Survivors describe Oct. 7 attack horrors
Surge in antisemitism worries Wis. attendees
WHITEFISH BAY, Wis. – Zohar Lahav-Shefer was at her home in Kibbutz Gevim near the Gaza border when the missile sirens started blaring the morning of Oct. 7.
She woke her family, rushed them into a bomb-proof safe room and immediately started texting family, friends and others in the communal settlement to check on them. Fears of missile attacks are a reality of life for people living in that area of Israel – hence the safe rooms in most homes.
But it quickly became clear that this was different.
She began receiving messages – people pulled from their homes, gunned down in their safe rooms. Lahav-Shefer’s sister messaged her that an elderly woman they grew up with had been killed. So was an entire family known by her 18-year-old daughter.
“We went from funeral to funeral to funeral,” Lahav-Shefer said, recalling the days after the attack.
Lahav-Shefer was in Wisconsin 41⁄ months later describing her experience to more than 200 people at a Jewish community center. She spoke alongside three other Israelis, two of whom also live in kibbutzim near Gaza and one who was attending the Supernova Music Festival, which also was attacked.
The event is part of a nationwide program called “Heroes of Light,” funded by the Israeli government, the Jewish Community Center Association of North America and the World Zionist Organization. It was focused on sharing personal stories of survival and ensuring that victims are not forgotten, the JCC’s chief innovation officer, Jonah Geller, said at the start of the event.
In October, Hamas militants stormed into Israeli border communities, killing 1,200 people, taking 250 hostages and catching Israel’s military and intelligence apparatus completely off guard. Militants still hold 130 hostages, although about a quarter are presumed dead.
Sharon Anna Yacobi, an 11th grade homeroom teacher, lives in the same kibbutz as Lahav-Shefer. She told the Wisconsin audience that on Oct. 7 she received a deluge of messages from her students as she checked in on them. Since then, she’s continued to counsel her students through the trauma, and their struggles with eating or studying.
Another survivor, David Bar from Kibbutz Alumim, told the crowd of his sister-in-law, who went for a run that morning. After attempts to reach her were unsuccessful, her children posted a missing notice to Facebook.
Bar and his wife feared the worst. Four days later, she was found dead.
Lahav-Shefer is a mother of three children – one of whom is currently serving in the Israeli military. She has lived in Kibbutz Gevim for nine years but grew up on a different kibbutz a half mile away from Gaza.
While still in her safe room, LahavShefer kept asking, “Where is the IDF (Israel Defense Forces)?” When prompted by an audience member, she said she still feels “angry,” “disappointed” and “heartbroken” by the military’s belated response that day.
But despite living with safe rooms, sirens and now a conflict with no end in sight, “It’s the only home I have,” LahavShefer said.
The issue that was rarely mentioned at the Feb. 22 event was Israel’s response in Gaza, which has been condemned by many countries around the globe.
Israel’s retaliatory air and ground offensive has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced more than 80% of its 2.3 million people. Several hundred thousand Palestinians remain largely cut off from food, water, fuel and aid. Civilians are at peril from disease and famine, the World Health Organization says.
The pain of Palestinians has also reached Milwaukee and other U.S. cities. Numerous Wisconsin families have lost relatives back in their homeland. Last October, a man whose relatives in Gaza told him they were “waiting for their turn” to be killed in an airstrike, found out days later that an airstrike in the Gaza city of Khan Younis had killed at least 32 members of his family.
In January, South Africa went to the United Nations International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and asking for an immediate cease-fire. The court ultimately stopped short of a cease-fire order, but did order Israel to “take all measures” to prevent genocide of the Palestinians.
Further, the U.N. Security Council has held three votes on resolutions demanding a cease-fire in Gaza. The U.S. vetoed each one. The most recent was Feb. 20, when the U.S. pushed a separate effort to have any cease-fire linked to release of the remaining hostages.
The U.S. and European Union have designated Hamas, which has run Gaza since 2007, a terrorist organization.
At the Wisconsin event, the mood in the room was largely supportive of that idea – continuing the war until the hostages are returned.
Bar, a teacher seemed to go further when he said, “Israel cannot go into the cease-fire,” and added that if it did not “finish” Hamas, the militant group would just regrow and the country would “go through this again and again.”
One attendee of the Wisconsin event, Ilene Elias-Queen, said she’s concerned about rising antisemitism across the United States.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Jewish and Muslim advocacy groups across the country say they’ve seen large increases in reports of harassment, bias and sometimes physical assaults against members of their communities.
Ben Sand, a dual citizen of Israel and the United States who served in the IDF between 2019 and 2021, said attending the “Heroes of Light” event was one way to show support for Israel from afar.
“Everyone is affected by it (the war), there’s no two ways about it. I just have to wait and hope my government does the right thing,” he said.
Another survivor, Galit Mutzarfi, shared her story of attending the Supernova Music Festival with her boyfriend.
For a while, they hid from Hamas attackers, watching body after body fall to the ground. But her boyfriend feared they weren’t going to survive.
“He was saying goodbye, that he loved me, and he was sorry about everything. And I tell him no, don’t say goodbye. We are going to be OK,” Mutzarfi said.
After several hours of running, the couple reached safety.