Somehow, we survived

The morning of October 7 began with deafening explosions. We understood immediately: this was war. Gunfire echoed and unfamiliar noises wrapped around the kibbutz. Messages started arriving: terrorists had infiltrated. Everyone was told to get into the reinforced security rooms. I looked at the door and realized it couldn’t be locked, only held shut by hand. A feeling of complete helplessness.

Messages from neighbors kept coming: “They’re breaking into our house,” “They’re shooting at us,” “We love you.” Each one felt like a farewell. And us? We just waited for our turn.

The door burst open. Karma, our dog, barked. Four gunshots. A shout in Arabic: “Enough.” Then silence, the most terrifying silence I have ever heard. They reached the door of the reinforced room. The handle began to turn. I held on. Pressed hard. They pushed, and I fought for my life, for Moran’s, for Benaya’s and Sinai’s. In my heart I screamed over and over: “Shema Yisrael.”

A burning tire was shoved into the ventilation opening. Smoke filled the room. The power went out. We were choking. We tried to raise our hands, to surrender, but the door wouldn’t open. We jumped out the window, fell into the bushes and hid under a small palm tree. They passed right by us, centimeters away, and we froze – exposed, powerless.

Five hours of hell. We saw them looting our lives, heard the horrors coming from nearby homes. Flames that started inside our house spread into the yard. Again we were choking. Again our eyes burned. Again that bitter taste in our mouths.

We slipped onto the path. Moran froze. I shouted at her to move, but she was in shock. I ran to her, pushed her forward. In that moment bullets whistled past. They were shooting at us from the rooftops. We kept running and reached a grove. I found a pile of cut branches, built a small mound and dug in under it. Another five hours.

Then suddenly, red lights. I froze, thinking it was Hamas. Ten minutes of unbearable tension – then a voice in Hebrew. I shouted: “Soldier, we’re an Israeli family with two children!” It was a team from Shayetet 13, the Israel Navy’s elite commando unit. They had blown open the fence and surrounded us. Moran was crying.

The body survived, the heart did not

We walked through the horrors: the burned houses, the neighbors who were no longer there, and finally the Nova music festival site. Children lying by the roadside. Some burned inside cars. The body survived. The heart less so.

And still there’s one thing I can’t understand. How did our children, three and a half years old, stay silent for 14 hours? They didn’t cry. They didn’t scream. Even when terrorists passed by. Even when they shot at us. I have no answer. That is the greatest miracle of that day.

The handle. The palm tree. The miracle. Not just symbols of a terrible day, but the story of my life. A day I relive again and again with every breath.

Since then I don’t stay silent. I write. I sing. I tell. To remember. To understand. To hold on to the handle, even when it’s no longer there.