The State Comptroller’s Office will track and follow the government’s fulfillment of its duties toward Kibbutz Nir Oz, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman told its residents in a meeting with them on Sunday.
One-fourth of the kibbutz’s members were either killed or kidnapped on October 7; of the 59 hostages still held in the Gaza Strip by Hamas, 14 are from Nir Oz. Most of the residents are now living in temporary housing in Carmei Gat.
“The terrorists wiped the kibbutz out. The full reconstruction of Nir Oz is a litmus test for the government,” they said.
“Its reconstruction will be a victory; if it is not properly rebuilt, if there is no community there, then that will mean that Hamas won,” they added.
The residents first listed the psychological damages as the chief stumbling block to their return. Englman said that it is important to guarantee the kibbutz members that they will receive everything they need.
Many captivity survivors and freed hostages have repeatedly said that their personal – and Israel’s collective – healing journey has no chance to start until all the hostages are returned home.
Margalit Mozes, who was kidnapped on October 7 and freed in the November 2023 deal, said that since her return, no government figure has reached out to her or accompanied her in her journey.
“Apart from being extremely happy to see an IDF soldier bringing us home, there was no official Israeli source that got in touch with me. No one, from any office, to this very day,” she said.
“This is so very wrong; there should have been a blanket of support for those who returned, someone to say a kind word, even just a ‘welcome back,’ which we only received from the soldiers who greeted us,” she said, adding that someone did get in touch with her from the National Insurance Institute (NII), but that there was no one besides who did, “even when we were in the hospital [after returning from captivity].”
She was in captivity for 49 days.
Hadas Kalderon – whose two children Erez and Sahar were kidnapped and released in the November deal, while their father, Ofer, was released in February – said, “There is no organized body that can see the big picture. We find ourselves in a situation where we are handling everything, pulling all of the strings. There needs to be someone in charge of this.”
She noted as well that there are many kibbutz members who are hesitant and fearful to come back and live there.
“It’s not that they don’t want to, but there are many blockages to their return. What about them? Where is the attention to them? Some of these people aren’t young, they are without a home, and with no promise for a better future,” she said.