Kibbutz Nir Oz is rebuilding after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack

Nir Oz, Israel — Eliyahu Margalit, more commonly known by his nickname “Churchill,” was the mythical cattle breeder of Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities along the Gaza border that was hardest hit during the heinous attack by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. Margalit, 77, was abducted, along with his horses, to Gaza. On Dec. 1, the Israeli military announced that Churchill had been murdered by the terror group while in captivity. 

Only a day earlier, Churchill’s daughter Nili, 41, returned home from Gaza as part of the seventh tranche of released hostages in the temporary truce deal brokered with Hamas.  

More than a quarter of Nir Oz’s 427 residents were either murdered or kidnapped on Black Shabbat, as it is known locally.

Of those, 31 are still in captivity in Gaza, including Kfir Bibas, the red-haired baby who, at 11 months old, has become a symbol of the hostage crisis as the youngest abductee.

The IDF announced last week that seven hostages had died while in captivity, four of whom — including Margalit — were from Nir Oz.   

Life goes on for Margalit’s cowshed and on the day that his death was announced, a new calf was born.

The freshly delivered bovine isn’t the only sign of new life emerging from the devastation.

Last week saw new potato saplings planted and avocado harvests with volunteers from across Israel arriving at the fields to lend a hand. 

The once-bucolic kibbutz, which lies only a mile from the border with Gaza, has 6 acres of farmland and is known for its potatoes, pomegranate, wheat, and peanut exports.

An oasis of green in the arid climes of the western Negev desert, the kibbutz is an ecological marvel and home to 900 species of flora.

Since the onset of the Second Intifada in 2001, Nir Oz — which was established in 1955 — has been plagued by rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza.

These attacks intensified significantly in both number and frequency after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas subsequently took over the Strip in a bloody coup.

Still, kibbutz residents say that it was a price they were willing to pay for what they believed was a patch of heaven on earth.

“It was 99% paradise and 1% hell,” Benny Avital, a member of Nir Oz’s rapid response team, told The Post outside a row of burned-out houses on the kibbutz. “They [fire rockets] at us, we escape with the kids, sometimes for a few days or a couple of months, and then we come back and have quiet for a bit.

“But after that Saturday, it’s 1% paradise and 99% hell.”

Each of the nearly 20 communities targeted in the Oct. 7 massacre experienced the attack differently, leading to varied responses and differing perspectives about both rehabilitation and the possibility of returning.

In the case of Nir Oz, IDF forces took hours to arrive, leaving the terrorists to carry out an extended, systemic strategy of killing on sight, home invasions, and attempts to breach safe rooms.

When, in some cases, those attempts failed, terrorists set fire to Nir Oz homes, leaving residents with a terrible choice: face suffocation or confront the attackers. 

According to Avital, who threw a wet towel on his head and ran into houses rescuing several dozen survivors, of the 700 Palestinians to enter the Kibbutz that day, only 150 were actual armed militants.

The rest were civilian men, women and children.

It later emerged that some of those civilians had taken kibbutz members hostage. 

The relentlessness of the violence on October 7th is why many residents — Avital included — cannot answer whether they will eventually return to the kibbutz. 

“We don’t want to think about it right now. There are still a lot of people kidnapped and the situation in Gaza is unknown,” Avital says. “We cannot continue living here when they are over there.” 

Renana Gome Yaakov, whose children Yagil, 12, and Or Yaakov, 16, were returned to Israel on November 27 after enduring horrific abuse in Gaza for 54 days, including being branded by terrorists using motorbike exhaust pipes, said that for now, going back was not on the cards.  

 “Can you imagine bringing the children back to the house they were kidnapped from,” Gomeh Yaakov told The Post.

Nevertheless, a tentative plan for the eventual return to Nir Oz is already in place.

For the next month, the community will continue staying in a hotel in the Red Sea tourist resort of Eilat where they were evacuated after the massacre.

The resort town — which hugs Israel’s border with both Egypt and Jordan —  has doubled its population since the war began, housing more than 60,000 of Israel’s estimated 300,000 evacuees.

A converted field school in Eilat has been transformed into a school for 600 children from Nir Oz and other battered Gaza envelope communities.

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The hotel itself, which is sandwiched between a popular coral reef diving spot and the red Negev mountains, has undergone several modifications to adapt to its new function.

A dozen tents have been erected next to the pools, for everything from makeshift preschools to massage clinics and art therapy spaces. 

In the beginning, clowns and singers were brought in an attempt to lift the mood, but according to Irit Lahav, the daughter of Nir Oz founders who has taken on the unofficial role of kibbutz spokeswoman, it didn’t feel right.

“There’s too much sadness,” she said.

Late into the night, the hotel lobby transforms into a gathering place where survivors, plagued by insomnia, swap stories of that fateful day.

Lahav’s own life – and that of her 22-year-old daughter, Lotus – was saved after she jammed an oar to block the handle of the safe door from being opened.

“Here we sit and cry,” she said, motioning towards the opulent lobby, which overlooks several swimming pools and meticulously groomed gardens.  

After their sojourn in Eilat, the community, which Lahav said hopes to remain together, will relocate to newly constructed apartment blocks in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat where they are expected to remain for eight months.

Relocating to high-rise apartments in a city setting is not ideal, Lahav said and would represent a significant shift for the kibbutz residents who are accustomed to large, open spaces, their own private homes, and a communal way of life.

According to the plan, the community will receive a kindergarten on an adjacent street. School-aged children will attend school in Gat, a nearby kibbutz. 

The move is being done in conjunction with the Tekuma Authority — the governmental body tasked with rehabilitating the Gaza envelope region — and is partially funded by American Jewish groups.

Jewish communities in the US have also been matched with evacuated Israeli communities, with Chicago adopting Nir Oz. Similar efforts are underway for other Gaza-area communities hard-hit by Hamas.

Residents of Be’eri, for instance, have been relocated to resorts along the Dead Sea while those from Kfar Aza are in a hotel along Israel’s central Mediterranean coast. 

The Nir Oz community will be housed for the better part of a year in Kiryat Gat.

During that time, a temporary settlement composed of trailers known as caravillas — a portmanteau of the words caravan and villa — will be built for the community in the Negev region, likely Irit near Lahav, a kibbutz some 60 miles east of Nir Oz.

According to the current plan, the community will remain in the caravillas for around two years.

Afterward, Lahav noted, and contingent upon a huge number of factors, the question of returning to their cherished kibbutz may have a more definitive answer. 

“Will I come back and take the risk again? Right now I cannot even think about next week. I love this place. I love the fields, I love the people. But it’s too scary.” Lahav, who accompanied The Post on a tour of the smoldering ruins of the kibbutz, said. 

Ron Bahat, 57, who grew up with Lahav in the kibbutz’s collective children’s home, has a different attitude and has already returned to Nir Oz. 

“I came back because it’s home,” he said. But Bahat remains an anomaly. 

For now, the most urgent priority is to ensure the kibbutz, and its output doesn’t collapse entirely.

Close to 60% of Israel’s supply of produce comes from the Gaza corridor area, such as Kfar Aza, Be’eri, and Nachal oz.

An IDF unit has been tasked with overseeing a civilian and military mission to make sure the work is carried out for what Maj.

Nir Boms called “the day after” — when the fighting with Hamas stops.  

The unit has crossed off 200 tasks a day towards that end, everything from scrubbing the surviving houses from blood to treating traumatized dogs to harvesting crops.

“One child requested that we feed his fish so we have soldiers doing that,” Boms said. 

“Almost from day one, we were tasked with rebuilding. This is what we do. They tear down, we build. They won’t break our spirits.”