06/10/2024
The following is a translation of the witness account that Michal Rahav , a friend from my kibbutz, gave last night at a vigil for the hostages. It is the story of how she, her husband and their three children survived the October 7th massacres.
October 7, 2023 is a seemingly random date, without historical importance, just another Saturday, Simchat Torah, the last day of the bathing season in the pool in Nirim.
6:30 In the morning, we wake up to the sounds of shelling and non-stop alerts on our mobile phone. We run to the saferoom, which is our daughter Yuval's room, while picking up Itamar and Noam. The children look at us questioningly, what's going on? What's happened? What is the reason for the warning? I can't understand what the cause is, but I understand very quickly that we are in a completely different event than what the residents of the Western Negev have ever been before.
Lee takes the M16 out of the safe in the saferoom. He had brought it home from his police unit only a day earlier, together with another flack jacket (the third in number) to be ready. His intuition did not let him rest and he felt that he needed to be ready… for what? He did not yet know.
He goes out to our bedroom and puts on his uniform, expecting an emergency call up to arrive in a few minutes, when he's finished he calls everyone he knows from the reserves and the kibbutz to understand what's going on, and there's no answer.
At 7:00 my brother sends me a message that the news says that we have terrorists, I open the WhatsApp group of "Parents in Nirim" and see a compilation of messy messages "We hear Arabic, we hear gunshots..."
At this very hour, Col. Assaf Hammi, Sgt. Tomer Achimas, and Sgt. Kirill Burdsky of blessed memories, are fighting bravely against a swarm of terrorists not far from our house, and we are not aware at all, we might have been credulous, or simply in denial that such horrendous events could be taking place just a few hundred meters from us. In retrospect, we realize that we, the people of Kibbutz Nirim, owe these heroes a great debt because if they had not come, our situation would have been much worse.
Lee doesn't take any chances, enters the saferoom, dresses the children in helmets and gives me his personal weapon, He gives me a crash course in shooting and leaves the saferoom.
Time passes, the messages repeat themselves, shouting, shooting.
At 8:15 I leave the saferoom towards my bedroom, while I am standing in front of our wardrobe Lee and I hear an AK-47 shots coming from the parking lot at the end of the path. Looking out the window we see the movements of soldiers. That makes perfect sense. In the same parking lot there is a shelter to which soldiers immediately arrive whenever rounds of escalation begin.
The shooting continues, we look again and this time we recognize 4-5 figures, terrorists, donning green ribbons around their foreheads, dressed in uniforms making their way down the path. At that very second, from the very back of the house, you hear shouts in Arabic from 2-3 more terrorists.
I run back to the saferoom and close the door, telling my daughters to stand behind me and that no matter what enters this door, they must fight, and not give up. I stand in front of the door aiming the weapon, ready, at the same time Lee is outside the saferoom, ready and waiting. He is standing in the foyer, we both have the same thought: "There is now way they will get past me; no way they can be allowed to reach the children."
In the saferoom, the children and I hear a shot just beyond the door. Lee is in the fight. Suddenly the door opens and Lee walks in and says that he just hit a terrorist who was trying to enter the house. Then, what is called in the professional jargon: a "pressure cooker" begins on the house. Incessant shooting from the terrorists' Kalashnikov rifles, from every direction: on the iron window of the saferoom, on the door, we hear the bullets exploding, they hit our electricity supply and we are in complete darkness.
Lee is standing pointing the weapon at the door, I join him, in the same position. The children are lying on the floor, hugging each other.
For a few seconds there is silence and then they start tossing grenades that explode inside the house, the room is filled with a strong smell of gunpowder, ringing in my ears and we turn to face each other and say to each other: they will not get past us, we will fight to the last bullet.
The cowardly terrorists decided to move on. Unaware of their decision, we waited for them to enter the door until after 3:00 pm when the IDF arrived at the door of our house and called to us to come out.
I leave the saferoom trying to gauge the totality of the destruction of the house, but there is no time, the soldiers urge us to evacuate to a centralized point in the middle of the kibbutz, so they could encircle and protect us.
In the living room among the broken glass I see the menorah and a Kiddush cup that I received as a gift from my late grandmother, I take them, later I also take two charcoal drawings by my late father-in-law.
Our house has been destroyed. Our possessions, our experiences, our memories, the happy holidays, the laughter and the tears: everything has been desecrated.
We, the residents of the Western Negev, have over time developed a sixth sense in which we know how to recognize the movements of the IDF and the movements of the enemy. That morning, we were able to differentiate between the types of shooting, during the many long hours we hid in the saferoom, with the exception of the shooting of the late Col. Hammi and his little team of heroes., we did not hear anything beyond the the gunfire and screams of those bloodthirsty terrorists who came to destroy us.
For hours I lied to my children, telling them that the IDF would be coming soon, that's how it ends....
The tragic results of that black day in Nirim - 5 deaths
Doron and Mor Meir, Roi Popplewell, Oran Alfassi and Gideon Babanai, may their memories be for a blessing.
5 hostages: Chana Perry, Rimon Kirsht, Noralin Babani who were returned during the hostage-prisoner exchange in November, Yagav Buchstab and Nadav Poplewell who were both murdered in Hamas captivity and their bodies were returned by the IDF soldiers in August, for burial in Nirim.
Tens of burned, destroyed homes.
As a community we were left wounded in our bodies and souls, our lives will never be the same.
In two days we will commemorate the anniversary of the blackest day in the history of the State of Israel, unimaginable lawlessness, escape from responsibility, a nation suffocated, evacuated, displaced, a very heavy and dark cloud hanging over us all. Along with the many successes of the army, 101 of our brothers and sisters, of our family, are still in the captivity of Hamas, a number and a situation that cannot be understood at all.
I call from here, to the government of Israel - not in the name of politics, not in the name of the political parties, not in the name of our democracy, not in the name of the region, not in the name of anything but basic humanity to do everything but everything to return them home, the dead for burial and the living for rehabilitation.
No house in the State of Israel from the north, south, east or west will be complete and begin to heal without the return of all the abductees now!
I wish a speedy and complete recovery to all the wounded, and a blessing of success to the IDF soldiers and women and their safe return home.
