“Without the cows I would have left too,” admits Israeli Marcelo Wasser, who was born in Buenos Aires 65 years ago. “We have lost personal security. “The army came very late,” he recalls of the morning of October 7, when 50 Hamas militants attacked the Nirim kibbutz (agricultural cooperative) 135 kilometers south of Tel Aviv, where they killed five people and kidnapped four others. Wasser wears a flak jacket around the clock and is the only one of the kibbutz’s 500 residents who remains in charge of the dairy farm, caring for more than 600 Holstein cows and about 350 calves. Nirim is now a war zone, a closed military district with battle tanks and artillery pieces at the entrances.
“I had never given the slightest thought to living in Tel Aviv or anywhere else,” he expresses a clear rejection in the powerful speech of Argentina, which he left after the military coup of 1976 at the age of 18 months. “In Israel I had never been afraid. I never thought any of this could happen. “Rockets used to fall from time to time,” he recalls of previous conflicts in the Palestinian territory, “but a massive massacre like the one at the Supernova music festival, 15 kilometers from this kibbutz, was unimaginable.”
“We live in fear,” admits this veteran soldier from the 1982 Lebanon War. “At my age, I think that perhaps it is time to retire and start a new life after more than 40 years on the dairy farm begin.” [granja lechera]. But I won’t decide anything until this war is over,” he admits in the office on the ground floor of the farm’s main building. Wasser, the farm’s manager, had started the conversation in the main office on the first floor but recommended continuing it somewhere closer to the bomb shelter, a reinforced concrete igloo on the outdoor terrace.
More information
Eight minutes into the conversation, the alarm on his cell phone rings while a red light flashes intermittently. “We have 10 seconds, better eight; “We are less than two kilometers from the border with Gaza,” he warns, as he moves steadily towards the shelter, with the four volunteers currently helping him on the farm and the photographer accompanying this special envoy at a run arrive. Shortly afterwards, several violent impacts can be heard dozens of meters away.
For Marcelo Wasser it’s routine. “I’m in a dilemma: continue or change,” he confirms his existential doubts. “Life is like that now, under the bombs, we just saw it. “For me it’s between five and ten runs a day to the animal shelter,” he later argues slowly as he walks confidently, his eyes fixed on the stables. “In the kibbutz, the owner of the cooperative farm, they asked me to stay. For me it’s a pretty sensitive topic. “In the situation we find ourselves in, I wonder whether I should start a new life with my wife, who is already retired at 62 and is also of Argentine origin,” the last resident of Kibbutz Mirim ponders aloud.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
Marcelo Wasser arrived at this end of the Gaza border after dropping out of medical school at age 18 to make aliyah, the immigration that guarantees Israeli citizenship to all Jews in the world. He was assigned to clean manure on the kibbutz farm and after serving as a stretcher bearer in the military for almost three years, he studied economics and joined the management of the cooperative. He has been the managing director for three decades. “Those were different times of collective effort. Now everything is privatized,” he clarifies.
“In Israel, kibbutzim with farms were built in border areas for strategic reasons,” he explains. “When you have animals in your care, you cannot move around as easily and you are less likely to abandon the animal. “The cows can’t run away and the population can settle down,” he explains with a wink. It highlights the strong bonds of mutual support for education and health care expenses among those who continue to live on the kibbutz. “We maintain a high level of solidarity. “We used to pay 36% of our salary into the community fund, but now the contribution for community service is limited to 2,500 shekels (approx. 590 euros) per family per month.”
“This dairy farm is my life, but a month ago I was on the verge of losing it here,” he says, shaking his head. “On October 6th we celebrated the 78th anniversary of the founding of the kibbutz. Two of my children and one of my grandchildren came to spend Sabbath evening with me,” he recalls. The next morning at 6:30 a.m. the anti-aircraft alarm was activated. “We are used to it. We went to the safe room in my house. But it was impressive, projectiles kept falling.”
Cries for help
The Thai farm workers alerted him. “I got into the electric golf cart that I use to get around the kibbutz,” he says. There were a dozen dead cows and many others were injured, so he told the Asian staff to hide in the shelter with water and food and returned home. We still didn’t know what was going on. Then he connected his cell phone and began to understand what was happening in Nirim.
“Something extraordinary happened to me. “In my head I heard the voices crying for help that I read in the text messages,” he remembers. “They said: Please send help. Let the security guards come. They’re shooting at my house. They want to break down the safe room door. They burn it. Smoke is coming in.”
Marcelo Wasser, on the dairy farm of Kibbutz Nirim, near the border with the Gaza Strip.Edward Kaprov
“I realized what had happened was extraordinary and I shouted, ‘The (sic) damn mother.’ “I just got saved,” he recalls. “Later we came to know that there were 50 terrorists in Nirim. We were hidden for almost twelve hours until the army took us out.” In the nearby Kibbutz Nir Oz, with a population of 400, one in four people were declared dead or missing. There were hundreds of deaths and dozens of abductees among the more than 5,000 young people dancing at dawn at the Supernova music festival.
In Nirim, only Marcelo Wasser remains, who takes turns managing the farm with his deputy, so that he can rest a few days a week with his wife in an apartment in the Tel Aviv area that friends have lent him. Along with the troops, there is also a person on the outskirts of the site who is responsible for relations between the kibbutz and the army and has set up checkpoints and barricades on the roads in the area.
“Back to Argentina? No, no… there’s a lot of uncertainty,” he jokes. “I really like my motherland… dulce de leche, mate – my wife drinks it -, Mendoza wine – I drink it -, the language, but… I will stay in Israel, albeit in a different place. Don’ Don’t worry”. Wasser assures that he stays on the dairy farm “because of professionalism and responsibility” and “because of the volunteers who come from the cities to help.” “They play it. “Me too,” concludes he gloomily, “but they come and go for a few days, and I carry on almost all the time.”
Mirim was a kibbutz of the Zionist left. “I also thought that peace could be made. I voted for the Meretz Party (pacifist left) in 1992 to support Labor MP Isaac Rabin’s plan for the Oslo Accords. Now I feel like I’ve been cheated. But it is not like that. Apparently I was wrong,” he asks. “You can’t do anything with Hamas now, you can only eliminate them,” he explains the matter. “With the Palestinian Authority it could be possible. I do business with Palestinians from the West Bank. I sell them cows. They ask me for advice on their projects. But after what happened, the trust is broken. I have previously argued with many Israelis that peace must be given a chance. But on October 7th they came to the kibbutz to kill people.”
“This is the most difficult situation of my life. “You can’t live with this fear,” Nirim admits in his latest report. “I no longer know whether I will find a gun pointed at me when I return. “I’m thinking about leaving.”
Follow all international information on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_