Kibbutz Nir Oz faces long road to rebuild three years after devastating October 7 attacks

Three years have passed since the morning when Hamas-led attackers swept across the border and into Kibbutz Nir Oz, a farming community of 400 people sitting just a mile from Gaza. Forty-seven residents died that day, along with six others who had fled there from a nearby party. Seventy-six people were taken hostage. The kibbutz, once a place where neighbors gathered to eat together and celebrate holidays, now stands half-empty and half-ruined, a landscape of concrete safe rooms where houses used to be.

Dalit Ram Aharon walks through the grounds with her husband, Achi, pointing out the damage with the careful precision of someone who has had three years to memorize every detail. The dining hall, once the social heart of the community, is silent except for birds nesting in the ceiling tiles. By the glass entrance doors, pocked with bullet holes, postboxes bear colored stickers: red for those killed, black for those taken. "That's one out of four of us," Dalit says. "Murdered or kidnapped. Including children and babies."

The Siman Tov family home stands burned out nearby, a wind chime still hanging by the door. Tamar and Yonatan were shot through the door of their bomb shelter—a structure designed to stop rockets from Gaza, not gunfire. Their three children, five-year-old twins Shahar and Arbel, and two-year-old Omer, died inside as the house burned. Dalit remembers the last messages Tamar sent to neighbors that morning: "Is everyone fine?" Then, as the attack unfolded: "They are shooting us." And finally, in fractured text: "We are very injured."

An estimated 500 Palestinians, including Hamas's elite Nukhba force fighters and civilian looters, some of them children, attacked the kibbutz. Forty-one residents and foreign workers were killed in the assault itself. Seventy-six people were kidnapped to Gaza; fourteen of them were taken alive and later killed in captivity. The last living hostages from Nir Oz returned to Israel on October 13, 2025. Two weeks later, the remains of Amiram Cooper, the last deceased hostage, came home. The Israeli military investigation revealed a catastrophic failure: the first soldiers did not arrive until 40 minutes after the last attackers had left. Nearly every household in the kibbutz experienced killing, violence, sexual assault, looting, or kidnapping.

Walking through the grounds now is eerily quiet—only bird calls and the mewing of stray cats break the silence. Dozens of fire-damaged homes have been torn down, leaving rows of reinforced concrete safe rooms standing alone, monuments to a protection that failed. Dalit and Achi want some of the damaged houses preserved as evidence. "People should see what happened," Achi says. "They should see the destruction, the pure hatred that happened here." They point out where Maya Goren, a teacher, was killed in the kindergarten, and the makeshift memorials marking where three of the kibbutz's seven security team members died fighting the attackers.

One house is harder for Dalit to pass than any other. It belonged to Shiri Bibas, her closest friend—"like a sister." Shiri, her four-year-old son Ariel, and nine-month-old Kfir were taken hostage and became symbols of the Gaza crisis. Yarden Bibas, Shiri's husband, was released alive in a ceasefire deal in February 2025. But Shiri and her sons were killed. Hamas blamed an Israeli air strike; Israeli forensic experts who examined the bodies said they were murdered by their captors and mutilated. "She was very funny, a happy person, a mother," Dalit says. "She lived a simple life. She never did anything to anyone."

Many of the bereaved have left Nir Oz for good. But some have returned. Gadi Moses, a kibbutz co-founder and the oldest male hostage released during the war, came back. So did Yair Horn. Twenty houses have been renovated or rebuilt. Dalit and Achi are determined to return as well, though they face a two-year wait for the kibbutz to reopen fully. They are currently living in an apartment in a town further north. "We'll come back for the memory of Shiri and for the people that didn't have the chance to live here," Dalit says. "This is our home."

The rebuilding project director, Emi Palmor, describes the scale of the task: "Terrorists penetrated 97% of the households and burned down almost 50%. Now it's the only place in Israel that has to be completely demolished and completely replanned." But there is a painful debate underway about how to do it. Some survivors want the kibbutz to feel serene when they return, free from reminders of loss. Others insist that the last damaged houses must remain as evidence, so that future generations will believe what happened here. Dalit's eldest son, Uri, turned nine on October 7, 2023—the day the family spent hiding in their shelter. He asked his mother: "Mum, I don't want to die on my birthday." Three years later, survivors still live that day every day. But with the last hostages home, Achi says, there is finally time to focus on healing. "Until the hostages came back, it was the only thing on our mind," he says. "Now you have the time to concentrate on yourself, on what you lost, what you need."