Survivors battle with ghosts of black Shabbat

“On the news, you hear a lot of stories of sadness, but when we reread the stories of 7 October, we understand that these aren’t just stories of sadness, but stories of hope, happiness, and rebuilding.”

So said Nitay Ledany, the former spokesperson of Kibbutz Nir Oz, on why we must keep retelling the stories of 7 October 2023.

Ledany is part of a delegation from the Israeli non-governmental organisation Israel Is that recently spent time in South Africa. They were brought to South Africa with the help of the South African Zionist Federation, the Israel Centre, and Mizrachi South Africa.

The delegation was made up of 28-year-old Ori Schapira, who survived Hamas’s attack on his home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza; 26-year-old Shai Aviv, who survived the Nova festival massacre; and Arab Druze Israeli activist Julnar Madi. The group participated in a panel discussion moderated by radio talk show host, social media commentator, and columnist, Howard Feldman, on 27 March.

For the first time, Schapira and Aviv were able to share their stories of 7 October with a room full of people and in English, something they never thought possible when they embarked on their path to healing post 7 October. They said telling their story to audiences had spearheaded their healing journeys.

Schapira, who grew up on Kibbutz Kfar Aza, always knew that danger was just around the corner, being so close to the Gaza border. However, when he woke up on the morning of 7 October to Hamas invading his kibbutz, he locked himself in his mamad (safe room) when he heard terrorists yelling outside his window, and knew that something was very wrong.

“The fighting, the shooting, the explosive noise didn’t stop, and when it did, it was even scarier because I didn’t know if the terrorists were right outside and were being quiet to trick us to get out or try to see what was going on,” he said.

At about noon, the terrorists entered his apartment by breaking the window, and at that moment, he decided to send a message to his parents on the kibbutz, his brothers, and his friends before it was too late.

Schapira then fought with Hamas terrorists who tried to enter his mamad by pulling the door closed when they tried to get it open. The terrorists were speaking in broken Hebrew to him through the door in an attempt to get him to come out of the room, but he didn’t budge.

He was rescued by the Israel Defense Forces at 21:30 that night. When his parents heard that he was safe, “they said that they could now die peacefully because I was okay”, he said.

He said that though he hopes that peace can be achieved and he can move back to his home and feel safe, that doesn’t seem possible right now.

“A few weeks before the attack, I was on the Gaza border in the fields,” he said, “Right now, I don’t feel safe sleeping there. I still sleep with my handgun under the pillow. I go to the kibbutz almost every day, I still work there. But to go back and live there and feel and be safe, it’s complicated.”

Aviv had gone to festivals since she was 15 years old, and loved the dance community she created, going to every Nova festival since it was established. She was working at Nova that day, selling her macrame jewellery and crystals.

“On 7 October, while we were celebrating life, while we were celebrating peace and love, we saw the purest evil,” she said. By 07:00, she saw hundreds of people running away from the festival and being shot by terrorists.

She ran to her car, which was still intact, and tried to leave the festival grounds. She was surrounded by broken and burned cars, and as she looked in her rearview mirror, she saw a truck with eight terrorists and machine guns with a rocket-propelled grenade pointed at her car. She immediately jumped out of the car and hid in the bushes.

“I was in a position where no-one could see me, but I could see and hear everything. After seeing the horror, I decided to put my head on the ground and just listen,” she said. “I started to hear many screams of ‘Please don’t shoot me!’, ‘Please don’t kill me!’. I heard a lot of bullets in the air, a lot of explosions, a lot of Arabic curses.”

The terrorists then started to shoot at the bushes where she was. Aviv ran back to her car and drove 500m until she saw a military tank. The tank was filled with eight dead soldiers, but she and the people she was with took their weapons and used them to fire back at the terrorists.

“Some of the security guards from the party also came to the tank after a few minutes and helped us to fight. We succeeded in taking one of the weapons from one of the Hamas terrorists we killed. And for the last seven hours, we fought in the middle of a big field with nothing to protect us besides a tank and my car,” said Aviv.

Once it was safe to leave, she and her friend followed a police car going back to the centre of Israel, but the car was so fast, they lost it. “We were shocked by the road with all the burned and butchered bodies,” she said.

Aviv then went to Ofakim as her friend had family there. Once they entered the home, they were again surrounded by terrorists and explosions, so they stayed in the safe room until the next day when they were able to return home.

“I haven’t been able to go back to the Nova festival site,” said Aviv. “Just 15 minutes before the massacre, my friend took the last picture of me smiling. I don’t think I can ever get back to that person I was before.”