She was in Tel Aviv, her kids in Sderot. A mother's account of October 7
On the ground in Sderot: Surviving the Simchat Torah terror and everything that came after
For almost a week, I couldn’t write anything. Because our story is lucky, and there are thousands of terrible and unfathomable ones... and our hearts are breaking. But I’ve received so many messages from friends wanting to know what happened and what is still happening here. So here is our story.
At noon on Friday, October 6, Avi, my ex-husband, came to Tel Aviv to pick up our kids and take them to Sderot for the holiday weekend. We had just moved back to Israel after eight years of living in California. The kids were looking forward to their aunt’s amazing dinner and Savta’s delicious hamin [cholent] on Shabbat morning.
I was tired after a week of traveling with the kids during Sukkot, so I was glad for the peace, quiet, and time alone. I walked around Tel Aviv looking for something to do. On the eve of Simchat Torah, most of the cafés and restaurants had closed quite early, and by 5 p.m. the streets were empty. It was almost eerie. I noted the date and thought about how the most energetic and vibrant “city that never stops” can suddenly feel deserted. It looked like the movies from the morning of Yom Kippur, exactly 50 years ago, right before the war started.
Later, when I opened the door for a friend, we heard enthusiastic and joyous singing coming from the synagogue down in the square where people were dancing with the Torah.
Saturday morning at 7:30, I was awakened by a distant rolling sound getting louder. My windows were closed. At first I thought it was the people at the synagogue – they’ve woken up and now they are singing with the Torah again. Then I heard explosions. Nope, that was definitely a rocket-warning siren. Not again, I thought. I was worried that one of these little mini-wars with rockets was going to upset the kids. It had been so hard to move them [to Israel]... there was a lot of resistance. We were finally getting settled.
I immediately called Avi. He told me that the rockets had started an hour ago. The kids were still asleep in the mamad – an internal bomb shelter that had been turned into their bedroom at his house. Every new building in Israel is required to have one. It is a room with steel reinforced double thick concrete, and a steel window.
I was telling myself that it’s going to be okay. We are used to the rockets from when we lived here before. Avi has dealt with this for two decades. And I know it well from my experiences documenting life in Sderot and making a film there. We know the drill. We know how to keep ourselves safe. We try for the kids not to get too scared. We have the Iron Dome that intercepts rockets and a bomb shelter. And the terrorists – there have been other times when they’ve gotten in through a tunnel to a border kibbutz... all those stories.
“But this time it is different,” he said. “There are terrorists in Sderot driving through town in jeeps and shooting people.”
I suggested that they head back to Tel Aviv as soon as possible.
“The army is saying lock yourself in your house and don’t leave. We can’t go out. The terrorists are all over... they are looking for them,” he said.
The kids woke up. They didn’t have any prepared food there... they were planning to go eat hamin. They have some bread and some eggs. An argument ensued about turning on the gas stove to make the eggs – Shabbat. I was saying it’s an emergency situation... please turn on the gas. Ari (age seven) came up with a compromise – they can cook eggs in the panini press.
It’s electric but maybe not as bad as turning on a fire. So they ate triangle-shaped eggs. At this point – for us – it was still about the little things. We hadn’t yet heard the truly horrendous stories.
Avi called a little while later. “I can hear gunfire in the streets, and it is near us.”
Looking out his window, he could see soldiers in his parking lot with guns drawn, looking for terrorists. The photo he sent me looks like a shot from an action movie about a guerrilla war.
There was nothing I could do. I just kept telling myself they were safe and watching movies on their iPad in the bomb shelter. But what is safe, anyway? Safe for now.
I talked to them around every hour. “Lily, can you see soldiers outside? Does it make you feel safer?” “I’m not afraid, Mom. I’m okay.” I was worried about her mental state and was surprised at how good she sounded. They were having a Harry Potter marathon.
Avi’s voice began to sound more worried. Friends were posting a constant stream of information on Facebook. “Send forces to Abu Hatzera Street. I can hear shooting here.” “There are dead bodies on the road at the entrance to Sderot.”
Avi heard a knock at the door but was afraid to open it. He looked through the door hole and saw a soldier. He thought, but what if it was a terrorist dressed as a soldier? The accent seemed Israeli. Avi cracked the door with the deadbolt still locked. “Do you know Martin the policeman?” the soldier asked. Avi said no. “We are looking for him.”
It turned out Martin the policeman was already dead.
