, we went on a trip for several months in India, in the East. Aviv told me that before that trip, he realized he didn’t know the children. That besides knowing what kind of omelet each one liked, he didn’t know who his children were. And it was important to him to get to know them, so he invested a lot in that. On the other hand, we are super relaxed parents. The relationships are because we want to, not because we have to. It makes me happy that they know I’m okay and they don’t need to protect me, that I’m still the one protecting them. When I returned from captivity, it took them time to get used to having a parent in the picture again, because they were basically alone during that time."

Aviv and Liat Atzili in their youth, in Australia. Met at age 14 in a youth movement 

Atzili does not know exactly what happened to Aviv after he left their home in the kibbutz for the last time, and how he was killed. But from the information given to her by the army, she is convinced he was killed in the kibbutz and kidnapped to Gaza after his death. "That moment is always in my head when he was sure he was going out, and it was okay to leave me at home. That his commitment was to the whole, to the community and the place."

Does that make you angry?

"No. It suits him very well. It suits the whole readiness squad. On that day in Nir Oz there were stories of supreme heroism, of the readiness squad members and others who saw not only their family but the whole community before their eyes. They risked their lives. Right now it’s still hard to relate to it, first there needs to be healing and perspective. You can’t see yourself as a hero when you still feel like a victim. But Aviv fought until the last moment for the things that were most important to him. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t go out and do everything he could."

Aviv’s last year of life was amazing and fulfilling, Atzili says, and that comforts her a bit. "He flew with his brother Ronen on a trip to India, went skiing with the Erez Association — an association of former and serving members of the alpine unit he was active in and really loved. We were on a trip in the U.S. with the children and extended family. I think he died very content. His WhatsApp status was BETTER TO BURN OUT THAN TO RUST."

On June 21, Aviv turned 50. His loved ones marked his birthday by opening an exhibition of artworks he left behind, at the Ro-Art Gallery in Tel Aviv. "He always painted, always did metalwork, but in the last year also exhibited in shows and sold works. It was new. He spread a lot of his art in Nir Oz, felt that this public space was his. He accomplished little in this field, it’s a serious heartbreak."

Works by Aviv Atzili. Spread a lot of his art in Nir Oz | Photography: Hadas Parush, family collection, Ze’ev Holtzman collection

Although Aviv’s body was not returned, the family held a funeral for him in Nir Oz. On his tombstone was engraved in his handwriting a line from a song by the band Mashina, "I’ll Wait for You in the Fields," inspired by a romantic tribute he once made to Liat. "Once they poured a slightly new surface for tractors. Aviv engraved on it 'I’ll wait for you in the fields', and took me to see it. Underneath we wrote — 'Fallen in battle for our home Nir Oz.' Very minimal."

She emphasizes that for her there is no reason to risk other lives to bring his body back to Israel. "I’m quite convinced his body will never return, and I have no problem with that. If a single hair from someone’s head falls to retrieve Aviv’s body and bring it back to Israel, it won’t give me peace. You can’t bring him back to life and it’s not logical for people to pay with their lives to bring back a body. Always before he went to take a nap, Aviv would write to the children, 'Little birds shh, Dad is sleeping.' Like that, 'sleeping.' And to me he would say, I wish myself proper rest. For me, he found proper rest."

Earlier this month, Atzili, who also holds U.S. citizenship, met at the White House with U.S. President Joe Biden. He was the first to call her parents to congratulate them on the day she was released from Gaza. Not even an SMS came from the Israeli government. "It doesn’t disappoint me in any way, it’s a gap in the perception of the role of leadership in certain places. The perception of an elected official who serves the public is not deeply rooted here. The personal connection, the deep commitment and care that exists between a citizen and their representatives in the U.S. is nothing less than inspiring. We have a lot to aspire to". The meeting with Biden was very emotional. "He’s a lovely man. He told me about his first wife who was killed in a car accident and referred to this shared fate between us. He said, a day will come when you will remember Aviv and smile before you cry."

Photography: From the White House Twitter account

Earlier this month Atzili met with President Biden at the White House. He was the first to call her parents on the day she was released. No message came from the Israeli government. The meeting was very emotional. "He told me about his first wife who was killed in a car accident and referred to this shared fate between us. He said, a day will come when you will remember Aviv and smile before you cry."

