Today is the two year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel. Today I spent some time going through tweets and videos about the attack. We covered this extensively at the time but I found there were still a lot of stories I didn’t know. I also read two first-hand accounts by people who lived through 10/7. They were taken hostage and spent months as captives in Gaza. What they experienced is worth reading and talking about today.
On the morning that Hamas gunmen overran Kfar Aza, a pastoral Israeli kibbutz near the border with Gaza, they burst into Emily Damari’s small apartment, shot and killed her dog, Choocha, and snatched her from her bedroom. She was bleeding from hand and leg wounds.
Then they took the keys to her car and drove her and two neighbors across the fields back into their Palestinian coastal enclave. For the next 471 days, Ms. Damari was held hostage, above and below ground…
In Gaza, Ms. Damari’s captors moved her about 30 times as Israeli bombs exploded above and around her, she said. She spent one night in a cramped tire storage area breathing in rubber fumes. And she spent months in the tunnels, sometimes crammed with other female hostages in what she described as a small “cage.”
She was eventually released in January of this year during a brief cease fire. She has since traveled to tell her story and to advocate for the release of the remaining hostages. She says she still feels guilty about being free while an estimated 20 Israelis are still captives like she was.
Her wish now is for her friends held in Gaza to come home, along with the rest of the other hostages. She is also thinking about her own plans. She intends to have children, she says, but she also wants to keep sharing her story — and the story of that October day in Israel — with as many people as she can.
“People have to understand what happened here,” she said. “I was one of 250, many of whom did not survive.”
The other hostage story is a first person account written by Eli Sharabi, who spent 491 days in captivity. Sharabi’s wife and two daughters were murdered on 10/7 but at the time he didn’t know that. He credits his desire to survive and see them again with helping him get through his ordeal. It was only when he was released that he learned they were gone.
On Oct. 7, 2023, terrorists broke into my home in Kibbutz Be’eri. My wife, Lianne, our daughters Noiya and Yahel and I hid in our safe room as the gunmen burned and murdered their way through the kibbutz. After they took me, I was seized, bound and dragged into Gaza. My first experience was not only with Hamas fighters but also with an ecstatic civilian mob — men, women, children — fighting to try to rip me limb from limb. The Hamas terrorists needed to push the mob back. I did not know my wife and daughters had already been murdered. The hope that they were alive carried me through 491 days of captivity, a hope that was only destroyed upon my release.
He spent the first several weeks as a captive in the basement of a home. His captors spoke English and even a little Hebrew. Sharabi speaks Arabic so he was able to talk to them easily, and also to eaves-drop on some of the conversations about the war.
I can speak Arabic and could understand perfectly well when the terrorists discussed their ideology. One man was adamant that all the land belonged to Palestinians and that the Jews should leave for Morocco or Yemen. Another was more political, repeating endless Hamas dogmas about how there is no such thing as the State of Israel. But it was obvious that for some of them, joining up with Hamas was about economics, not just ideology. Hamas had money, power and status, and some joined to try and get those things for themselves.
However, it became clear to me that the willingness to torture and murder comes from a deeper place. The murderers who broke into my house and slaughtered my wife and daughters were driven by blind hatred, which seemed to take precedence over all other motivations, including life itself.
Eventually he was moved into the tunnels where the conditions were horrible. Now that he has been released, he also wants to see the remaining hostages come home but he also believes Hamas needs to be defeated.
As the Trump administration attempts to finalize a comprehensive peace deal, I think of the Israelis still being held by Hamas and fervently hope that they will soon be freed. But it’s important for the world to know that lasting peace can only come if the murderous ideology that we witnessed in Hamas and all those associated with them is defeated. Real change will require the wholesale rejection of a culture that fetishizes death, and a reawakening of the desire to embrace and celebrate life.
Hamas must be destroyed to prevent this from ever happening again. That was true two years ago and it’s still true today. Hopefully, President Trump can pressure Hamas to disarm and release the hostages at once. Any future in which Hamas remains a fighting force is one in which it’s only a matter of time until the next 10/7 attack.
