“I don’t go alone into the kibbutz,” says B.J. Rai, the father of a family of five that survived the October 7 massacre at Kibbutz Nir Oz. “I have too many thoughts.”
B.J., his wife Dorine, and their three children survived one of the worst attacks carried out by Hamas that day, hiding in their “safe room” and holding the steel door closed. (“Safe room” doors were not permitted to be locked, by law, in the event first responders needed to rescue people inside.)
Before the day would end, over 100 of the kibbutz’s 400 residents would be murdered or taken hostage to Gaza — the single worst impact, proportional to its population, suffered by any of the kibbutzim in the area.
At first, Dorine said, the family simply hid in the safe room when they heard the rocket sirens from the barrage that preceded the Hamas invasion on the morning of October 7, 2023. Their dogs did not like the safe room, and so they stayed outside.
But when the family heard shots being fired outside, they worried about the dogs — while knowing that they could not rescue them.
Soon the terrorists were inside the house, shooting in all directions. B.J. held the door closed for four hours: at one point he literally stood on the handle, bracing himself against the ceiling. After 11 hours, the family finally emerged.
They presumed the dogs were dead — before the dogs returned home the next day.
But if the dogs found the way home easily, the family has found that journey more difficult.
B.J., who is originally from Nepal, and who met Dorine while she was backpacking through India after her military service, was one of the kibbutz members tasked with collecting the bodies of terror victims from their homes around the kibbutz. Afterwards, he says, he could not see properly for two weeks. “It was darkness, just darkness,” he recalls.
When the family stopped home to collect their belongings before boarding evacuation buses to Eilat, B.J. and Dorine found that there were few things to preserve. What had not been looted had been shot by terrorists inside the home.
After several months in a hotel in Eilat, the Rai family moved, along with many other Nir Oz families, to apartments in the desert town of Kiryat Gat, to await the repair and reconstruction of their kibbutz. But B.J. found himself unable to work, consumed by his memories and by thoughts of what the hostages in Gaza might be enduring. (Many dozens of Nir Oz residents had been abducted, more than any other kibbutz; many of those hostages are still in Gaza today.)
Some evacuees are eager to return home. There are communities like Nirim, next door to Nir Oz, that are rebuilding. But B.J. and Dorine do not think they will return.
If they go back to kibbutz life, it will be elsewhere — far from Gaza.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
