Be’eri massacre

Overview

The Be’eri massacre was the killing and abduction of civilians during Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel. Attackers breached Kibbutz Be’eri’s perimeter at 6:59 a.m. on October 7, 2023. They entered homes, murdered residents, took hostages and set buildings on fire. The assault became one of the deadliest attacks on a single Israeli community that day. An Israel Defense Forces inquiry recorded 101 civilians killed, 30 Be’eri residents and two other people abducted to Gaza, and 31 security personnel killed in the battle.

Approximately 340 attackers infiltrated Be’eri, including about 100 operatives of Hamas’s Nukhba force. The scale of the incursion overwhelmed the community’s defenses. Residents and members of its civilian rapid response team nevertheless held a defensive line during the first hours, preventing the attackers from reaching additional parts of the kibbutz. Fighting continued after soldiers and police arrived. Israeli forces regained operational control by the morning of October 8 and continued searching the area.

The massacre was an attack on people in their homes as well as a battle between armed forces. Couples were murdered inside houses while children hid. Families were separated and taken to Gaza. Homes were burned or heavily damaged, and survivors faced a prolonged displacement and rebuilding process. The IDF’s subsequent inquiry found that the military had failed in its mission to protect Be’eri’s residents. That finding stands alongside the documented courage of local defenders, soldiers and police officers who fought the attackers.

Background

Be’eri is an Israeli kibbutz near the border with Gaza. On October 7, Hamas launched a coordinated assault across the border, striking military positions, roads, towns and kibbutzim. Other sites of massacres included Kfar Aza and the Nova music festival. The attack on Be’eri unfolded amid simultaneous fighting across southern Israel. Roads were blocked or threatened, nearby military positions came under attack, and reinforcements struggled to reach communities where civilians were under fire.

Hamas also attacked communications infrastructure during the opening phase. Using quadcopters, its operatives dropped improvised explosives on generators and equipment at communications towers near the Gaza border. One targeted tower stood roughly 2.5 miles west of Be’eri. The strikes formed part of a wider assault that disrupted the ability of Israeli forces to understand and respond to events as attackers moved toward civilian communities.

The military position west of Be’eri was attacked early that morning. Its defenders were drawn into their own battle as armed men advanced toward the kibbutz. Be’eri’s security chief, Arik Kraunik, warned residents and summoned members of the civilian rapid response team. He was killed near the entrance. Ilan Weiss, a deputy member of the emergency response team, was also killed as he tried to reach the community’s armory. Their deaths impeded access to rifles stored there, leaving other defenders to fight with weapons already in their possession.

The attack took place within a broader history of violence against Jewish communities, including the 1929 Hebron massacre, decades before Israel’s establishment. That history provides context for the danger faced by civilians; it does not diminish the distinct circumstances of October 7. In Be’eri, the immediate facts were direct: attackers crossed into Israel, entered a residential community, killed civilians and carried captives into Gaza.

Course of the war

After breaching Be’eri’s perimeter at 6:59 a.m., the first attackers moved into the kibbutz from more than one direction. Some passed through its entrance; others entered through a breach in the fence. They moved from house to house, shot residents, forced entry into protected rooms and set buildings alight. The assault expanded as further groups arrived. About 100 Hamas Nukhba operatives were among approximately 340 attackers who entered Be’eri over the course of the infiltration.

For the first hours, the principal defense came from Be’eri residents and the civilian rapid response team. They exchanged fire with attackers at the entrance and inside the community, protected people sheltering in homes, and maintained a line that kept the assault from spreading into additional neighborhoods. Their resistance continued even after the first IDF troops arrived. At one stage, roughly 26 armed Israelis faced an attacking force that would number in the hundreds. The disparity left families in other parts of Be’eri exposed while local defenders fought to contain the incursion.

At the kibbutz’s dental clinic, First Sergeant Shahar Tzemach and another local security squad member defended wounded people for seven hours. Attackers killed Tzemach after his ammunition ran out. The stand illustrates how residents and local defenders provided protection inside individual buildings while the broader defense of the community remained fragmented. Other attackers continued entering houses, murdering residents and abducting people toward Gaza.

