A family reunion in Israel, broken by war

Yehudit Shamir and her husband returned to the Kibbutz on the Gaza border where they first met decades earlier. October 7 sent the family running from tragedy.

By Leah Small

Virginia Center for investigative journalism at whro

Yehudit Shamir raised her son as a single mother in New York City. She struggled to find a supportive community. 

Shamir grew up in Queens, the daughter of Jewish parents of Eastern European descent. She began to explore her faith and its spiritual connection to Israel.  Shamir learned about the concept of Kibbutzim — small, communal towns, often supported by collective farming.  

She and her ten-year-old son immigrated to Israel in 1982 and settled in Kissufim, a tranquil Kibbutz near the border of the Gaza Strip. She married her husband, Shmuel, under the white cloth of a traditional chuppah. 

She learned Hebrew and during bike rides, stopped to pick figs ripened by the desert sun. The family later moved to Vienna, Va. but always visited Israel — the last time on October 6th.  

A day later, Hamas militants from Palestine waged a deadly assault targeting Kissufim and other communities in southern Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people. Militants took more than 200 Israeli hostages. And retaliatory strikes by Israel have killed more than 39,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.   

The Israeli-Hamas War is the bloodiest conflict in the multi-generational fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. Last month, VCIJ at WHRO profiled a Palestinian-American.

Shamir, now 74, lost family and friends in the attacks.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

October 6th is not a bad place to start. I was in Israel with my husband and daughter, and her husband and their baby, who was ten-months old at the time. 

 We were there visiting family and friends. We had been there for just a few days. We go annually, at least my husband and I do, and we gather our family together for a reunion. And that's what we did on October 6th in the evening. 

The weather was perfect. We had gone earlier that day to the beach. Just to see the Mediterranean is always just so relaxing and joyful. We came back to the party in the late afternoon, and it was in a park not far from where we were staying. 

 It was wonderful to be able to introduce our granddaughter to her cousins and other relatives. My granddaughter was just very comfortable meeting all these new people, smiling at everybody. 

 It was just a beautiful day.

Obviously… the seventh was a nightmare. It was just a nightmare. 

I grew up in New York City, in a neighborhood in Queens, that was kind of a working-class, middle-class area, with quite a bit of diversity. 

I was brought up secular Jewish. My grandparents were immigrants. They came at the beginning of the 20th century to the United States. 

 My parents grew up being more religious. But as adults, they moved away from religion, but brought their Jewishness and their values to politics. They were part of what was then the New Left fighting for democracy against fascism.  

When I was the single parent of a young son, I had moved away from any interest in real things Jewish. But I wanted him to have some knowledge of his roots and his identity. I started sending him to a Sunday school program and I started learning more.

When my son was about ten years old, I realized that raising him as a single parent in New York City was a very difficult thing. I didn't really have family support around me. I wanted to be in a place where I would feel more supported and more of a sense of community.  

Part of my process of learning about Israel was learning about kibbutz life. It respects people's abilities and skills. Children are very precious in the kibbutz, and everybody cares about them. I decided that I was going to move to Israel to settle on a kibbutz.  

I was 32. Most of my family thought I was crazy. But I felt at home immediately, in a way I could never say I did in the United States. 

Not that I didn't feel at home. I feel American. But in some ways, I was an outsider. When I was in Israel, every Friday, people would greet each other with “Shabbat Shalom” and wish each other a peaceful Shabbat. You didn't have to be religious or anything, that was the greeting. The language is Hebrew. And I loved learning Hebrew. 

In Kissufim, there were people from all over. There was a large contingent of people who had come from Argentina. There were native Israelis. There were people from Iraq, who had been forced out of their homes when the state of Israel was born.

My husband’s nephew, Ofer Ron, was like a brother to my husband.  

Kibbutz Kissufim was founded by his parents. My nephew, who was a bachelor, still lived there. 

There were many relatives that were living there. Our plan (on October 6) was to take our granddaughter to visit him in the Kibbutz. 

At 6:30 in the morning on October 7th, sirens began to sound all over Israel. We ran to the safe room. The Israelis are very well practiced at doing that. 

We began to hear all the reports of what was going on, coming in gradually, throughout the day. There had been a horrific massacre of people in the kibbutzim, on the border with Gaza and in other small towns, and in cities. 

We kept trying to Ofer there but there was no telephone connection. It was several days before we were able to get confirmation that Ofer had been murdered, as well as our cousin, who lived next door.  

Another friend of ours in Kissufim was also killed that day. Another friend was taken hostage, and we have no idea what his status is at this point. 

Ofer was a sweet, gentle person. He remained in the kibbutz. He was a hard worker and loved family.  

My nephew's sister had a friend who knew someone who was a singer, who offered to sing a couple of songs that Ofer loved at his funeral. He loved Israeli songs. 

And about 60 or 70 members of the Israeli Philharmonic showed up at the funeral unrehearsed. And they accompanied the singers on two songs.  

 They were just lined up, surrounding all of us who were there for the funeral to mourn. It was astounding. They realized how much it meant to all of us and to them as well, to just be joined in a moment of such intense grieving.  

When we first got back (to Virginia), it was strange to be walking around in a country where everyone was living their lives as usual. Nobody was thinking about war, people being killed.  

In the United States, the way people are responding to what happened is tremendously disturbing. The day after the massacre had occurred, before Israel had taken any kind of action, people were demonstrating and saying Israel deserved this.  

 There has been conflict there for a long time. And I'm not one to say that Israel does everything right and the Palestinians do everything wrong. But there was no justification for that massacre. 

I was very fortunate to be living in Kissufim at a time that was relatively peaceful. People used to be able to cross the border and do some shopping without any issues. There were relationships. There was a sense of a fair amount of security.

(In 1990), there were changes in the country that were political and economic. And our daughter was almost four when we left. It was a point in our lives where we were looking at, what does the future hold for us? It was heartbreaking and it was very hard on the family. 

In Virginia, when I retired, I became a representative of my synagogue in a group called Interfaith Communities for dialogue, which is a group that started after 9/11. It is a group of Christians, Muslims and Jews who wanted to create connections and mutual support. 

We're trying to build on that and have dialogues among people, with the hope that they get into groups of people who are different from them. 

I had personal conversations with two Muslim women who are on the board — friends who see the situation differently. 

Both were very focused on the suffering of the children in Gaza. For them, it drove everything about what they thought needed to happen next. Basically, saying the war needs to stop now, no matter what, because we need to protect those children. 

I completely understand where they're coming from. It's horrible — children and women and other innocent people are suffering in Gaza. They're not getting enough food. Their homes are being destroyed.  

My perspective is that it can't be an unconditional ceasefire. The hostages need to be released. And when we talk about the effect on children, we need to understand that children are being very deeply, traumatically affected on both sides of that border. I know that even now there are both Israelis and Palestinians who want peace. Leadership is a problem on both sides. 

I went to a couple of dialogs organized by another group called the Jewish-Islamic Dialogue Society of Washington. I'll just keep going to them. I think it's necessary to get people in the room. We should be talking. That's a start.

Reach Leah Small at [email protected].