More info kept coming on Facebook. Names of people who were dead. Avi’s friends from school. The guy who he sees every day on his morning walk. People were writing, speculating about the numbers of terrorists. The numbers kept going up. Stories about terrorists going house to house in the nearby kibbutzim, breaking open bomb shelter doors and killing people.
Eighteen communities had been invaded.
Then photos started pouring in. Streets of Sderot strewn with bodies. Terrorists roving the streets in trucks with machine guns, killing everyone in their path. They took over the police station and killed everyone. I once knew all the police officers. American groups from Birthright would meet me at that police station, and I would show them the “rocket museum” – a collection of every kind of rocket that had fallen in the city since 2001.
A time to be together
IT WAS 4 p.m. My friend Iris invited me over so I wouldn’t be alone. She asked if I heard about the nature party. “The music festival – a rave in the desert at Kibbutz Re’im. The kids all went to this party, danced all night, and in the morning the terrorists came to the party.” They started shooting and taking hostages. There were stories of horrible atrocities. I was worried that Lily would see this.... I was thinking about how I could keep this info from her.
At 5 p.m. Avi called to say his Internet and TV were down. Now the kids were bored and didn’t have anything to do. His Internet was not working on his cellphone, either. Maybe the army closed down the data access? I was thinking. Avi was asking for us to look online and give him news updates. The stories I was seeing were so bad, I was thinking that maybe it was good they couldn’t see them.
At 5:30 p.m. Ari called, demanding that I come and pick him up. I told him that I’m so sorry but I don’t have a car, and if I did, it’s not safe to drive and the roads are closed and they won’t let me come.
“A helicopter!” he demanded. “Bring a helicopter and come to pick me up!”
Wow, my son thinks I am a superhero. For a few minutes I let myself live in a little movie – I am a James Bond mom flying a helicopter who swoops in and rescues him from his bomb shelter in Sderot.
I asked Avi again if they can leave. No way. Still gunfire outside.
Somehow the hours pass, and the information we were getting was worse and worse. I didn’t know how they were passing the time. There was a point where I actually didn’t want to call; I didn’t know what to ask or what to say to them.
I was alone in my apartment. I was telling myself I was calm. I was speaking on the phone all the time. My friend Enid in Jerusalem. My sister. I spoke to them every hour. Other friends were calling from the US. I was trying to update them without alarming them.
It got dark, and then the sirens started in Tel Aviv again. My neighbor called me to make sure I came into the shelter. She told me to stay inside my house – there could be terrorists in Tel Aviv, they were saying. I didn’t believe it.I went out anyway, thinking things could get worse – maybe I should go to the little mini-market down the street to pick up some things. It was closed, and the streets were deserted. A little white dog was running fast down the street and was in a panic. I tried to chase him down to return him to his owners, but he ran under a parked car and escaped. I heard explosions, and I went back inside.
IN SDEROT, a few blocks away from Avi’s apartment, at his parents’ house, there was a knock at the door.... His mother didn’t open it. She called Avi’s sister, who called the army. The terrorists ran off as the soldiers were approaching.
At 10:45 p.m. Avi finally got the kids to sleep. But he couldn’t sleep. “I have to protect these kids. I wish I had a gun....”
The stories of terrorists breaking into bomb shelters were so bad. We didn’t know what to do. We talked again about how to leave, and it seemed too risky. I told him I could not help him make this decision. “I am not there. I don’t know.”Avi went to sleep holding a knife from the kitchen.
I slept a few hours.
It was 7:30 a.m. “What is happening?” Avi said the kids were still asleep. “Can you leave?” “No. This thing is still happening. It’s still alive.”
I walked outside. I’ve never seen this version of Tel Aviv. Nobody in sight. One person walking a dog. A zombie apocalypse. There was one place open for coffee – Anita Gelato in Neveh Tzedek.
“We decided maybe we need to open to try and boost morale,” the guy behind the counter told me.
I ran into three friends there. I went to my friend Diane’s, and she kept me occupied.
I decided to clean and organize the house. I was thinking that they were going to get out of there today. They had to get out of there today. Somehow time kept going.
Avi called around noon. “There were rockets, and our power is out.” They needed to leave soon or they would lose communication. “It’s still not safe; it’s not safe. We can’t leave. I just heard guns a few minutes ago.”
I didn’t know what to do.
It was 1 p.m. Avi: “Okay, we are going to leave. Neighbors are leaving. But we don’t have gas in the car, and all the gas stations are closed. We can’t go. And what are we going to do if there are rockets?”