Two people fleeing the Nova festival massacre, Yasmin Porat and Tal Katz, reached Be’eri at about 7:30 a.m. and sheltered with Adi and Hadas Dagan in the Dagans’ safe room. Attackers later forced all four from the house and brought them to the home of Pessi Cohen, where a larger group was held hostage. Katz was killed there. Porat escaped with a surrendering attacker, while Hadas Dagan survived the later fighting at the house. Adi Dagan was killed by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell that struck near the doorway during the hostage standoff.

By early afternoon, the attackers had taken 30 Be’eri residents and two additional captives to Gaza. Israeli reinforcements then began arriving in greater numbers. Special forces, soldiers, police officers and Shin Bet personnel fought through the kibbutz and began evacuating residents. Brigadier General Barak Hiram was assigned command of the sector as forces worked to establish a clearer picture of where attackers and civilians remained. By 6 p.m., about 700 Israeli soldiers and security personnel were operating in the area. Fighting and evacuation continued into the night.

The hostage standoff at Pessi Cohen’s house became one of the battle’s most difficult episodes. Hamas attackers had gathered captives there and fired on approaching forces. A mistaken report initially directed responders toward the dining hall instead of the house. Police, Shin Bet and IDF commanders then coordinated negotiations and a rescue attempt while the battle continued around them. Light tank shells were fired near the building to pressure the attackers. One shell ricocheted and its shrapnel killed Adi Dagan and wounded Hadas Dagan. The IDF inquiry determined that most other hostages at the house were likely murdered by their captors. Porat and Hadas Dagan were the two survivors among the 14 hostages described in accounts of the incident.

Israeli forces carried out their main evacuation and searches overnight. They regained operational control of Be’eri by the morning of October 8, then searched again and fought attackers at isolated points. The battle cost the lives of 23 IDF soldiers and members of the civilian rapid response team, together with eight Israel Police officers. Approximately 100 attackers were killed inside the kibbutz. Those figures describe the battle’s armed losses separately from the 101 civilians murdered during the attack.

Israel’s conduct and the protection of civilians

The IDF inquiry made an unequivocal finding: the military failed to protect Kibbutz Be’eri’s residents. Its forces had prepared chiefly for limited infiltrations, while the October 7 assault struck many locations at once. Nearby positions were attacked, access roads were dangerous, and the military struggled to build an accurate picture of events inside the kibbutz. Be’eri’s community emergency team had developed information about the attack during the morning, but residents did not receive sufficient warning from security officials.

The inquiry also identified failures after reinforcements reached the area. Some units waited outside Be’eri while civilians remained under attack. Others entered and withdrew, or delayed action amid unclear command arrangements. In some instances, forces gave priority to defending a position or evacuating wounded soldiers before assisting civilians. The inquiry called for civilian protection to take precedence in such circumstances. These findings did not erase the actions of soldiers and officers who entered the kibbutz, fought attackers and evacuated survivors; they established where the institution had failed the people it was responsible for defending.

Israeli fire at Pessi Cohen’s house required a separate accounting. The tank was used during an active hostage situation in which attackers were firing from the building. The IDF inquiry found that commanders coordinated their decisions and sought to save the captives. It also identified the shrapnel injury outside the building. Adi Dagan’s death cannot be assigned to Hamas gunfire: it resulted from the Israeli shell. The inquiry assessed that most of the other hostages were likely killed by the attackers. Stating those findings precisely preserves the distinction between the invaders’ massacre and a fatal consequence of Israel’s response.

The inquiry lasted about three months. Its team conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with residents, civilian defenders and security personnel, collected security-force communications, and reviewed messages exchanged by kibbutz members with their consent. It also examined video, field reconstructions, intelligence and interrogation material from captured attackers. The IDF worked with Shin Bet and the Israel Police. Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi summarized the completed inquiry, and its findings were presented to Be’eri residents, hostages’ families, bereaved families and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Terrorist tactics and propaganda

The attack combined armed infiltration with the deliberate targeting of civilians. Hamas is a terrorist organization, and its Nukhba operatives were part of the force that entered Be’eri. Attackers crossed the perimeter, moved through residential streets, broke into homes, murdered residents, abducted captives and looted property. They set buildings on fire, leaving some families trapped or displaced. These acts cannot be described as an assault confined to military positions: the homes and people of Be’eri were central targets.

