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Kfar Aza and Me
We walked toward the tree with a broken surfboard leaning on it. Tied with a piece of string, it presented a photo of a family man with candles and stones on the grass beneath it. The crowd of 20 people stood around and waited to hear from its guide.
“My husband and I were married young and split up. But he lived on one side of the kibbutz and I would stay on the other. We share four kids so we would remain in each other’s lives.”
The guide was called Chen and she had been a resident of the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Aza all her life. Her parents helped establish and develop it over the years, building it up to a community of nearly 800 people residing mere miles from Gaza. Chen didn’t like sleeping alone so on the weekend of October 6, 2023, she traveled north to Rishon LeZion to stay with friends also originally from the kibbutz. Her 83-year-old mother stayed home alone.
“My ex-husband was shot and killed at this spot,” Chen said, looking at the tree. “They identified him by his tattoo and our children all have the same one in his memory.”
The group remained silent. As we absorbed what she told us, another guide walked over to her to say hello. They embraced with a hug and a soft kiss on the cheek before moving on.
“That is my cousin,” Chen explained. “He lost his nephew on October 7.”
Israeli hostages Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher would re-enter Israel, but they would not return home. Nobody from Kfar Aza lives there while they rebuild parts of it and leave remains so strangers can come from around the world and bear witness to the atrocities that took place. Fallen residents are currently buried all across the country, but they will one day be returned to finally lay to rest. The problem, according to Chen, was that they didn’t have the space in the cemetery to do it at once.
“We never thought we would have to bury 64 people at the same time,” she said.
The air is heavy in Kfar Aza. The sound of drones is above us at all times, but nothing is identifiable in the skies. The eyes of those walking its grounds are widened as people walk past destroyed buildings. Survivors of October 7 open their destroyed homes for the world to see. I spoke to Chen in the house she grew up in with bullet holes in the ceiling and part of the roof missing. The kibbutz feels like a new part of Jewish history added to our collective story of pain and persecution; a new site where travelers can visit and understand the trauma that happened that day, and what would kick-start the terrible position Israel and Jewry are in today.

A front door of a Kfar Aza home. (James Spiro)
I was part of a group invited to visit key locations central to the attacks on October 7. The kibbutz was our first stop and we were taken around the region eventually to Nova, the site of the music festival that was attacked as people sang and danced. Folks from mainly America were with me, and a few Brits and Canadians were with me as well. They were warned that while a ceasefire agreement had gone into effect, the chance of rockets was never zero.
In some ways, I’ve done this tour before. As a university student, I traveled to Krakow and took a bus to walk the grounds of Auschwitz. My group and I stood in the very gas chambers where so many millions of Jews were murdered. It remains a form of ‘dark tourism’ popular among those who wish to reconnect with their heritage and is still portrayed in media – the most recent example being A Real Pain, the 2024 movie written, directed, and starring Jesse Eisenberg.
Almost 15 years later, I didn’t have to fly to Poland to experience the discomfort Eisenberg also described as ‘tragedy tourism’ – I took a bus from a stop 10 minutes from my home. Others flew across an ocean to explore a tragedy not experienced by their ancestors but by their offspring: many shared with me concerns about their own children on campuses around the country or what kind of world their grandchildren would grow up in. The Holocaust was then, we thought. This is now, we know.
The tour took us next to a site containing more than 1,000 cars that were destroyed by Hamas as victims tried to flee from the Nova massacre. Their escape carriages were captured, attacked, and burnt with many of their passengers still inside. Ruined cars are stacked up as walls and some are left on the ground, with stories shared of those who tried their hardest to drive fellow Israelis to safety. Their heroism lives on as yet another memorial erected to honor Jewish victims. Another stop on the tragedy tour.

A car on display at the site memorializing the victims of Nova (Photo: James Spiro)
We ended at Nova, which now appears as a mass memorial site of the young. Not in age but in nature. Young with optimism, creativity, and positivity for a future Israel in peace and cooperation with its neighbors. Photos of the murdered festivalgoers are full of life and love. Memorials belonging to the fallen are reminiscent of a WWII monument but contain birth years from a new century – a new millennium – than the last time in history the world would see so many Jews killed in a single day. The air is heavy at Nova. There are no sounds of drones in the skies. When people walk around there is no sound at all.
Kfar Aza and Nova brought out in me a familiar feeling when reflecting on Jewish pain. New sites and memorials are being put up to honor the victims of the latest attack on our People, and it feels like once again the world is looking the other way. Tourists may stumble into memorials across Europe and the United States, but will they visit Israel to bear witness here, the country home to the latest tragedy tour of tourism? A country that, since its inception, was designed to be a haven for Jews from such horrors?

The Nova site. (James Spiro)
I took the trip to see for my own eyes the terror inflicted on that day. I feel I did it one year too late (I was invited down as a member of the press in the early days of the war but was denied on the bus because I did not have suitable protective gear. It was sent to soldiers in the IDF, exactly as it should have been). People used to come to Israel to embrace its piety and marvel at its technology, but I hope others take this same trip one day so that this new history does not get lost in our tale.
“When we leave here, we will return to our safety in the United States,” one of the tourists said to Chen at the end of the day. “But you cannot do that. How do you go on?” In his mind, Israel has already become a location of tragedy tourism from which he gets to leave. For me and millions of people here, we remain. I would later return home to Tel Aviv to news of a terror attack that took place that night.
Chen sighed, exhausted from the tour. Her pain appeared just as raw, I imagine, as the first time she must have conducted it. “We do not have a choice.”
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