| Tse'elim
Kibbutz Tse'elim is affiliated with the Kibbutz Movement and under the jurisdiction of the Eshkol Regional Council. The kibbutz was established in 1947 by several youth movement groups from Eastern Europe and North Africa. In March 1949, after the War of Independence, all the members of Tse'elim from two points of settlement—in the Negev and near Rehovoth—moved to Kibbutz Kfar HaHoresh near Nazareth to take the place of the numerous members who had left the kibbutz. A group of young immigrants, Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe, replaced the Tse'elim members who had left the Negev settlement point.
Today Kibbutz Tse'elim is situated a bit south of its original location. Only a few remnants of the original site remain. One of them is the old security hut, which has been declared a national heritage site.
The kibbutz is named after the acacia trees that are indigenous to the region and were mistakenly identified as biblical lotus trees.
Adjacent to the kibbutz is the Tze’elim Urban Warfare Training Center.
The kibbutz is home to UBQ Materials, a cleantech company that developed a technology to convert household waste into green raw material for industry.
Events of October 7
On the day of the attack, the terrorists did not reach the entrance to Kibbutz Tse'elim. Because Tse'elim was considered safe relative to other locations, the army opened an evacuation route leading to the kibbutz. Hundreds of partygoers from the Nova festival who managed to escape from the area of the inferno found refuge at Tse'elim, where the residents provided them medical treatment and protection.
Kibbutz Tse'elim is located 7.6 kilometers from the Gaza border and therefore was excluded from the government-declared evacuation plan (together with Urim and Gvulot, two other kibbutzim in the Eshkol Region). The regional council took it upon themselves to evacuate the residents to Eilat and the Dead Sea. Moreover, the council and not the government provided the residents assistance and funding for the time they spent outside the kibbutz as well as monetary compensation.
On the morning of Saturday October 7, Shoshi Diamant, 56, the nurse of Kibbutz Tse'elim, was at home when she heard unusual movement near the kibbutz gate. Around 400 people fleeing the Nova music festival, some wounded, some bleeding, some fleeing shot-up cars, streamed into the kibbutz seeking help.
Shoshi immediately ran to the kibbutz infirmary to help the permanent staff. Together they triaged the wounded, treated those in need of urgent care and evacuated as many seriously wounded as they could. They took the rest to the dining hall, which had been set up to receive the survivors.
"Sometimes I don't believe that it happened," Shoshi recalled. "So many people, so much blood, all this inside our kibbutz." Even when she and her staff were asked to be called heroes, she insisted: "The true heroes are those who defended us on the front lines."
Stories of Heroism
