Yesha

A group of 20 Hamas terrorists attempted to infiltrate Moshav Yesha on the morning of October 7, at the same time other communities of the Western Negev were being invaded in Hamas’s coordinated attack on Israel. With unflinching bravery, three residents of the moshav, two from the civil defense team and a third, a soldier at home on leave, left their families and answered the call to defend their community. Outnumbered and attacked with heavy artillery and RPG’s, they were able to completely repel the terrorists.  Tragically, all three were killed in the fighting, but their heroism saved their community from the horrors of the worst terrorist attack ever perpetrated on Israel. These heroes are: Lior Ben Ya’akov, the moshav’s deputy security chief; Gil Avital, a member of Yesha’s civil defense team; and Itai Nachmias, a regular soldier who was at home that Shabbat and came to help the defense team of two. As Aviv says of his brother Itai’s heroism, “He protected his home with his body.” Together, they went house to house, encountering terrorists in direct combat. For hours the three fought alone, while their families and all the other families of the moshav hid, terrified in their safe rooms until the army came to rescue them. Once they were certain they had repelled the attack, the three then went to the neighboring moshav of Mitvahim to join with their three member civil defense team, and that is where they fell in battle, along with two others from the Mitvahim team. The moshav was not spared entirely however; Yesha brothers Yuval and Noam Rabia, and Shahar Kadman were also cruelly murdered at the Nova Peace Rave held in nearby Re’im forest. And as the terrorists were retreating, they managed to killed and kidnapped foreign workers in the moshav’s packing houses.

The situation even three month later is still very precarious, and cultivating the fields is a daily danger to life. An attempt to get volunteers and workers into the greenhouses almost ended in a major disaster, when a Qassam rocket fell on to a greenhouse. Miraculously no one was hurt. Local businesses are completely shut down, and the entire community was evacuated to a hotel in the Haifa area. Some families are afraid to ever return to live in the moshav, but not Chen Gamari. She explains “Yesha is a dream for me, and I want to go back there as soon as possible, despite everything that has happened.”