At 6:29 am, a barrage of rockets rained down on the farming village of Netiv Haasara, a moshav located just above the Gaza Strip, only a few hundred meters from the separation wall between Israel and the Palestinian territory. The alert sounded from loudspeakers – "Color red! Color red!" – and residents ran to missile shelters, often located at the heart of homes, each fearing one of those unexpected attacks that have been part of life since the 2000s in this border community.

But on October 7, 2023, the moshav's WhatsApp network quickly delivered chilling news: Three Hamas terrorists had crossed the walls and electrified fences separating the two territories on motorized paragliders; they landed in the heart of the village and opened fire on everything in sight. An aerial infiltration was not among the attack scenarios considered by the moshav. In the panic, the head of the community's emergency team decided to forbid his people from deploying in the village. Nevertheless, three members went out, armed, and were immediately killed, as were 17 other villagers, assassinated by bullets, grenades or burned alive in their homes.

Twenty-five terrorists, it later emerged, had simultaneously attempted a ground assault at dawn. It was in vain, as their explosives failed to breach the perimeter wall. Seven others arrived later by road, infiltrating several houses. Barricaded in their shelters, often in darkness and with no information other than distress messages sent on the group messaging app, most residents were only freed by the Israeli army around 5:15 pm, more than 10 hours after the operation began. The moshav was immediately evacuated. It was in the convoy heading to Tel Aviv that the survivors, in shock, learned of the scale of the massacres perpetrated all around Gaza that day: 1,200 dead, 250 kidnapped and more than 5,000 wounded.

You have 90.56% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.