“Shiri was very, very funny. She was a happy person – a mother,” Dalit says. “She lived a simple life. She never did anything to anyone.”
While Shiri’s husband, Yarden, was released alive by Hamas in a Gaza ceasefire deal in February 2025, she and her sons – held by a different armed group – were killed.
Hamas blamed an air strike early in the Gaza war for their deaths, but Israeli forensic experts, who examined the bodies after they were returned later that February, said they were murdered by their captives and their bodies mutilated.
Many of the bereaved from Nir Oz, including Yarden Bibas, have moved away for good. However, with 20 houses renovated or rebuilt, a few former hostages have come back to live here.
They include Gadi Moses, another kibbutz co-founder, and the oldest living male hostage released during the Gaza war, and Yair Horn, who stops to chat with the Aharons as he passes in a golf buggy. Dalit and Achi are determined to return too.
“We’ll come back for the memory of Shiri and for the people that didn’t have the chance to live here, and for the memory of my parents, and to continue our roots, and for my children, because this is our home,” Dalit says.
However, she, Achi and their children – currently displaced and living in an apartment in a town further north – face a two-year wait for Nir Oz to reopen fully.
“Terrorists penetrated 97% of the households and burned down almost 50%,” says Emi Palmor, director of the rebuilding project. “Now it’s the only place in Israel that has to be completely demolished and completely replanned.”
She says that it is a difficult balance to redesign the kibbutz so that it feels like home but does not cause new trauma to those who return.