Morning Wire - Massacre at Israel's Kfar Aza | 11.12.23

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

When Hamas terrorists attacked on October 7th, Kfar Aza suffered some of the worst casualties. The kibbutz is less than two miles from the border with Gaza. Daily Wire correspondent Kassy Dillon returns to Kfar Aza to report on the atrocities. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On October 7th, several villages in Israel were attacked by Hamas terrorists. One of the communities which suffered some of the most casualties was Kfar Aso, a kibbutz, less than two miles from the border with Gaza. Daily Wire reporter Cassie Dillon went on assignment to Kafar Azza to talk with people who were there when the terrorists attacked, as well as those who are working now to rebuild the devastated community. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's November 12th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. The following is a series of on-the-scene reports by Daily Wire correspondent Cassie Dillon from the Kaffar-Azqbutz, a community that lost dozens of innocent people to Hamas terrorists in the October 7th attack. Anybody here, not geared up?

You're hearing mortar fire being shot by Israel into Gaza. I'm Cassie Dillon reporting from Israel. Right now, I'm in Kafar Azah. This is one of the kibbutz scene that were attacked by Hamas and a kaiqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq. We're here with residents and first responders who returned to show us the destruction and the horror they endured that day. While we're here, we can still hear mortar fire from going from Israel into Gaza, and there are rockets as well being shot this way from Gaza.

We have to catch up with them. Eton Schwartz with the Israeli government brought a group of journalists from all over the world to view the massacre scene at Kafar Azza and to fight the narrative that Israel is an aggressor in this war. It's very important for us as the Israeli people, that you have come here to see the atrocities your own eyes. We are here because we are now almost a month after the war to release our 240 hostages. That is why we are engaging in war and to dismantle the Hamas. And just in case, because we have seen in the past few days different questions about what really happened,

we asked our speaker Ma'or, who lives here in this community, Ma'O Morabi, who will introduce himself and Simcha Grinman from Zaka, from our forensic, national forensic unit, to explain exactly what they saw that day. Mayor Moravia, we are right now in Kfarazha, my home, my village. Mayor Moravia was home on October 7th with his children and says he could have never anticipated the events of that day. You will hear mortars going off while he speaks. On October 7, we were awakened at about 630 or 6.40 in the morning from the rocket alert. We ran to the protected room. We waited until we heard the rockets falling, the explosions.

Then I went outside and started hearing gunshots from assault rifles from every direction. We went back inside the house. I told my wife and children to go back into the protected room. We locked out the doors on the windows. And we started getting text messages that there are terrorists inside the kibbutz. We turned off the lights, the TV, the air conditioning. It's still the end of the Israeli summer, so it was very hot. And we were there for the next 20 plus hours inside the protected room. It was very hot, as I said.

And we were just, you know, hearing the gunshots and the explosions getting closer to us every minute and every hour until they finally came to our street. And they were inside our neighbor's house. Our house is one of the last houses are here in the kibbutz, so we were saved for the great finale, I think. There were combats inside the houses of our neighbors. My neighbor was fighting with them over the door handle for hours. They were trying to open it. He was holding it. After three or four hours of fighting, the army finally came and neutralized the terrorists.

And we were pretty much rescued from that squad, from that murder squad. And now we know that the next streets, there were families and people that were murdered and houses were burned to the ground. How many of your friends have you lost? Here? Every person died here is my friend because it's a small community, it's a small village. You know, we all live together and grow our children together, so we know everybody. And the people who were murdered and the people who have been abducted into Gaza are all my friends, all my children's friends. What's the number at right now?

Do you know? I think the numbers right now is 58 dead and 17 abducted, but could be a little more or a little less. How many people live here? Usually about a thousand, give or take. give or take. Okay. And so when you're walking out of the room with the Army, what did you tell your daughters? What did you do?

I told my children, they gave us five minutes to grab everything we can. So, you know, we just grab underwear, socks, dolls, whatever we could. I don't think we even took the entire five minutes. We just wanted to go outside, so we ran outside. There weren't much talking. No, we were just tired, hungry, thirsty, in shock. So we just ran outside and the soldiers take us. outside of the kibbutz.

Final question. Do you plan on staying here? We want to know that we are secured, we are safe, and we can live here. The last thing we want is to abandon the village. We want to rebuild it, rebuild the community. We love this place, and we need the government to secure our security, to know that we can live here safely. Behind me is a home at Kafar Azah that's just been completely destroyed

during Hamas's brutal October 7th attack. You can see it's just completely burnt. There's debris. debris, bullet holes, we'll go inside. One month ago, a family was living in here, and now there's nothing to return to. It is completely decimated. You can see back here, this is a bedroom.

There's blood. Still on the walls. You can see right here, just a complete horror in this home. This looks like a teenage girl's room, and look at her laptop, look at the blood. She's on her bed. This is where she had safety. I'm standing in blood right now.

