Southern Israel was filled with blood and death. Brilliant red wildflowers now bloom among the ashes

As spring approaches each year, wildflowers erupt across Israel

REIM, Southern Israel -- Each year as spring approaches, wildflowers erupt across Israel, a splash of color before the punishing Middle Eastern summer. Nowhere is the show more dramatic than in southern Israel, near Gaza, where brilliant red anemones burst forth with such intensity that rolling hills seem to be covered in red carpets.

Along the Gaza border, the flowers, which look like poppies, have been crowned with their own festival, Darom Adom, or Scarlet South. It's been a major economic engine and source of local pride for nearly two decades, bringing hundreds of thousands to a little-visited and conflict-scarred part of Israel.

This year, even as explosions ring out and tanks churn across the fields as the war in Gaza drags into its fifth month, the flowers have burst forth with intensity. But the festival has been canceled, another war casualty.

For festival organizer Vered Libstein, everything is different.

Libstein lived in Kfar Azza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border hit hard by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the war. She lost her husband, Ofir Libstein, her 19-year-old son, Nitzan, her mother, Bilha Epstein, and her nephew, Netta Epstein.