They didn’t know where to go, only knowing they couldn’t stay where they were.
Roei Itzhaki and his older brother, Idan Itzhaki, were enjoying the Nova music festival in the early morning hours of Oct. 7 in Re’im, Israel, a kibbutz — a small Israeli settlement — located just outside the eastern Gaza border. The festival began at midnight and was scheduled to continue for the entire weekend, but the festivities were halted abruptly at 6:29 a.m.
That’s when the two brothers and 4,000 other attendees started to see and hear missiles from Gaza being sent to their location. It didn’t seem like anything unusual, Roei said, as Israelis are used to Hamas, the terrorist group in charge of Gaza, sending missiles all across the country.
“They were pretty chill because we’re used to missile attacks,” Roei said, translating for Amit Amar, who spoke in Hebrew.
The Itzhaki brothers and Amar were at Temple Beth Ami on Tuesday evening to tell their stories of escaping death to roughly 45 people, with more watching live via the temple’s Facebook and YouTube channels.
After the first barrage of missiles was fired, Hamas terrorists started to storm the festival area, prompting attendees to try to leave in a hurry — but with only one exit, Roei said, it was difficult to leave. Amar left the vehicle along with his friend, Yosef Chaim Ohana, and the two of them were being chased by a terrorist, Roei said.
Ohana and Amar then found a group of festival attendees, some requiring medical attention, so he helped put tourniquets on people.
“They tried to reach home and they put their address on Waze, but there was no signal all over the area,” Roei said on behalf of Amar. “We don’t know why there was no signal in the area, but they couldn’t find a way to escape home because it was an open field. They just didn’t know the direction to their home.”
Ohana was later kidnapped, Roei said, and remains in Gaza to this day, with Tuesday marking 186 days. For that reason, and for the other hostages and people killed in the Oct. 7 massacre, Amar and the Itzhaki brothers are telling their story in the hopes of getting the help that the Israeli people need against Hamas.
Rabbi Mark Blazer said as he gets ready for the upcoming Passover holiday, which begins April 22 and ends on April 30, he’ll be thinking of the hostages waiting to be liberated from Gaza as the Israelites were liberated from Egypt by Moses.
“This Passover is going to be a little harder,” Blazer said. “This is going to be hard because when we talk about the liberation of our people, it looks like right now, we’re going to be thinking about people who are held hostage.”
According to the Israeli government, more than 130 hostages remain six months later, though Israel officials are fearing that a quarter of those could already be dead. A weeklong cease-fire in November saw more than 100 hostages be released.
The three Israelis at Temple Beth Ami on Tuesday described in harrowing detail how their lives were nearly ended on multiple occasions. Roei said he called his mother whenever he felt that he could die at any moment.
One of those moments came after a couple hours of running — during which Roei and Idan were separated — before the two were able to get back to their vehicle near the festival area. But once they got inside, Roei said a terrorist appeared out of the bushes and sprayed the vehicle with bullets. None managed to strike anybody inside, but pictures show bullet holes just inches away from the fuel tank.
From there, the Itzhakis were on a mission to save a friend who was hiding in a separate area, with the only way to find him being a location sent via WhatsApp before their friend’s phone died.
When they got there, they found their friend hiding among more than 20 dead bodies.
“Finally, after this 15-minute drive — also, they shot at us again a lot of times in this drive — and then we managed to get to the location,” Roei said.
It was only then that the three of them were able to escape to a nearby kibbutz, only to learn that the music festival massacre was not an isolated event: Israel was now at war with Hamas.
Roei said they found shelter inside the home of an older woman who had no idea what had happened as she was keeping the Sabbath, meaning she was disconnected from the outside world for a full day.
It wasn’t until after 11 p.m. that night, nearly 17 hours after the attack at the music festival began, that the Itzhakis were saved by their older brother and taken back to their home in Jerusalem.
Roei said 11 friends of his died that night and another is still a hostage in Gaza — as far as he knows.
“We don’t know if he’s alive, if he’s sleeping, he’s eating,” Roei said. “We just don’t know what happened to him.”
So what message do the Israelis have?
Part of it was explaining that the massacre was indeed real. Another was hoping that some sort of help could be found in the United States, where the Itzhakis and Amar had already spoken to crowds in Nevada and Florida before making their way to California.
But Roei also wanted to deliver a message: to let Hamas know that their plan to separate the Jewish people would not and has not worked.
“The only thing they did is they only make us more united,” Roei said. “And even though what happened to me, I say that I’m proud to be Jewish, I’m proud to be Israeli and this is the message I want to bring.”
Roei described how telling his story is part of his healing process. One woman in the crowd thanked him and the other two Israelis for doing so, telling them that she hopes they can one day enjoy music and dancing once more.
“We will dance again. This has become my motto,” Roei said. “We will dance again for our brothers and sister that couldn’t anymore.”
To hear the entirety of the survivors’ stories, visit tinyurl.com/3pr9jmm8.
