Children normally count to 10 on their fingers, maybe their toes – but since October 7, seven-year-old Eilam Svirsky has counted to 10 naming the people he knows who were killed in Kibbutz Be’eri in the Hamas terrorist attack – including his maternal grandparents and paternal great-aunt.
“I stop the counting at 10,” said his mother, Merav Svirsky.
The counting could go much, much higher: 88 members of the kibbutz were killed in the attack and 30 were taken hostage, among them Merav’s younger brother Itai Svirsky, 38, who was visiting his parents and grandmother at the kibbutz that weekend. Earlier in the week, Merav had left her two boys with her mother while she and her partner, Dan, who is also from Be’eri, finished moving into their new home on Moshav Tal Shachar near Beit Shemesh. She had brought the children back to the moshav on Wednesday.
Despite having left the kibbutz and its traditional communal way of life several years ago, Kibbutz Be’eri was always “home” she said. Her children, who spent almost every weekend there, knew many people in Be’eri. Her grandfather Avrahamik “Bamik” Sela, who passed away three years ago, was one of the founders of the kibbutz. Her 97-year-old grandmother Aviva survived the attack, but her caretaker was taken by the terrorists and murdered just 50 meters from her home.
Itai was staying with his mother, Orit, 70, and they hid under blankets in the safe room when the terrorists broke in, spraying the room with bullets. They killed Orit in front of Itai and took him hostage. Itai’s father, Rafi Svirsky, 71, Orit’s ex-husband, who lived in a nearby house in the same neighborhood, was also murdered, as were his three golden retrievers.
Merav’s two young sons have been traumatized by the attack in which their grandparents and great-aunt were murdered and their beloved uncle taken hostage by Hamas. Her four-and-a-half-year-old son won’t go into his bedroom until his father makes sure it is safe, she said.
She and her two other brothers have not had a chance to mourn their parents – or even consider what to write on their tombstones – because they are so focused on working to get Itai out of Gaza, she said.
“My parents are no longer here to fight for him; we are the only ones who can fight to get him out. It is our responsibility to get him out,” said Merav.
Right now, it feels like the fourth side of their “square” is missing, she said.
The “sandwich child,” born between the twins Merav and Yonatan, 42, and youngest, Yuval, 34, Itai was a very social child, always active playing soccer and taking guitar lessons together with Yonatan. At one point Itai considered music as a profession, but, said Yonatan laughing affectionately, his talent did not quite mesh with his passion for music.
When they were younger, Itai knew how to “press his buttons,” he said, but they had become closer as adults.
“All our lives are at a halt now until we get Itai out of Gaza,” he said. “At the end of every breath I take, I think of Itai and feel like I have been stabbed. I shudder when I think of him in Gaza and worry about how he is doing there.”
ITAI STUDIED psychology at Tel Aviv University and more recently found his niche as a life coach, also becoming the “rock” friends and family have leaned on for support – both emotionally and physically.
He is the uncle who can be counted on to babysit at the last moment; the son who helps out with all the paperwork; the brother who checks up on his siblings; the grandson who spends hours with his elderly grandmother – with whom he is especially close; and the friend who stays up late into the night listening to a friend who is going through a divorce.
“Every time we meet, we sit and talk. He is always sensitive to what people say and sees beyond people’s posturing,” said Dror Kozlovski, 35, Itai’s longtime friend who shared an apartment with him when they were students at Tel Aviv University. Coming to Tel Aviv from small communities, neither quite fit in with the normal whirlwind of the Tel Aviv student scene of pubs and parties, he said. Nevertheless, Itai remained in Tel Aviv after graduation, although he had recently begun to deliberate, in his slow, methodical, and “ping-pong” way, whether to return to Be’eri so he could be closer to his parents and grandmother.
“He was always there for me in difficult moments, not just physically but in a deep and meaningful way, like when I was going through a divorce and had a young son.”
Itai was so concerned not only about Dror, Merav interjected, but also about his son who was the same age as her son, that he consulted with her about the best way to help Dror’s son adjust to the divorce. Itai is still an important figure in his son’s life, Dror said.
Working as a waiter during his university studies, Itai befriended a lonely older woman who would come into the café, Dror recalled, and would listen to her as she endlessly complained. Once she asked for a large sum of money as a loan, and Itai gave it to her, although he knew he would never get it back, Dror recounted.
