By Jerry Klinger
BOYNTON BEACH, Florida — Having returned a few days ago from four Gaza kibbutzim where I distributed lifesaving medical supplies and defibrillators, I could not simply recount lists of horrors beyond nightmares. Words have little meaning to the dead and kidnapped.
There are about 100,000 Jews in the San Diego area. Organized Jewry is not really sure how many are practicing Jews. Some light candles on Shabbat. Others like bagels.
Does a non-Jew who associates with Jews and likes bagels count as a Jew?
October 7, any living thing that came within Hamas’ tentacles was a Jew. October 7 was not a one-off pogrom. it was Genocide. The International Court of Justice in the Hague, through its twisted logic of legal hate, labeled the victims as the perpetrators.
I did not go to the Gaza kibbutzim, as increasing numbers of people are doing, for “horror tourism.” I did not go to understand the Hamas Holocaust War on Jews. I went because one of the kibbutzim was the site of a project that had been approved in September.
For the past year, I have been placing giant 10’ sculpted lions at strategic interpretive sites in Israel, defining Jewish historical presence and legitimacy. Lions are associated with the Lion of Judah, the House of David, a symbol of modern Jerusalem and the State of Israel. They are intended to promote cultural tourism, visibly affirming more than 3,000 years of Jewish presence.
We call the system “The Lion’s Trail.”
Lions have been placed so far in Maale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Ariel, Kiryat Shemona, Nesher, Bet Jann, Beit Shean, Yokneam, and the Golan Heights.
We were progressing Southward when Kibbutz Mefalsim requested a Lion. Mefalsim is part of Sha’ar Hanegev, which is the partner Israeli city for the Jewish Federation of San Diego Originally settled by Argentine Jews, it was approved in September for Spring of 2024. Then came October 7…
Hamas waves of drug-enhanced monsters attacked the kibbutz. A tiny handful of kibbutzniks with small arms manned the “walls” – fences – repelling attack after attack after attack. Official government policy was to hide inside homes or safe spaces until the army could come and stop the attacks. Most of the kibbutzniks were “unarmed” for their own safety. It was a disastrous policy everywhere.
The great Army of Israel failed massively. They were almost nowhere to be found along the Gaza line. There were a few exceptions, but mostly nowhere to be found. The Gaza kibbutzim were on their own.
For five hours, the Lions of Mefalsim and all the kibbutzim under attack fought the monsters. Thousands of Hamas attacked, then thousands of Gazans enthusiastically burst from Gaza like jackals to further savagely kill, rape with extreme cruelty, and loot before retreating with their prizes – property and human hostages, to Gaza to celebrate their “victory.”
Hamas threw themselves at the Mefalsim gate, their bodies piling up on top of the murdered corpses of Jews who had tried to escape the Nova Music festival about a kilometer down the road. Hamas made certain no Jew reached the gate. The defenders of Mefalsim made sure no monster made it inside the perimeter. Mefalsim took losses, houses were smashed with RPGs, members died in their safe rooms.
Scores and scores of dead Hamas, some with detailed maps on their bodies of the kibbutz, showing the location of the armory, the generators, the communications centers, etc., were retrieved when the fighting was over.
As a kibbutz fighter told me, when they could finally fight outside the gates, they searched the cars parked along the road for the Nova Festival for survivors, for life. They found only death, the bodies, not just shot once but over and over and over again, then, burned.
Mefalsim held. Other kibbutzim were overwhelmed. Incredible bravery everywhere by handfuls of lightly armed defenders against the tidal waves of death.
The war wreckage of the kibbutzim I visited, Mefalsim, Nir Oz, Nahal Oz, Kfar Aza, the carnage was very visible. We had special permission to go but only if the Army said it was safe to enter.
Safe…is a relative word. It was a surreal world. We were able to walk about safely; many heavily armed soldiers were nearby.
In Kfar Aza, I handed kibbutznik Doron the medical supplies he requested. We walked along rows of burned, blown up, bullet-pocked houses. Each dwelling had been searched for human remains by Zaka Search and Rescue. A small sign told us it had been cleared of remains and booby trap bombs. Doron pointed to one house. His son had been murdered there. The sounds of explosions and small arms fire, a constant background cacophony. Gaza was visible across the torn-up fields.
Though I came to Israel for projects, I needed to meet with the kibbutzniks of Mefalsim who had asked for the Lion. I needed to see them, and they needed to see me. Together, we needed to reconfirm the Lion after the new reality.
I had changed my proposal. I had offered them a 10’ foot lion before October 7. My offer changed to a 20’ lion. It will be the biggest Lion in Israel. It will face Gaza, be easily seen from Gaza. And, as my wife insisted, it will have an angry, very angry face.
Did they still want the Lion? They, all the kibbutzniks, fought like Lions. I showed them a concept idea of the proposed enormous beast. I shared with them a biblical quote for the proposed sculpture. All of the Lions of the Lion’s Trail have a biblical quote tying historically it to its site.
| 6 Thus saith the LORD: For three transgressions of Gaza, yea, for four, I will not reverse it: because they carried away captive a whole captivity (Israel), to deliver them up to Edom. |
7 So will I send a fire on the wall of Gaza, and it shall devour the palaces thereof;
–The Prophet Amos 6-7
My question to them seemed nonsensical to them. They absolutely want the Lion.
Israel is intensely focused, rightly, on the return of the hostages. Everywhere you look in the country are images of the hostages and signs calling to bring them home.
The 1200 murdered on October 7… seem to be ignored, forgotten.
“Never again happened.” The people were disarmed. The Army miserably failed.
There will be time, after the fighting is over, to review, examine, and blame anyone and everyone for the failure of the Mini-Holocaust. The government may change, even fall. And the future will be… what…?
For the first time, Jews, even marginal Jews in Israel, in Galut, are discovering the eternity of the eternal hatred – antisemitism. They are frightened.
The Gaza war killing could end tomorrow if Hamas would surrender. Israel did not, never, ever, want this war.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and others are not interested in saving the Palestinian people. The war could end in a moment if they surrendered. Their objective is not Israel. Their objective is the West. Only the naïve and blind do not recognize that.
Planning for the Mefalsim Gaza Lion is for installation in late summer.
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Jerry Klinger is President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation www.JASHP.org