Hostage-taking served both the immediate assault and its aftermath. Attackers removed people from Be’eri to Gaza before Israeli forces could regain control. Captivity separated children from their families and extended the attack far beyond the hours of fighting in the kibbutz. Emily Hand and Hila Rotem Shoshani were released after 50 days in Gaza. The Goldstein-Almog children were held for 51 days. Several members of resident Ruth’s family, spanning children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, were also taken hostage. When the IDF published its Be’eri inquiry in July 2024, eleven of the people abducted from the attack area remained captive in Gaza.

Survivor testimony, security recordings, photographs and footage document the attack on Be’eri and the neighboring communities. The location of the Nova festival had changed two days before October 7; that change was later used in false claims that its massacre had been staged. Such claims do not alter the documented killings at the festival or the account of Porat and Katz, who fled from it into Be’eri and were then taken hostage. Distinguishing verified events from propaganda is part of preserving an accurate record of both massacres.

Outcome

Israeli forces retook Be’eri, but they did so after a severe civilian catastrophe. The IDF recorded 101 civilian deaths, 31 security personnel killed and 32 people abducted from the kibbutz and its surroundings to Gaza. Be’eri’s houses sustained heavy damage from the attackers’ arson and the fighting. The losses included residents killed while seeking safety inside their own homes, local defenders killed while protecting neighbors, and officers and soldiers killed trying to reach or clear the community.

Personal accounts show what the aggregate figures cannot. Narkis “Kissy” Hand, 54, was shot and killed near her mother’s home after fleeing her own house. At Pessi Cohen’s house, people who had first sought shelter in a safe room became captives in a prolonged confrontation. The names and circumstances of those killed remain integral to the history of the battle: the massacre was experienced by families, neighbors and individual defenders, not only by a community counted in casualty totals.

The battle also exposed a failure of national defense. Be’eri’s residents and civilian rapid response team prevented a still wider takeover, but they were required to fight for hours against a far larger force. The IDF’s admission that it failed to protect them became a central conclusion of its October 7 inquiries. The return of military control ended the attack inside the kibbutz; it did not end the consequences for hostages, bereaved families or survivors whose homes had been destroyed.

Aftermath and legacy

Recovery began amid destroyed buildings, missing residents and the search for remains. In one case, volunteers searched Be’eri’s rubble for three days for traces of a seven-year-old girl. Identification of a bone fragment by DNA enabled her family to hold a burial. Such work formed part of the effort to account for those killed and give families a place to mourn. A United Nations mission investigating sexual violence connected with the October 7 attacks also visited Be’eri while gathering evidence about the assault and its aftermath.

Many surviving residents lived away from Be’eri while the community planned repairs and new housing. Temporary accommodation was established at Kibbutz Hatzerim. The rebuilding program included renovation of residential and public buildings, replacement of infrastructure, new homes and a new dental clinic. The clinic would replace the one where defenders and wounded people had faced attackers on October 7. Returning to Be’eri required practical reconstruction as well as decisions about how to remember places where neighbors had been killed.

In December 2025, Be’eri voted to demolish damaged homes in its two worst-hit neighborhoods while preserving one house as testimony to the massacre. The decision followed community discussion about remembrance and rebuilding. New housing was under construction elsewhere in the kibbutz, and some residents had already returned, while others remained in temporary homes. The scale of the physical damage and the loss of roughly a tenth of the community made recovery a long process rather than a single return date.

Be’eri’s legacy includes the record of Hamas’s murders and abductions, the resistance of residents and local defenders, and the IDF’s responsibility for its failure to protect them. The inquiry established a detailed timeline and identified operational errors; family accounts and physical evidence preserve the human consequences. Together they show why the massacre remains a defining part of the October 7 attacks and of Israel’s effort to remember its victims, account for the hostages and rebuild the communities struck that day.