NewsNation National Correspondent Robert Sherman has found himself on the frontlines of some of the world’s biggest stories: from Ukraine to Israel and across the United States. He shares what he’s seeing on the ground. Subscribe to his newsletter: Frontlines with Robert Sherman here.
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(NewsNation) — It’s the smell that hits you first.
The moment our cars rolled through the gates, the energy changed. Everything felt dark. Somber. We opened our car doors and the unmistakable scent of death pounded our senses.
Before even seeing a single thing, we could just feel this was a place where horrors transpired. The rolling farmlands were empty. The quaint walkways through trees and foliage were devoid of activity. Were it not for the birds optimistically chirping in the canopies above, you might think life couldn’t possibly exist in this place.
Kibbutz Be’eri was one of the epicenters of the October 7th attack. The IDF told us before the war began an estimated 1,200 people called this community home. More than a hundred were killed or taken hostage.
Our NewsNation crew was accompanied inside by an IDF Captain in the Reserves, only permitted to give us her first name: Maya.
She led us to the first home right at the end of a narrow strip. Each house neatly nestled beside another. A gravel path with trees arching over it separated one row of homes from the next.
The front door was missing from this first home — smashed off its hinges. Char and burn marks weaved outward from the window panes. That smell of rot growing stronger as we approached.
The most forward feature of the house was the black and red spray paint markings on the front. Numbers, letters, and shapes all hastily jotted down by the Israeli teams that cleared the community out and cleaned up some of the most gruesome carnage following October 7th.
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Maya told us that any time you saw a circle with a dot inside of it, that meant at least one body was found inside that home. House after house had that chilling reminder that the ground we stood on was a place where somebody’s was taken.
As we set foot inside, the ground was shaky. Everywhere you stepped, a thick layer of ash covered the ground. As homes were set on fire, everything was reduced to the soot beneath our feet.
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“Houses were burned so severely it took us weeks to identify (bodies) because everything was ashes. Everything inside the room, there was nothing left,” Maya explained. Bodies themselves were lost to the flames.
Archaeologists had to be brought in to sift through the ashes. In some cases, the best hope they had of identifying human remains was finding teeth buried in the soot.
Seeing that made me understand the story of Emily Hand. Just eight years old on October 7th, the Israelis initially believed she was murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri.
“I was sort of relieved because I’d rather that than have her taken hostage,” her father, Thomas Hand, recalled thinking. “The way they told me Emily has been found. She was found in the kibbutz, and she’d been found dead. I’ll never forget those three statements.”
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But after weeks of searching the Kibbutz, they couldn’t find her remains. No blood. No teeth. No DNA. Nothing to substantiate she died there. The Israelis told Hand’s father they now believed she was alive — likely a hostage in Gaza.
“I had to shift my whole brain and digest this new information. And when they told me, I just went, ‘No, no, no no,’” Thomas Hand said.
Indeed, this proved to be true. Emily Hand celebrated her 9th birthday in captivity, and was ultimately released by Hamas. Her father was finally able to embrace her again in November.
Not every story in this Kibbutz has such an ending. 25-year-old Sahar Baruch was taken hostage October 7th as well. The IDF announced he died in captivity earlier this month. The same can be said for Yehudit Weiss, a 65-year-old cancer patient whose body was found in the area of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.
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Putting these stories into perspective, every step taken inside Kibbutz Be’eri felt treacherous. I couldn’t help but wonder if what I was walking on was human remains or not.
Maya led us into the bomb shelter towards the back of the home. Like everything else, the room was scorched to a shell.
Most every house in Israel has one of these shelters. In southern Israel, rocket strikes are common. But the shelters are designed to protect from explosions, not attackers.
“People were shot through the doors because the doors aren’t bulletproof and were holding the door handles for long hours hoping they would survive,” Maya explained.
Maya took us through several homes that day. One of them was riddled with bullet holes but oddly had a wall covered in what appeared to be wipe marks from a rag. Two months ago it was coated floor-to-ceiling in blood.
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Some of these houses still had family portraits and trinkets scattered about. We were asked not to photograph those out of respect to the families. They served as another reminder that the place where people built their lives was also where they ended.
Today, the Kibbutz is effectively empty, save for the IDF tanks humming by and artillery blasting a few blocks away. The October 7th survivors have left for safety until the war ends.
But remarkably, the IDF tells us some are already chomping at the bit to come back. To rebuild. To start life anew.
We hope to bring you more on that story when the time comes.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.
