Six months after fleeing their home on a kibbutz in northern Israel for fear of Hezbollah attacks following the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Yulia Bardan and her family have returned to collect as many memories of a lifetime they left behind.
She only had an hour to spare. “It was under the cover of darkness that I was given my first chance to go home,” she told Fox News Digital. “I cried the whole time.”
When she arrived, Kibbutz Manara, once home to nearly 300 people, looked like a war zone. “We heard explosions overhead so we rushed to our house, the closest to the Lebanese border. There was no electricity and we couldn't open the windows,” she said.
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A soldier walks through the rubble of a house damaged in an attack by Hezbollah terrorists, in Kibbutz Manara in northern Israel, near the Lebanese border, on November 27, 2023. (Jallah Marri/AFP via Getty Images)
With a flashlight in hand, she walked from room to room, collecting as much stuff as she could into a large garbage bag. The family of five now lives in one room, with not much space for extra stuff. “My daughter wanted a dollhouse, but I couldn't take it. The best part was when they found our cat alive. The kids were so happy when they saw the cat,” she says.
Shortly after she packed her bags and left the kibbutz, a Hezbollah missile hit her house, making it one of 75 percent of kibbutz buildings in the north damaged by Hezbollah's relentless bombardment.
Since Hezbollah joined the war on October 8 as a “support front” for Hamas, more than 7,500 rockets have been fired from Lebanon into Israel and more than 200 drones have crossed the border. The casualties have been 44 dead, 271 injured, and 62,000 people have fled dozens of communities in northern Israel, without knowing when or if they will be able to return. Damage to agriculture and tourism has run into billions of dollars, raising fears that the conflict could escalate further.
Yulia Bardan and her husband Nadav enjoy a quiet moment at Kibbutz Manara with Lebanon as the backdrop. (Yulia Berdan)
The decision to evacuate most northern communities immediately after October 7 came not from the government, which was slow to act, but from the residents themselves. “We are very lucky that Hezbollah's Radwan forces did not join Hamas in the massacres, because if they had, no one would have been able to stop them,” said Yohai Urfin, community director at Kibbutz Manara. “We are right on the border and in great danger. We have known for at least 10 years that Hezbollah's Radwan forces have invaded Galilee, occupied several communities, and are training their plans to do here exactly what happened in the south.”
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A photo taken in Kibbutz Manara on December 20, 2020, shows a Lebanese man holding a Hezbollah flag in the southern Lebanese village of Houla. (Jallah Marri/AFP via Getty Images)
Naor Shamir, who has lived on Kibbutz Manara with his wife and three children since 2011, does not underestimate the reaction of residents along the northern border since October 7. “We fled, we were afraid they would kill us, like they did in Gaza,” he recalls.
Shamir, who normally teaches math and physics, has been focusing on leading the kibbutz's emergency response force, a group of local residents with combat experience, since October 7. The unit is tasked with defending against terrorist infiltration, rocket fire and even wildfires caused by hot shrapnel and missile strikes. “The situation is even more difficult because a large part of Kibbutz Manara is visible from Lebanon,” Shamir says. “If you walk through parts of the kibbutz, you're totally exposed to Hezbollah.”
A kibbutz house damaged by a Hezbollah rocket. (Kibbutz Manara Rapid Response Unit)
In December, when members of a rapid reaction force responded to a fire caused by an anti-tank missile, Hezbollah fired three more missiles, wounding two of the force's members. “Manara is on a high ridge, making it an easy target for anti-tank missiles,” Shamir said. “We're defenseless.”
Founded in 1943, the kibbutz economy was primarily based on agriculture, with its famous vineyards, cherry and apple orchards, and poultry farming. Today, much of this has been destroyed by Hezbollah rockets: vineyards have been burned and orchards in vulnerable areas abandoned.
The aluminium company run by Yulia's husband, Nadav, was also destroyed in the missile attack and has since joined the rapid response force, while Berdan and their three children live in a room in a kibbutz in the north, away from the border.
This photo taken from a location in northern Israel shows a Hezbollah unmanned aerial vehicle being intercepted by the Israeli Air Force over northern Israel on August 25, 2024. (Jallah Marri/AFP via Getty Images)
“There has been no official declaration of war here, but we live as if there is one. There are constant drone and missile attacks. My children go to school, but today they spent two hours in a shelter because of a missile attack. You might ask, 'Why don't you move somewhere else?' but this is our home and we can't imagine living anywhere else,” she said.
She continued: “What if she and others put down roots and abandon the northernmost areas of Israel? Manara is on the border. If we are not there, who will be? We have to go back.”
Hezbollah terrorists conducted a training exercise in southern Lebanon in May 2023. (AP/Hassan Amar)
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She said she hoped the day would come when the government understood what was at stake and “will do what is necessary to change the situation in the north,” adding that the war between Israel and Hezbollah had left northern Israel in ruins “while the world's attention was focused elsewhere.”