Another call after two minutes. Ari didn’t want to leave, and had a tantrum. Lily bribed him with M&Ms. Lily again: “We are trying to figure out which gas stations are open.” They are troubleshooting. She’s only 13, but she was acting calm, cool, and collected.
At 1:15 p.m. I called them again. “Where are you?”“We are out – we went east, toward Kiryat Gat.” (We usually drive out to the east of town when rockets are coming from the west, from Gaza.)
They got out of there – Avi, his sister, and the kids. They went to three gas stations until one was open.And then they were home. The kids ran in and hugged me.
I looked at Avi and burst into tears, and we hugged each other. His eyes were red. He said, “I walk past him every morning. He is a jogger. I can still see his face.” And my sister-in-law told me that there were 30 people dead in Sderot, and she knew them all.
And then I exhaled. And I realized I had been holding my breath.
Family members and friends started calling, asking if we could leave the country and stay with them. Lily said she didn’t want to leave. Ari said he was scared but he was also not leaving. Lily said, “I can’t leave when people are in bomb shelters, fighting for their lives.” She was born here, but she became Israeli after 32 hours in a bomb shelter.
The darkest day
PEOPLE ARE saying this is worse than anything that has ever happened here. Worse than 1973. Because this time civilians are the target. The number of dead is so high. Because we are such a small country, statistically this is like 23,000 people in the US being killed. In a couple of days.
There is an overload on social media and news and terrible videos. Information feels like a machine gun. All the missing. Kids and babies murdered. Entire families captured and taken hostage. A Holocaust survivor. Stories of rape, mutilation. Bodies being desecrated. Audio from cellphones of people begging for their lives in sheer terror while they were being killed. The terrorists used phones of kidnapped kids at the rave, filmed them being murdered, and sent the videos to their parents from the kids’ phones.
I can’t keep anything from Lily. She knows everything now. I was delusional about that.
I spent a day collecting stories from families of missing and kidnapped kids. What to do with all of this information? I want to take a camera and film them.
My Facebook feed is full of hundreds of beautiful faces of young people – and the announcements of their funerals. I reposted them. Everyone should see their faces and remember them.
Here in Tel Aviv, and everywhere else in the country, we are in shock and mourning. Wandering around in a daze. Looking into neighbors’ eyes and nodding silently.
Most people are staying near bomb shelters and afraid to venture out. I see helicopters, hear airplanes and sonic booms. Continuing sounds of explosions. One minute ago the building shook. What was that? We never know exactly, though sometimes we try to guess.
School was canceled all week. For some, it started on Zoom on Sunday. We cannot make plans more than a few hours in advance.
Markets are open for food, and bakeries started opening for limited hours. So now, at least, we can buy bread. I heard some gyms are holding a few exercise classes – but with no music.
I wandered around Tel Aviv, taking photos of places that used to be teeming with life, music and crowded with hundreds of people partying – they were now completely empty.
And then on Thursday afternoon I was driving through my neighborhood and got stuck behind a car. There was party music blasting from what looked like a clown van... completely painted in bright pastel drawings. It had stopped at Suzana, one of my favorite neighborhood cafés. There were balloons. At first I thought – this is really sick; someone is out of their mind. And then I see that Suzana has been taken over by rows of computers and tables with supplies and people were unloading dozens of big boxes from the clown van. In a frenzy of chaotic activity I recognized two friends who were organizing it all, who explained that they were boxing up care packages for soldiers.
Tel Aviv’s amazing restaurants were now mostly closed to the public, but their kitchen staff were all cooking meals for soldiers. Nobody was going to work, but businesses were organizing volunteer activities for the cause. My kids’ school is holding a drive for basic supplies for people from the border kibbutzim who have been displaced from their homes. They are asking our kids to write letters and make art to send to survivors.
There are more and more and more announcements of these efforts every day. The massive solidarity movement has begun. The show of support and unity from every side of Israeli society is absolutely overwhelming. I had seen this on a smaller scale when I lived in Sderot 15 years ago. And now here it is again – all over the country and bigger than ever.
Just when things seemed like they couldn’t get any worse – and they still probably will – we have this one thing, this indescribable Israeli thing that doesn’t have its own word, although it needs one. It is a feeling that we are all responsible for one another, that we all really care about each other. And when people who are not from Israel ask for the reason I moved back here, I cannot really explain it to them, but this is it.
The writer is an American-Israeli filmmaker of ‘Rock in the Red Zone’, ‘Refusenik’, and most recently, ‘Vishniac’.
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