Two years later, worlds shattered in Israel, Gaza

Hamas' Oct. 7 attack destroyed lives, sense of security; war has left enclave in ruins.

- BY NABIH BULOS

Photographs by YAHEL GAZIT For The Times "HOW DO you digest the loss of 102 people?" said Miri Gad Messika, shown Tuesday outside her parents' home in Beeri, Israel, which was destroyed Oct. 7, 2023.

Little has changed in the house of Miri Gad Messika's parents from two years ago, when Hamas-led militants blitzed into this tiny community less than three miles from Gaza's eastern edge, killing more than 100 people and kidnapping 32 others.

The scorch marks from the fighting that day still mar the walls, and the underbrush of bullet-shattered tiles crackles with Messika's every step. To the side lay a stuffed panda doll, dusty and discarded on what remained of a kitchen counter.

"We always used to say this place is 99% heaven and 1% hell," Messika said, her eyes sweeping across the room before looking out into the ravaged courtyard.

The heaven part was the place she knew all her life as a third-generation resident of Beeri, with its printing press and basketball team. Hell? That was the periodic rocket attacks during the decades of flareups between the militant group Hamas and Israel that would send residents racing into their safe rooms.

"But we knew how to manage that," she said. "We just went into the safe room and closed the door. That's it."

But 10 minutes into the onslaught that fateful Saturday morning on Oct. 7, 2023, Messika understood it was "a historic event."

"We weren't prepared for such a thing," she said.

On Tuesday, the second anniversary of the attack, Messika and others across Israel recalled the day that sparked the country's longest war, shattered Israelis' long-held sense of security and entrenched anew the hatreds and divisions long a part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The scars endure like the lingering smell of soot in her parents' home.