Palestinian woman seizes Israeli family’s home on Oct. 7
Unwanted House Guests: A Mother’s Nightmare
EILAT, Israel—Natali Yohanan, a 38-year-old mother of two, never locked the doors of her house in Nir Oz, a kibbutz near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. There wasn’t even a key.
On Oct. 7, a Gazan woman walked through Yohanan’s unlocked front door and made herself at home for hours, eating, singing, and watching Netflix. Sometimes, the woman served drinks to armed terrorists who stopped by for a break from the massacre they were conducting outside.
Yohanan, hiding with her family in the safe room of the house, did not get a chance to see the unwanted house guests. But she imagines the woman is a young mother like her and wonders how she could have been so cruel. Like many survivors of Hamas’s surprise attack from Gaza, Yohanan no longer believes coexistence with the Palestinians is possible.
“It’s very hard for me as a mother to think about a woman who came to my home and saw the pictures of my kids and still came to steal and to terrify my kids,” Yohanan told the Washington Free Beacon at a hotel in this Red Sea resort city where her family relocated along with most of the kibbutz. “I never thought the common people, kids and women, would participate in things like that. It broke my faith in the goodness of people, especially people from Gaza.”
Yohanan, an elementary school English teacher and lifelong resident of Nir Oz, said she “always hoped for peace” and for the Palestinians to get their own state. She believed that ordinary Gazans were victims of Hamas, the terrorist group that has governed Gaza for most of two decades.
“We’re a very peace-loving community. The country, they always make fun of us that we’re very people-loving and we want peace,” she said, noting that several members of the kibbutz regularly drove Palestinian children from the border of Gaza, less than two miles away, to Israeli hospitals for life-saving medical care. “I really believed that Hamas kidnapped Gaza.”
One of the first things the Gazan woman did when she entered Yohanan’s house was turn off the electricity in the safe room. So for 12 hours, until the Israeli Army finally arrived to evacuate them, Yohanan, her husband, and their two children, ages six and eight, were trapped in sweltering heat.
“My kids were begging for water,” Yohanan recalled.
Meanwhile, the woman “turned on Netflix and changed it to Arabic,” Yohanan said.
“She watched TV. She opened the fridge and heated up food. She drank Coke, and she talked to [her terrorist companions]: ‘Do you want Coke? Do you want coffee? They spent like five hours in my house, sitting on the sofa and just relaxing.”
Terrorists also occasionally shot at and banged on the safe room door, and they killed the family’s dog. When the woman left, she took Yohanan’s jewelry, makeup, underwear, shoes, sunglasses, and passports, as well as her children’s clothing and toys.
“I think about it a lot, that maybe she looks like me, that she’s a young mother,” Yohanan said. “It was very hard for us to know that regular people, people we thought are not involved in the conflict, came just because they had an opportunity to plunder, to steal.”
According to a dozen members of Nir Oz, Gazan women and children as young as 10 years old followed Hamas terrorists into the kibbutz on Oct. 7, looting, helping the armed terrorists, and apparently enjoying themselves.
“Basically it was sort of an invasion of a community,” Irit Lahav, a 68-year-old tour guide and peace activist from the kibbutz, told the Free Beacon. “That’s why for me, I cannot say this was a Hamas action. No, for me, this was a Palestinian action. A whole community had come to our kibbutz, took our things, stole stuff, killed people, and kidnapped others.”
Yohanan’s father was among at least 46 people from Nir Oz who were killed by terrorists on or after Oct. 7. He was shot while trying to hold shut the door of his safe room. Many of Yohanan’s students and friends were also murdered. Across southern Israel, some 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians.
More than 70 of the some 240 hostages taken on that day were also from Nir Oz. Thirty of the hostages have since been released during Israel’s ongoing war to destroy Hamas.
“We have this sense of we want revenge, which is a horrible, horrible feeling,” Yohanan said. “I find myself showing my son video of houses being bombed in Gaza because I want to show him that Israel is still strong. I want to show him that the army is strong, that someone is protecting us because he doesn’t feel it anymore.”
Yohanan said her son is waiting for the next terror attack. If anyone knocks on their hotel room door, he panics. When he heard workers in the hotel dining room speaking Arabic, he took off running. Every night, he asks Yohanan if she locked the doors and windows.
“He is very mad at me that our house was completely open [on Oct. 7],” Yohanan said. “I can’t say I’m not afraid as well. From my hotel room, I see an amazing view of the ocean and Jordan, and I think to myself, can they come? Are we safe here?”
The general consensus among the Nir Oz survivors is that they would like to return to the kibbutz, but only after the threat from Gaza has been dealt with. And nobody knows exactly what that means.
“I don’t want Hamas to exist anymore. I want the normal, the good people in Gaza to rule. I want someone who my country can talk to. Right now, it sounds like it will never happen, but I want to believe for my kids,” Yohanan said. “I don’t want my kids to live in the same world that I do.”
(Videography by Orel Revivo; video editing by Daniel Binsted)
What does the coordinated attack by Hamas, using civilians as shields, reveal about the tactics and strategies employed by terrorist groups?
Y Hamas terrorists during the attack. She remembers him as a kind and peaceful man who always believed in coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. Yohanan’s experiences on that fateful day shattered her belief in the possibility of peace.
The incident in Yohanan’s house was not an isolated one. Many other residents of Nir Oz experienced similar intrusions and looting. It was a coordinated attack by Hamas, using civilians as shields and exploiting their vulnerability to carry out their heinous acts.
The fact that women and children were willingly participating in the attack is deeply disturbing. It raises questions about the indoctrination and brainwashing that takes place within Palestinian society. How could a mother, who is supposed to nurture and protect her children, willingly participate in acts of violence and terror?
The attack on Nir Oz and the involvement of civilians demonstrate the complexity and intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is not just a political or territorial dispute; it is deeply rooted in the hearts and minds of the people. It is a battle for narratives and identities, where both sides feel justified in their actions and see the other as the enemy.
For Yohanan and many others in Nir Oz, the attack shattered their illusions of peace and coexistence. They can no longer trust or believe in the Palestinian people as a whole. The trauma they experienced has left scars that may never fully heal. They now feel a deep sense of betrayal and fear, unsure of their own safety and the future of their children.
The attack on Yohanan’s house is a heartbreaking reminder of the devastating consequences of violence and hatred. Innocent lives are lost, families are torn apart, and communities are left in fear and despair. It is a stark reminder that peace can never be achieved through violence and that empathy and understanding must be the foundation for any lasting resolution.
As Yohanan and the people of Nir Oz rebuild their lives, they will continue to grapple with the trauma of that day. They will search for ways to heal and move forward, but they will never forget the pain and suffering they endured. The incident serves as a chilling reminder of the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a reminder that peace can only be achieved through dialogue, understanding, and a genuine commitment to coexistence.
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