The Kfar Aza massacre (2023)

Kfar Aza, a kibbutz of about 950 people some three kilometers from the Gaza border, was attacked at about 6:40 on the morning of October 7, 2023 by fighters led by Hamas. They took most of the kibbutz within the first hour. The army's fight to retake it lasted until the afternoon of October 10. According to the IDF's investigation, presented to the community in March 2025, 62 residents were killed, along with soldiers and members of the security forces who fought there, and 19 people were abducted to Gaza. It was one of the central battles of the October 7 attack.

The kibbutz and its defenders

Founded in 1951, Kfar Aza lies just east of the border, close enough that its residents lived for years with only seconds of warning before rocket fire. Its western edge, nearest Gaza, held the "young generation" neighborhood, a row of small homes where many of the kibbutz's young adults lived. Like other border communities, Kfar Aza relied on a volunteer emergency squad of residents for its first defense, armed and trained to hold off a small infiltration until the army arrived, not to fight hundreds of attackers.

Three days of fighting

The attackers came in several waves. According to reports of the IDF's investigation, about 100 Nukhba fighters of Hamas entered in the first two hours, more arrived through the morning, and a third wave, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad members, came after noon. The young generation neighborhood was overrun early, and many of the residents killed that day died there. The emergency squad fought from the first minutes, and seven of its members were killed. Some residents held out in their safe rooms for more than a day before soldiers reached them.

Army units began to arrive during the morning, but, according to the inquiry as reported by Ynet in February 2025, at least twenty different units operated in the kibbutz without a senior officer coordinating them. Forces cleared areas and then pulled back, allowing attackers to return, and some evacuated residents were sent toward a gas station where gunmen were still present. The inquiry also found that at least three civilians were killed by Israeli fire, including a hostage shot in a vehicle that soldiers took for an attackers' car. Survivors were evacuated on October 8 and 9, and the last fighter in the kibbutz was killed on October 10.

Outcome and significance

Of the 19 people abducted from Kfar Aza, most were freed in exchange deals or came home later. Two of them, Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz, escaped their captors in Gaza and were shot dead by mistake by Israeli soldiers in Shuja'iyya on December 15, 2023, together with Samer Talalka from Hura, as they waved a white cloth. The incident shook the Israeli public, and the army opened an investigation into it. Kfar Aza residents, including the brothers Gali and Ziv Berman, were among the hostages released in the ceasefire of October 2025, and the remains of others were returned in the months that followed.

The IDF's inquiry acknowledged that the army had failed to defend the kibbutz. The surviving residents were evacuated to Kibbutz Shefayim in central Israel, and many lived away from home for well over a year while the kibbutz was repaired. Kfar Aza's story, with that of Be'eri, stood at the center of the Israeli debate over the failure of October 7 and the demand for a state commission of inquiry into the war and how it began.