A displaced resident from a kibbutz near the Gaza border told The Post that there is still the feeling of being a “refugee in your own land” six months after the devastating Oct. 7 attacks.
New York City native Adele Raemer — who has called the destroyed Kibbutz Nirim home since 1975 — said she’s not going anywhere and was determined to make her battered community “bigger and better.”
“We’re going to go back and build bigger and better. And that will be our revenge,” the 69-year-old retired teacher told The Post from her temporary housing in Beersheva, some 30 miles away from Kibbutz Nirim.
Hamas terrorists stormed the 430-person community one mile from the Gaza border, slaughtering five people and abducting another five, while burning dozens of homes that still sit in a pile of ruins.
A 9-day-old baby miraculously survived after being placed on the windowsill as his home was set ablaze.
Raemer took cover in her safe room for 11 hours as gunmen, armed with detailed maps about the residents, went door to door on a terror spree – all while her followers from around the world breathlessly monitored her live Facebook updates throughout the harrowing day.
“They started breaking into our house to either kill or kidnap us,” she said, reflecting, “I think that we’re very lucky – I was sure I was not going to see another sunrise.”
While the Bronx-born and bred senior is among some 200,000 fellow Israelis who have been displaced since October 7, there’s still no place she’d rather live than the Jewish state.
“There’s nowhere I feel safer than in Israel,” said the widow and grandma of eight. “It’s the only place in the world where Jews can protect themselves and really be at home. Any other place we’re the minority.”
Raemer said she was heartbroken to witness the violent expressions of antisemitism around the world, including her beloved stomping grounds of New York.
“We were always taught to appreciate diversity – to protect our minorities. We’re the minority. We’re a people in danger of extinction. If we were exotic tigers, people all over the world would be fighting for our survival,” Raemer declared, noting that Jews make up 0.2 percent of the world population.
“Where is the liberal, left-leaning world that claims to be champions of indigenous people? We’re the f–king indigenous people here – how did they get it so backwards?”
Her greatest fears concern Jewish students staying safe amid raging protests along the quads of American colleges, including her own “visibly Jewish” relatives. “That worries me to no end,” she said.
The irony of her grandparents fleeing the eastern European pogroms for safe harbor in the US “where they could be free and safe,” juxtaposed with later generations “in danger” here is not lost on Raemer.
“They must be rolling over in their graves,” she raged.
“What happened to the melting pot, the land of the free and home of the brave?”
The former New Yorker feels “absolutely abandoned” by other communities, especially ones the Jews historically supported, including from the civil rights movement.
“The Jewish people have always treasured and respected [helping others] and this is what we get?” she mused.
On a visit to Washington in the fall, Raemer, who spends her days advocating for the release of hostages, some of whom are personal friends, met with two politicians, South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who gave her “so much hope” for the US-Israel relationship.
She recalled Fetterman — whom she hadn’t heard of him until the Capitol Hill meeting — as a “big guy not wearing a suit like other people.”
His emotional reaction surprised her as she recounted her harrowing experience on the day of the attack.
“He almost cried, he was so empathetic,” she said of the surprise hero to the Jewish community, noting that he invoked his own children in that situation. “It was so amazing – not anything I expected in Congress.”
Raemer — a lifelong Democrat who voted for Biden in 2020 — has sharply criticized the president who she accused of “flip flopping” on the Jewish state.
The dyed-in-the-wool Democrat conceded, “I honestly don’t know,” when The Post asked who she would vote for in November.
Her next visit to DC will take place later this month when she plans to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner at the invitation of the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Though it’s more formal than the attire she usually wears around the kibbutz, one accessory is a non-negotiable: “I’ll be wearing a long yellow ribbon” a la Montana Tucker’s in-your-face human rights statement at the Grammys in February.
Kibbutz Nirim, which had normally been “95 percent heaven,” according to Raemer, has become militarized since the attacks, “basically an army base,” where war feels immediate.
“I hear a lot of explosions” during the visits to the kibbutz with reporters.
But going home, and soaking up the scents of cut lawns, flowers in bloom, and even “manure mixed with milk and the earth,” is the priority for the kibbutznik.
“Even with the infiltration and the murders, the majority of people want to go back. But people have to feel safe again.”
It won’t be easy, but it’s vital to “reclaim what was stolen from us – and so much was stolen from us,” she said, including “precious things, like a sense of security.”
She’s lost a modicum of hope in her Palestinian counterparts, admitting she’s struggled to “comprehend that Palestinian citizens of all ages were flooding into our communities and doing any damage they could” during the rampage.
She thinks of the “bridge-building” peaceniks, “the ones who came to drive [Palestinians] to hospitals” in Israel who were killed on October 7.
She was incredulous at how Hamas could target those attempting to make peace in the conflicted region.
“These are the people they thought should come over and slaughter?” she said.
But one thing is clear for Raemer, who will likely opt not to have a gun in her home once she returns: “October 7 can’t happen again. Hamas wants to do it again, but we have to finish the job in Gaza” and demilitarize Hamas.
Nirim, which was founded in 1946 pre-state Palestine to establish a Jewish presence in the desert, just celebrated its anniversary on October 6 – and it isn’t going anywhere, according to Raemer. “We were pioneers – then and now.”