Bodies are still being found in battle-scarred Israeli kibbutz

BE’ERI, Israel - Before you see what happened here, you can smell it, lingering among the palm trees and carrying past the yellow security gates that were meant to keep out intruders.

“There is nothing, nothing that this even compares to,” said a rescue worker with Zaka, a volunteer group of ultra-Orthodox men that has helped to clear the bodies of around 120 residents from the streets and houses of this once-tranquil kibbutz.

They have been doing this for days, going from one devastated community to the next. They are exhausted. But the work continues. “In Judaism its important to bury someone as fast as possible, otherwise their soul can’t continue on,” he explained, before moving on.

The Be’eri kibbutz, home to around 1,000 people, was established in 1946, before the state of Israel was founded. It lies just a few miles from the blockaded enclave of Gaza, over the border fence that residents had assumed was impenetrable. When Hamas attacked Saturday, desperate residents called for help, but it came too late for many of them. Families tried to hide but were hunted down and killed in their homes.

Others were held hostage for hours before the soldiers arrived. Some, no one knows how many, were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza.

The acting U.S. ambassador made an unannounced visit to the community Wednesday and was overcome by what she saw.

“I’m emotional being here as a mom, especially,” Chargé d’Affaires Stephanie Hallett said, “and hearing the stories of children who were killed and abducted from here.”

For 48 hours, this small cooperative was a war zone. Israeli forces battled to retake the community from Hamas militants, house by house and street by street.

Most of the bodies of Be’eri’s residents have been removed, but some were still being found Wednesday. At least 103 militants died here, too, the military said. An earthmover filled with their corpses ferried out a load in its front-mounted bucket.

“Terrorists,” spat one of the soldiers guarding the kibbutz gates as the vehicle passed.

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Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv was among the first soldiers to reach the town after it was overrun, as the Israeli military scrambled to respond to a complex and lethal attack that no one had seen coming. Officials said Wednesday the death toll in Israel had reached 1,200.

The general pointed to a two-story house on a quiet street, with two scorched trees on the drive outside. “That house was a very, very hard battle,” he said. “Forty hostages were inside and more than 20 terrorists. Six soldiers lost their lives.”

Like the volunteers, Veruv has gone from one horrifying scene to the next, revisiting what he said was the worst fighting he’s seen in 40 years of combat. He was with Washington Post reporters on a tour of Kfar Azza on Tuesday. Wednesday, he led journalists through Be’eri, five miles down the road.

“Smell how pogroms smell - smell it,” he said.

There was a pile of mangled corpses, some wrapped in white cloth, by the entrance to the town. Inside, there were bodies arrayed on a green, lush lawn. Another laid in front of a half-collapsed house.

“A couple of hours ago, we found two or three bodies under the rubble,” Veruv said. After five days, one soldier said, it can be hard to tell one body from another. Authorities are struggling to identify victims and return them to their families for burial.

There hasn’t been time yet in Be’eri to clear the rebar from middle-class homes. To wipe away the blood from a doorstep. To dispose of the knives and bullet cases.

The Israeli military has been criticized for taking so long to reach communities like this one. When they arrived, Veruv said, it was a brutal and time-consuming fight.

“Just to get inside the kibbutz, to go from apartment to apartment, it took a lot, a lot of time,” he said.

“Wave after wave of terrorists were hiding in their houses,” Veruv recalled. “They kept themselves at high readiness and attacked again and again.”

Some militants were dressed in Israel Defense Forces uniforms, and they had brought medicines with them, he said, preparing to stay for a while. Some drove from Gaza in their own cars, including a smashed jeep on the side of one street, its passengers dead on the ground.

Further down the street, Veruv showed reporters the kibbutz’s kindergarten, where he said seven militants had holed up.

“You can see the bodies - we killed some of them on the road, some of them inside the kindergarten,” he said. “I lost one of my soldiers here, another two were wounded. We were only five people here, so I asked for others to come to help . . . we killed them all.”

There will be more bloodshed in the days and weeks to come. Loud booms echoed across the cooperative Wednesday, the sound of Israeli airstrikes hitting Gaza.

Outside the gates of the kibbutz, soldiers loaded mortar shells into tubes to fire toward the strip. The area is considered an active military zone. And a land invasion of Gaza is believed to be imminent.

“Now we look forward to defending the people, to taking the survivors out and to switch ourselves from defense to an offensive operation,” Veruv said. “I’m sure we’ll ask ourselves all the difficult questions after [it’s over].”