The IDF recently presented residents of Kibbutz Gevim, near Sderot, with its findings from the October 7 attack on their community, during which four people were wounded, including the kibbutz security chief, who was seriously hurt. The investigation was approved for publication on Tuesday, and shows that the local emergency ready team held off terrorists during the assault, when IDF forces were engaged elsewhere.
According to the probe, about half an hour after the Hamas invasion, a vehicle carrying eight Hamas terrorists — not belonging to the main infiltration force — drove past the kibbutz and attempted to enter. The gunmen opened fire at four residents who were outside, including the security chief, then drove on to their next target. The residents helped evacuate the wounded into a house and, because Magen David Adom had difficulty reaching the numerous affected communities that morning, kibbutz members tended to the casualties for hours and saved lives. About 700 people were in the kibbutz that morning.
The report found that the kibbutz’s 19-member emergency team performed well even though its commander, the security chief, was seriously wounded. Five members were armed within minutes, and others retrieved weapons from the kibbutz armory and rushed to defensive positions.
Leadership was taken by resident Gilad Schwartzman, a senior reserve officer and former chief of staff of the 36th Division, who sent teams to check houses to make sure there were no further casualties and that everyone was sheltered.
The IDF believes the eight terrorists — who spent only three minutes at the kibbutz gate and did not enter — were part of the Hamas force that went on to attack the nearby moshav Yakhini, where six people were killed that day. Security forces that evening searched farmland near Gevim and found a Chinese farm worker shot dead and a companion wounded; the army assesses, on the basis of testimony and other evidence, that both were hit by gunfire, and a wounded terrorist was found in the area about two weeks later.
Like other nearby communities, Kibbutz Gevim did not see an IDF response for most of the day on October 7: the regional 77th Brigade was engaged in roughly 30 separate breach routes and other fighting across the northern Gaza envelope, from Zikim, through Erez to Sderot.
The review noted that, although Gevim sits about 3.8 kilometers from the Gaza border, it was not classified by the state as a border-adjacent community — within the 4-kilometer threshold — because it lies “across the road” from the immediate envelope. That designation has long denied the kibbutz security features such as warning fences and cameras that it should have received. The government is now finalizing a plan to deploy such security measures in Gevim and similar communities in the western Negev.
Two residents from Gevim were killed on October 7 outside the kibbutz: Ziv Hajbi, who was at the Nova party, and Shlomi Davidovich, who was hiding in a fortified space beside the road.