After returning from Gaza, she returned to work as a teacher at Nofei HaBesor School, where she taught the 12th grade before October 7. "In captivity I decided I would finish 12th grade with my class. So I returned pretty quickly to work both at the school and at Yad Vashem. I really needed that. I don’t know if it was the right thing for my students to have me in this state, but it did me good. I wanted to tell myself I’m still something of what I used to be. But next year I will take a break."

Have your tours at Yad Vashem changed because of what you went through?

"Not really."

Do people ask you if what you went through is like the Holocaust?

"Yes, and the answer is no, it’s not similar. I taught a 10th grade class at a school opened in hotels for evacuees at the Dead Sea. The class was mostly children from Be’eri and Kissufim, and I took them on a tour at Yad Vashem. One of the children asked me, 'Liat, did they fear like we feared on October 7?' I answered that they feared like that for six years. Almost everything I said about the Holocaust brought out things related to October 7 from them. I hope it gave them a safe place that allowed them to ask questions and be inside that comparison, that it gave them a little more tools to understand and process what they went through."

Next year she intends to dedicate herself to rebuilding the community and the kibbutz, which are currently in Kiryat Gat, until they can return to Nir Oz. "We managed to create something grounded here, a functioning community. People are still in acute trauma and react differently to various things. Some people feel the right way to cope is to move forward, and some don’t. And alongside that is the issue of the hostages. It can be simply said that without the hostage story ending, we cannot recover, we cannot build new lives. The community cannot move on. But it’s more complicated than that. The hostage story is an open wound, it’s constantly present. And that’s a complexity that’s hard to contain. It’s hard to find words that accurately explain the place it takes in the lives of the community. It’s a reminder of abandonment and neglect, a reminder of the terrible failure, that most people want to put behind them, and yet it’s impossible."

Atzili emphasizes that the failure did not start nine months ago. "We have been living for 20 years in abandonment and neglect and zero political strategy. October 7 is the result of Netanyahu’s policy and right-wing governments. Also regarding nurturing Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, the attempt to erase the Palestinian issue and the failure to manage negotiations."

Didn’t that scare you before? Didn’t you live there feeling it could explode?

"No. Aviv was involved in security matters and told me there was such a scenario, of massive shooting and infiltration of terrorists simultaneously in several settlements. But no one imagined it would be on such a scale. We were lulled by assumptions about fences, safe rooms. A paradise of fools."

In her new and temporary apartment in Kiryat Gat, she feels good. "There are still things that function well in the country. Few countries, even those defined as first world, would manage to mobilize like this for such an event in civil aspects. We received furnished apartments down to the spoon and the plant. True, it’s not a kibbutz, but there is a field and a sunset, and generally I prefer to focus on what is, what still can be, and not on what isn’t and what won’t be anymore. And I look at the alternative — a UN tent and humanitarian aid packages? Most people in the world who go through what we went through, that’s what they get."

Do you think about Gaza in that sense?

"Of course," she says, pauses for a long moment and takes a breath. "I was and remain a leftist from the radical side of the political map who believes in coexistence and peace," she continues quietly. "Peace is not a dream of do-gooders. We have no other choice. If there is no peace, we won’t survive. And peace is not eating falafel in Khan Yunis with my captors. Peace is the absence of war. And if this war won’t ultimately be a lever for dramatic change, then you can really pack your bags and leave here. That miserable statement that the whole Strip is Hamas is factually not true. They were wrong in their support of the events, just as the Israeli public is wrong about many things. Here too there is a terrible government. Here too an unworthy prime minister is elected again and again by a disturbing majority. And yes, I think about what’s happening in the Strip. I have compassion for people who suffer, bereaved families on both sides are families with sadness and loss, and my sadness and loss are not more important than that of other families. It’s clear to me that this war currently serves only political interests. And it’s clear to me that the government sacrificed the hostages on the altar of its political survival."

Will you return to Nir Oz?

"I want a tunnel from my house to the neighbor’s house, so that if something happens again I won’t be alone," she laughs. But it’s still hard for her to give a definitive answer. "My intention is to return. My son is there. It depends on who will return or come. Some are not interested in returning. But I definitely want it to become a living place again with continuity and renewal. I really love Nir Oz, and I don’t want October 7 to be what defines it. And it’s also my connection to Aviv. Without hesitation for a second, he sacrificed his life for this place. It’s very hard to give that up."

Epilogue

On the 15th of June 2025, two days after Israel declared war on Iran, Haaretz published a short article on the return of Aviv Atzili’s body from decimated Gaza by the IDF.