Naomi Petel Adler had always wanted to live on a kibbutz, the Israeli socialist-inspired towns known for their tight-knit communities.
“Kids get to run around until it’s dark, and then they come home for dinner and sit on the patio,” Adler said. You “see your friends walk by, and some of them maybe stop over and have a cup of coffee or a beer.”
In 2017, Adler made the dream move to Kibbutz Nahal Oz, directly next to the border with Gaza, with her husband and son. Despite the threat of Hamas, the Gaza-based terrorist group, life was good.
Six years, two more kids, and a brand new house later, Adler and her husband felt that they had made it.
“You check off things in your life,” Adler said. “You get the marriage, it’s going well. You get the kids, they’re doing well. You get the house, it’s going well. It’s like, ‘Okay, I’ve arrived, now, let’s live.’ And then shit hit the fan.”
The brutal Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities like Nahal Oz shattered the lives of Israelis like Adler, and their dreams of an idyllic kibbutz existence. Roughly 1,200 people were massacred by Hamas terrorists, and 250 hostages taken back to Gaza by a mix of Hamas, other Gaza terror groups, and civilians acting on their own.
Adler, visiting the United States with her family, has been sharing their experience surviving Oct. 7. She’s spoken to Jewish groups in Atlanta and St. Louis, and now, Adler is in the Twin Cities doing the same. It’s a bittersweet homecoming – Adler was born here, and moved to Israel as a child with her parents.
“You now have a job, which is to share this story onward,” she told about 80 members of the Minnesota chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women in a talk on Aug. 19.
“You have tools – when some idiot online, or to your face, says some sort of stupid bullshit and uses words that have nothing to do with the truth, like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ and suddenly saying that Zionism is a bad word, you now have a little bit more ammo to use,” Adler said.
Oct. 7 was supposed to be the 70th-anniversary celebration of Nahal Oz’s founding. Instead, at 6:30 a.m., Adler, her family, and the rest of the kibbutz woke up to a barrage of rockets from Gaza and Israel’s Iron Dome working to intercept them.
Hiding in the bomb shelter, which doubled as the children’s bedroom, Adler expected to be back to normal life in just a few minutes. But there was no all-clear message.
“In your mind, you’re like, someone jumped the [Gaza border] fence – all right, it’s one dude, it’s two guys, it’s three guys,” she said. “The army will come any minute and take them down, and maybe we’ll still have our party tonight. That’s what you’re thinking. The next thought was, ‘Damn it, no party. Shit.’”
The power went out, leaving the family in pitch darkness and no way to get fresh air. They used an emptied-out toy box as a bathroom.
On WhatsApp, Nahal Oz members started sending messages about seeing and hearing terrorists in the kibbutz. They asked if the army was coming to help while texting the moment-to-moment of whose house was being attacked.
Adler stayed calm for her kids, with no choice but to accept her helplessness.
“They are killing them, and we might be done,” she remembered thinking. “That’s it, and there’s nothing I could do. The thought did [come] – are we dying today? Is that what’s happening today?”
Until around 4 p.m., “all around and outside of our window, we [heard] nonstop gunfire, sirens, grenades, RPGs, yelling in Arabic, ‘God is great, kill the Jews,’” Adler said.
But it was only at 1 a.m. on Oct. 8 that Adler heard a neighbor yell that it was safe to come out to be evacuated by the army. Dazed, Adler and her husband left the shelter to quickly pack for them and their three sons.
“My husband took out shoes for him and me – totally forgot about shoes for the boys,” Adler said. “Took out clothes for the boys – we totally forgot to bring clothes for us.”
Once the family reached the army base where other members of Nahal Oz had been evacuated, Adler started to realize the true scale of the Hamas attack.
She saw Gali Idan, whose husband was taken hostage by Hamas while her 18-year-old daughter was murdered.
“I was like, ‘What do you mean? Maayan is dead?’” Adler recalled. “Someone else is saying that [Hamas] kidnapped their mom and two stepsisters together. I was like, wait, what? Like, total disbelief and shock.”
In the end, 13 members of the Kibbutz and two international workers from Nahal Oz had been murdered, while several others were taken hostage. At an army base nearby – where soldiers had reported Hamas preparations for an attack, but were ignored by Israel Defence Forces leadership – soldiers were massacred, with a handful taken hostage.
The Nahal Oz survivors were resettled to Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’Emek, in Israel’s north, where they’ve been ever since.
While telling her story, Adler has consistently gotten two questions from audiences: How are her sons, and will she go back to Nahal Oz to rebuild. This NCJW audience was no different.
Her sons are doing well, she replied, managing with a helpful mix of youthful innocence (the eldest is eight years old), resilience, and therapy.
As for rebuilding, that’s a more difficult question. For Adler, as with many Israelis, Oct. 7 marked a breakdown of trust with the IDF, Israel’s security agencies, and the government – all of whom were supposed to keep Israelis safe from Hamas.
“It’s not ‘to go back and rebuild’ – that’s a beautiful, feelgood, makes-you-proud thing. But it’s the day in, day out [that actually defines going back],” Adler said.
“My kids are very independent. Can I be okay with letting them go off on their bikes and not knowing exactly where they are? Can I put my three-year-old in daycare and just head on over to work?” she said. “I don’t know, and I think it’s too early to tell, because the war isn’t over. Hostages haven’t been returned. And only when those two things happen, we can start rebuilding trust with the army.”
Adler is open about the trauma she has from Oct. 7 – the nights of crying, the breakdowns, the inability to laugh or make any kind of decision. But she is also still in it, with no end in sight. Adler refers to herself as a refugee in her own country, almost a year after Hamas first invaded, as the war rages on.
Adler tries to stay away from the news about negotiations for the return of Israeli hostages. The negotiation failures, and Hamas’ repeated refusal for a deal, are debilitating.
“I had hopes once again, and that’s really soul-crushing, because you want this to be over, and you’re in a constant state of limbo and struggle,” Adler said. “There’s nothing that I can do.”
Nothing except continue to tell her story, and bring attention to the hostages. Speaking to American Jews, Adler is also focused on dispelling misconceived notions – like the idea that kibbutzim are like illegal settlements in the West Bank (they aren’t).
“What’s really important to me is that people understand in the U.S. that you can disagree with Netanyahu, you can not like, or support, Netanyahu, but that has nothing to do with Israel’s full claim to exist and to fight for itself,” she said.
“What I want is for people to take my story and to share that onwards, because…I’m a mom of three kids. I can’t be out, talking five times a day for the rest of my life,” Adler said.
“People need to also do the work. People need to share the truth.”
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