Why Kibbutz Nir Oz, Kibbutz Re'im Was Created, and the Special Music Festival From the October 7th Attack

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

            Road sign marking route to Nir Oz (photographed 2014)

             So much of the kibbutz was burned, along with  bodies.  

In the 7 October 2023 surprise attack on Israel, about one quarter of the 400 residents of Nir Oz were killed, injured or abducted in the most gross and unbelievable ways. The surviving kibbutz members were evacuated to Eilat. According to the New York Times, "no one lives in Kibbutz Nir Oz anymore".  All of Israel were shaken by the methods used in this killing spree of so many.  All the other world joined them in the shock that so many disgusting ways were used on a people in the midst of celebrating life by dancing to music outside.  The had come from near and for for the Music Festival, an annual event.  All were young people.  Everyone has been scarred.  

Nir Oz (Hebrew: נִיר עֹז, ניר עוז, lit. 'Meadow of Strength') is a kibbutz in southern Israel. It is located in the northwestern Negev desert between Magen and Nirim, and covers 20,000 dunams. Nir Oz is under the jurisdiction of Eshkol Regional Council. In 2021 it had a population of 393.

        Kibbutz Re'im where Music Festival took place;  Re'im is a secular kibbutz in southern Israel, and one of the Gaza vicinity villages. Located at the confluence of Besor Stream and Gerar Stream in the north-western Negev desert. Re'im falls under the jurisdiction of Eshkol Regional Council. In 2021, it had a population of 433.  It was founded in 1949; way before Gaza had been given to the Palestinians which happened in September 2005.  

On 7 October 2023, the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas initiated a surprise invasion of Israel from the Gaza Strip and massacred 270 civilians, wounded many more, and took an unknown number of hostages at the "Supernova Sukkot Gathering", an open-air psychedelic trance music festival celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot near kibbutz Re'im. This massacre was part of a series of coordinated Hamas attacks on Israel that day, which included targeting Israeli civilians for mass killings in the nearby communities of Netiv HaAsara, Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Holit at the start of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.

The festival was hosting approximately 3,000 attendees, with the lineup focused on the electronic psytrance subgenre. At around 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists entered the site by truck, motorcycle, ATV and paraglider and immediately began killing festival attendees with machine guns and RPGs. A number of attendees were also taken hostage by Hamas. (While the exact number of hostages is unknown, two people close the festival put the number at around 150.)

Supernova Sukkot Gathering was the Israeli offshoot of the Paralello Universo festival, a psytrance festival launched in Brazil roughly 20 years ago.

Hamas attacked others areas in the region of the festival site, located near the Gaza border, on Oct. 7. Israeli has since retaliated with days of heavy bombing of Gaza.  Hamas is the fighting source for Arafat's Fatah who has attacked Israel since 1967's Six Day War.  Though civilians in Gaza may not be the young military force of Hamas, remember they went along with Arafat it attacking Jews of Israel. They do not speak in favor of Jews to their children.  They teach their own hatreds.  Many even design their children towards becoming Hamas members.   

The details of the whereabouts and condition of the hostages are not publicly known. The massacre at the festival was the largest terror attack in Israel's history, and the worst Israeli civilian massacre ever.

Founded on 1 October 1955 as a Nahal settlement, Nir Oz was recognized as a kibbutz two months later. Nahal is a branch of the IDF training cadres for agricultural settlements.  When half of the Nahal member's terms of service in the army expires, he is given an opportunity for permanent settlement along the borders, either in existing villages or among the founders of new ones.  Members of Nahal are recruited from youth movements, Youth Aliyah, pioneer youth organizations abroad, and the army,  

 According to a resident named Shlomo Margalit in 2013, there had been a moshav on the site around 1952, "but too many members were killed by the fedayeen or left, so it was dissolved." There were only four trees growing at the kibbutz at the time of its founding; it was developed over time into a model for low-water landscaping. The Hashomer Hatzair took over Nir Oz in May 1957, with a founding group of 70 members.

Due to its proximity to Gaza, Nir Oz farmers often come under Palestinian sniper fire. In 2008 the Israel Defense Forces asked the kibbutz to harvest its potatoes at night to lower the risk of attack. On 5 June 2008 a mortar bomb fired from the Gaza Strip hit the Nirlat paint factory on the kibbutz, killing an employee and wounding four others. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Around 2013 a tunnel from Gaza was found near Nir Oz. A 2023 book about water in the Jordan River valley reported that the village had a number of "self-contained bomb shelters, each weighing 67 tons."

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Oz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im_music_festival_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaza#:~:text=After%20Israel's%20withdrawal%2C%20the%20Palestinians,airspace%20and%20the%20territorial%20waters.