On September 29, Yuval Solomon finally came home to the place he loved the most – Kibbutz Kfar Aza, the idyllic expanse along the northeast Gaza corner, buffered by grassy fields.
Were you to walk through those fields, you would reach the official Gaza border wall. Walk a little further, and you are in the center of Jabalya, and a few more kilometers will put you on the beach by the Mediterranean seaside.
Before Oct. 7, Kibbutz Kfar Aza was an affordable place to raise young families, and just as great for older people. Founded in 1951, approximately 1,000 residents lived there on Oct. 7. Ultimately, 64 people were killed, and 19 were abducted to Gaza. Yuval lived in a special area mapped out for young people.
He celebrated his 29th birthday on the evening of October 6 with a party in the courtyard of the kibbutz young people’s compound. Yuval was a professional event planner by trade but had never thrown himself a party. The celebration was attended by all his best friends, many of whom he’d grown up with. The party ended at 4 a.m.
Some of his neighbors, friends, and family included many names we have all sadly come to know – Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher, Gali and Ziv Berman, Alon Shimrin, Amit Soussana.
Damari, released from Hamas captivity after 471 days in a ceasefire deal, was one of the observers from the Nahal Oz base along with Steinbrecher. The Berman twin brothers are still in captivity. Shimrin escaped from Hamas tunnels, only to be accidentally shot by the IDF, who mistook him for a terrorist. Soussana was released in a ceasefire deal and has spoken candidly about sexual assault while being held hostage.
“In that neighborhood, more people were killed and abducted than in most other places,” said Gon Soussana, who had been living with his wife, Amit, in Kfar Aza on Oct. 7. “It was one of the worst places to be.
“I grew up with Yuval,” he said. “We knew each other from age 11. Yuval was a leader. He loved life, loved the people around him, and he was a big part of the Kfar Aza community. It’s crazy to think that Yuval is not here with us anymore.”
Even the local Aroma café has remnants of Yuval, who once worked at a nearby branch. The coffee shop two large murals and a small memorial for him. But nothing is more sobering than the young adults’ compound where so many brutal murders took place.
‘Our Babi Yar’
Indeed, Doron Solomon, Yuval’s father, said, “This is our Babi Yar” – referring to the ravine in Kyiv that was the site of one of the largest Nazi mass murders – as he looks around the courtyard, once teeming with energetic 20-year-olds, that is now mostly a memorial site.
Signs denote who was killed in which home, and hundreds of burnt-out candles sit on the steps leading to each doorway, with stuffed animals and the detritus of life once lived there – a sneaker, a chair, a laundry basket. At the entry to the Berman home is a “Happy Birthday” display for the brothers, with the numbers “28” and “29” crossed out, and “30” penciled in.
On Oct. 7, Doron and his whole family were residing in different neighborhoods of the kibbutz. His son Yuval, his older son Tamir, and his daughters Yifat and Ortal were close. Yifat worked in the polymer factory, as did Doron before he retired.
As I gazed out toward the Mediterranean Sea, in the direction of Jabalya, I noticed a power line with electricity, strung from Kfar Aza across the fields toward Gaza.
Doron affirmed that it is one of the power lines that supply Gaza with electricity. “We give them water as well,” he said.
The security fence running north to south is a meager barrier with some curled-up barbed wire lining the top. All it took was a bulldozer or two to bring it down on Oct. 7 – that and some well-armed paragliders who came flying over the fence.
The tour of Kfar Aza was jarring. House after house, some completely razed to the ground, each one telling a story. Doron drove through the neighborhood, pointing out each home.
“You see that one? There was a father, a mother, and three small children,” he said. “The Nukhba terrorists came and killed them as they embraced each other in a hug. That’s how they were found.
“This home belonged to Abigail,” he continued. “You know Abigail? [US President Donald] Trump met her and loved her. Her two parents were killed in this house. When she found them, she covered herself with their blood and lay down with them, pretending to be dead. Her father was a photographer for Ynet. She knew the only way she could stay alive was to play dead,” he recounted.
We passed an empty cement swimming pool with two small kiddie pools beside it. But we had no time to focus on the amenities this kibbutz once offered. Doron pointed out another house. “A family with two children died there,” he said.
Acting and reacting on Oct. 7
Only 10 families are left in Kfar Aza now as the reconstruction continues. Houses are being rebuilt, renovated; construction crews trying to obliterate some of the traces of the killing field this was.
The Solomons and the Soussanas live nearby in Ruhama, a kibbutz that did not get invaded on Oct. 7. The Solomon home is being renovated. Doron walked through it, pointing out the safe room. “Here is where I stayed for two days starting Oct. 7. I had a butcher’s knife in one hand, and held the door handle with my other hand,” he said.
At first, they were getting WhatsApp messages and phone calls about events unfolding. At 8:30 a.m. he received a call from Yuval.
He sounded panicked.
“Where is the army?” Yuval asked. “Where are the police? Somebody? Where, where, where is everybody? Why am I all alone here?”
