The founder and chairwoman of Kedma Youth Villages, Tira-El Cohen, who deals extensively with the student villages in the south and surrounding Gaza, spoke with Israel National News about the battles in the villages of Nir Oz and Sufa.
"Fortunately, the youth from the youth village in Kibbutz Sufa were not there," she said. "They were together in another place, but in the village of Nir Oz there were eight of our youth who spent quite a few very difficult hours in Nir Oz amid the fighting that was there which started around nine in the morning and only around six in the evening the IDF was able to regain control of the kibbutz."
Until then, throughout these difficult hours, "terrorists were walking around there, burning houses to try to force residents out of the shelters. For long hours the terrorists roamed the kibbutz, looting, among other things, the student village."
During these hours, Tira-El said they tried to keep in touch on WhatsApp. At some point the connection with one of them was lost. The thoughts were that he was murdered, but later contact with him was renewed and it turned out that he was only affected by anxiety. "They went through a very difficult experience. There are no words to describe what happened there. There is a lot of damage to property and lives, but we tell ourselves that we managed to safely rescue all our guys, and most of the residents of Nir Oz are also now in Eilat."
"Unfortunately, this battle does not look good, but we hope that in the long run we will win," said Tira-El, who added that as a community resilience researcher she is aware of the importance of continuing community activity as soon as possible, and indeed the students will return to their volunteer activities in order to create continuity in the community experience. "We are measured by our ability to keep everyone on their own circuits."
As someone who specializes in the field of community resilience, Tira-El says that theere are several layers to resilience. The first circle is the self where "each of us needs to sleep, get away from the screen for at least fifteen minutes every now and then. It is important to sleep because otherwise we will collapse and become a burden." The next circle is the limited family where it is necessary to examine what each of the members needs to deal with the situation, and the emphasis is on children and the third age. The wider circle is the community circle and the weaker strata within it, whether these are women whose husbands went to the reserves or whether these are the elderly. The fourth circle is the many national missions that exist and are waiting for help and volunteering.