Seeing the evidence of the attack, the smashed furniture, shrapnel in the ceiling, and blood on the walls and beds was disturbing. I continued on through several houses. This is a neighborhood of young families in Kaffar Aza. And speaking to the IDF, they believe that nobody survived here. And you can see why. There's definitely been grenades here, houses burnt. You can see the war is being broken into. You can still hear the war going on.

Complete horror. I met with IDF major David Burr on the scene. who shared his insights with us and said it's difficult as a father to see this massacre site. My name is Major David Baruch, and we're in Kfar Azah. And what is this section of the neighborhood? This neighborhood is a neighborhood of where the younger families were located in the neighborhood, and in the kibbutz. And from what I understand, I don't think anybody has survived from this street right here.

It's crazy. Families of usually one or two kids, the younger families, As you look at every one of these homes, you can see the destruction. I hope to God I'm wrong. But from when I understand, nobody on the street survived. What are we seeing with the houses? I know some of them are completely burnt, some of them aren't. Each one of these houses was attacked.

Most of them inside or out. Like this house across from us and this house right here was burnt. Incendiary bombs. Incendiary grenades were sent in. Some of those grenades, I've been told, when they lob them in, They're on a little bit of a timer and when they do go off flash 3,000 degrees Celsius. That's crazy. It's inhumane. And that's what happened in this house perhaps.

I don't know exactly what happened in each house, but I can see the horror that must have had, the family that lived here. Each one of these homes is a story, a family. And whether they were killed by these atrocious grenades or by gunfire, it really doesn't even matter. Terrorists came in right over there across the border, came over here. I've got a family, I've got kids. Every time I come to one of these communities, I think about that. And that's why when I bring people here, everyone's asking the questions,

what are you going to do next, how are you going to do it, when are you going to do it? Here I answer the question, why we're doing it. And here's another house in Kafar Azza. You can see right here, there are groceries, their, you know, their foods here. These people fled and they have not been back. Their stuff is still here. just completely destroy broken stuff. There's blood, blood right here in the ground.

Bullet holes, look at these. And I just want to remind everyone, this is a civilian village. This is not a military base. This is where civilians live, peacefully, farmers. And a lot of them are displaced right now. Some of them might try to come back and rebuild, and a lot of them are in Gaza right now as hostages.

Right behind me is a bomb shelter that people have had in this community for a long time, and usually they only have, you know, 20 seconds to get to a bomb shelter once rockets are fired. So when they woke up on October 7th and they heard the sirens, they thought there were rockets. So many of them ran into a shelter just like this. And in these shelters, they're meant to protect you from rockets. So people, you know, huddle in here. But as you can see, there's no door. So when intruders came into these areas and people ran into the shelters, they didn't know that people were going to throw grenades in here and kill them or shoot at them. And that's what happened. A lot of people ran in here for protection thinking that there were rockets, but in reality there were grenades

and people with machine guns. Next, I met a man in the kibbutz who has been volunteering since day one in clean up bodies. Again, you will hear mortars throughout our discussion. So just say your name and who you are. Okay, my name is Simcha Greeneman.

I'm a volunteer in Zaka. And I'm here from day one. I got my call on Shabuzh's afternoon. It was Simcha Sera. and my phone rings and I was called down to respond right away as a Zaka member

and we're dealing with things that we never thought we could ever see things like that. What's the one thing that you saw that keeps you up at night? I know there's probably many. Well, I'm a father and a grandfather and

to see kids butchered in ways that you can't believe that human being can do stuff like that is something that you you're in shock I have four daughters

and we had a story that we came into a house and we had a woman leaning on her bed and she was half naked from her stomach down and she was shot behind her head

And people ask me, was she raped? Wasn't she raped? That's not my job. But what I saw in my own eyes keeps me up and does not let me walk away from here until we make sure that everybody gets to burial and everybody, and all the bones that we find over here

will find their families and they'll be able to get to burial. Did you see children actually with Wichard? What did you see? What did you see with kids? I saw different things, but I can say one story that I dealt personally. I have the pictures holding the baby with the knife through his head. That was after we found that body under a pile of cement burned till it was wrong.

How old was that baby? According to the way that we checked, accordingly to see if it's an adult or a child, we check to see the drawer. If the drawer is a small drawer, then we know it's a child. Because according to the bones, they're not always, almost hardly left.

So over here we had a small body and a small drawer and a knife going through the skull. Now, have you seen many of the kapit seam or is this the one that you've been to bring in? I was in all the Ku Klitsim. As the truck driver of Zaka, I collected from every place

bodies and bodies. How many bodies did you say? Well, the first night I took over 70 bodies in my truck, and it didn't stop for at least three days. Again, every time, coming and going, coming and going. Aya Simcha, what he would say to those who question whether or not an attack in civilians took place. He was quite clear in his response.

Well, I invite them to come for one day, for a few hours, just to walk around with me, to see the situation, and to smell smells and to feel and to help me clean up one house and then we'll see if they don't believe it's like saying to a holocaust survivor nothing happened this happened and the world shouldn't understand it happened here in our houses that was daily wire reporter cassie dillon from kaffar azah in israel and this has been a sunday edition of morning wire