Casualties from Ongoing Conflict

Now, in the early evening, they, too, begin to arrive,

the wounded from the hardest, most prolonged battles,

residents of the Gaza border kibbutzim.

Just after seven in the evening, the entrance cameras capture

the Kounio family from Nir Oz arriving at the hospital.

First, Eitan enters,

immediately afterward, one of the girls is brought in in the arms of

an IDF soldier,

followed by the mother, Stav,

and then the younger daughter. They arrive after long

hours barricaded in their safe room, while the terrorists

broke into their home and set it on fire.

David, Eitan's twin brother, and his younger brother Ariel,

had been kidnapped to Gaza hours earlier.

The wounded from the Gaza border area keep streaming in, including wounded

from Be'eri.

I remember we had a moment of respite,

then suddenly he came in.

David Avcha from Kibbutz Be'eri

arrives fully conscious,

exhausted, weak, dehydrated.

He hid in his safe room

for long hours,

and he is speaking to us, communicating with us.

He tells us that his wife and son were murdered inside

the safe room,

that his daughter was injured,

and that he lost a leg.

I look at him, I listen to him,

She gives him her hand.

He was just desperate to talk to someone,

to share what he went through, what… that crazy

whole day.

There were countless moments that day the mind doesn't want to comprehend.

It doesn't want to comprehend what's happening outside,

and one of those moments was really when

the twins arrived.

The babies were ten or nine months old, they

were the Berdichevsky family's babies.

Soldiers brought them,

soldiers who entered their home

and found their parents had been murdered in the early morning hours.

They cried for many hours, they had probably been alone since morning.

They didn't drink,

they didn't eat.

The mind doesn't, doesn't want to grasp that there could be

such a thing,

such cruelty.