Merav recalled a more recent incident when Itai accompanied her family to a cultural event and a person who was living on the streets was yelling and shouting and making a scene. Itai went up to the man and asked him if he would like something to drink.
“He bought the man two cans of Coke,” she said, almost incredulously. “He just really sees people. That was such a great modeling moment for my children who saw him do that and not be afraid of the person.”
ALL OF their childhood photographs and mementos were destroyed in the attack on their mother’s house, which was burned to the ground, but Yonatan took out his laptop and showed the more recent digital photographs they still have. There was one in which Itai is sleeping on the couch with a two-year-old Eilam curled up on his chest. Another one has Itai climbing a tree with the daughter of a friend on the kibbutz. There were several of Itai with his grandmother, just sitting on a sofa together, and another one where Itai is helping her follow along in the Passover Haggadah at a kibbutz Seder.
Yuval, the youngest brother, recounted how Itai is never afraid to ask him questions about what is going on in his life.
“You know, he is the ‘big brother’; he really wants to help. Sometimes I just listen to him, and then tell him it is none of his business. Then he will call Merav and talk to her about how he is concerned about me and that she should talk to me,” Yuval grinned. “But it is from a place of really caring. And if you need something from him, you know he is always there for you. Now that I am in this period of change, I miss his advice.”
They smiled as they looked at photographs from the last family holiday they took to Crete – when they were finally all able to come together for their mother’s 70th birthday at the end of June. It was rare that they were able to all get together for a family vacation, Merav said. Her father had remained at the kibbutz to take care of his dogs.
“It was the best vacation we ever had together as a family,” she said. “We all just had the right energy, and it was the perfect place – not too long and not too short. It was just really fun.”
THE RELEASE of 110 women and children hostages at the end of November finally gave them a glimmer of hope that Itai would soon be coming home, she said. Sixteen of the released hostages are from Be’eri.
One of the released hostages had been in captivity with Itai and contacted Merav with a message from her brother, confirming that he was alive. For security reasons she can’t divulge more details, only to say that Itai asked the person to get in touch specifically with her because she lived the farthest away from the Gaza border. Yonatan, who is now staying with Merav, lived in Be’eri, and Yuval, who lived on Moshav Patish near Ofakim, has sold his sheep herd and moved with his wife and baby to Even Yehuda in the interim.
“Itai had seen my mother killed in front of his eyes; he didn’t know what had happened to my father or brothers. But he knew I lived the farthest away [and had the greatest chance of having survived the attack]. He asked the person to let me know that he was alive and to do everything in my power to get him out of Gaza,” said Merav, noting that they were and continue to be involved in efforts by family members of the hostages to get their loved ones out of Gaza as soon as possible. Itai was also able to relate through the released hostage what happened in those last moments in the safe room with his mother on the kibbutz, she said. Until then, they did not know what had happened.
But then, on Friday morning, December 1, Merav heard the jet fighters flying over her house and knew the war had restarted. By the end of the truce – which had ended that day after Hamas launched rockets into Israel – there were still 137 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, according to Israel.
“We are worried this could take a very, very long time, and we are worried about Itai’s mental state after what he saw happen when he was being taken captive,” Merav said, getting up to close a living room window as a fighter plane flew over the house, engulfing it with noise.
“This could affect any guy, but Itai is a very sensitive soul. How is he surviving? He is not a big macho guy. Of course, we know the mothers and children had to come out, but it is very difficult to see that so many got out and know that because Itai is a 38-year-old man he is low on the list. I know he is scared and anxious.”
Merav is worried about how her brother is feeling – what it was like for him, feeling that he was slowly being left alone as he watched others being released – and how he will feel once he comes home. She is no longer sure that releasing the hostages is the government’s number one priority and is anxious about the safety of Itai and the other remaining hostages while Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza.
She is trying to look at a wider perspective and believes that when Itai gets out and they help him to rehabilitate, his training will help him overcome it all, and her brother will go on to “have a good life.”
“We are talking about a 38-year-old man with a heart of gold.
“We can’t forget the men,” she implored. “This all started with the government’s abandonment of these people on October 7, and we are being abandoned now too, and the abandonment continues every day Itai is there.”
The Jerusalem Post and OneFamily are working together to help support the victims of the Hamas massacre and the soldiers of Israel who have been drafted to ensure that it never happens again.