Shortly afterwards, he called again.
“I’m going to fight them. There are three terrorists in my house. I have a knife.”
“Abba, I put my knife in one of the terrorists! The second one, I hit. The third one ran away. But I’ve been shot – shot in the leg. What should I do?”
“Yuval, don’t worry,” his father reassured him. “Help is on the way. I’m sending help. Tie a shirt around your leg tight in the meantime.”
“Only, I knew no one was coming,” Doron said sadly. “I didn’t send him help. There was no help to send.”
Meanwhile, during the attack, Doron and his wife positioned themselves, not in front of the steel door, which could have been penetrated by bullets, but behind the cement walls of the safe room. Doron clutched the door handle until his arm felt numb, but he kept holding it. The terrorists had cut the electrical lines; it was pitch dark. The safe room didn’t have a lock. When the kibbutz was built, safe rooms were made to withstand missiles shot from Gaza. No one ever anticipated shooting and terrorist attacks.
Doron called his son’s phone one more time.
“Abba, there are more terrorists – a lot of terrorists! I am going to fight them. I love you, and we will probably never ever see each other again.”
“Those were his last words,” his bereaved father said.
Some were saved, others were not
At 2 a.m. on Sunday, October 8, still hiding in the safe room, Doron needed the bathroom that was right across the hall. He snuck out of the room quietly.
“Who is barbecuing at a time like this?” he wondered, not realizing it was the smell of burnt flesh. Before returning to the safe room, he heard a noise outside. It was a tank right outside his window, heading straight for his lemon tree.
“Stop! Don’t hurt my lemon tree!” he screamed at the tank driver; it veered slightly to the left. Doron peered out the window a moment longer, noticing adjacent homes still burning.
He darted back to the safe room.
On that day, in the late morning, someone called to him outside his window, using his name and a code the kibbutz had devised to help identify rescuers. He found out that the kibbutz’s security team had been killed. They didn’t have enough time to get to the guns encased in gun safes for events like this one. And they told him that Yuval had died.
The Magazine asked him why he thought the terrorists attacked some houses and not others.
Doron shrugged, replying, “Ein den dino…” (eeny, meeny, miney, mo).
He pointed. “This one they went to, that one they didn’t, and this one – the house of Goldstein – they burned to the ground. The father and older daughter, Nadav and Yam, were killed. The mother with two small children were captured and held hostage; they were released in one of the ceasefires and now live in Shefayim.”
He pointed to another house. “In this one, there was a single woman living alone, hiding under the bed. She came out of her hiding place and began to talk with the terrorists. She offered them something to eat and drink; she made them food. They sat in her kitchen and ate and drank. They said, ‘See? We don’t kill women and children.’ Then they left her alive and went to kill women and children in other houses,” he said.
“Omer lived here with his parents. He asked the terrorists, ‘Can I please play basketball one more time?’ They killed him, too,” he said.
“I no longer know how to say ‘With God’s help’ – and I don’t even say ‘With my friends’ help’ anymore,” he commented.
Yuval was laid to rest in Shefayim, the kibbutz farther north that helped resettle evacuees from Kfar Aza.
Four months after Oct. 7, all of Yuval’s friends had a party. There were 250 people attending. An older man approached Doron and said, “I was with Yuval on Oct. 7 – the day after. And I found Yuval draped with the Israeli flag.”
Doron smiled sadly. “The flag is with us at home. And so is the knife that stabbed the terrorist between the eyes. Next time, I will show it to you.”
‘I will never leave Kfar Aza’
Meanwhile, as he continues to rebuild the kibbutz, one building lot at a time, Gon Soussana isn’t sure if he will ever be able to convince his wife to resettle in Kfar Aza. Manager of the Community Council and deeply committed to bringing back safety and people to the kibbutz, the pain that resonates house by house is impossible to fathom, even if the worst is behind us.
“Life in Kfar Aza was amazing,” Soussana said. “I was born nearby in Kibbutz Mefarsim. I became a member of Kfar Aza two years before Oct 7. It was like a dream to live there and raise my family there.
“It was an affordable place to live, and there was a good education system. You build your house here at a low price, and there were no taxes to the government. But it is 90% heaven and 5% hell – at least that is what Phil Lipstein, the mayor of Sha’ar Hanegev, said before he was murdered.
“We have the best border, the best army in the world, and it is the safest place to be. It is my homeland. I was born in Otef Aza [the Gaza border region],” Soussana said.
Doron confided that Yuval had been going out with a girl for eight years. She wanted them to move to Tel Aviv together. His response had been, “Over my dead body. I will never leave Kfar Aza.” They broke up over it.
“Yuval’s dream was to live his whole life in Kfar Aza,” said Oria Bokobza, one of Yuval’s friends. “He grew up there – all his family and friends were there. He said, ‘This is my home, and I would never move.’ Bringing him back home fulfills his lifelong wish.”
Yuval was scheduled to be brought from Shefayim to Kfar Aza for reinterment on September 29, 2025.