'When they came here, they started to sleep and smile': Cyprus provides escape for Oct 7 survivors
Visions of Oct 7 continue to haunt Rom Tzaba, a 21-year-old survivor of the Nova festival massacre.
Figures with no eyes, no heads – something between reality and a drug-induced vision of hell. When the nightmares stop, a daytime torpor sets in.
“I only eat one meal a day,” he said. “Just lunch.”
Since the day that Hamas fighters stormed the rave he and his friends were attending in the Negev desert in Israel and killed 1,200 people, he has lost 6kg.
He plucks at his hoodie to emphasise its new bagginess. “I’m not hungry like I was before,” he said.
Rom is talking to The Telegraph from a retreat in the forests near Paphos, Cyprus, where he and his friend Omer Segev, who was also at the rave on Oct 7, are hoping to forget, however briefly, the horrors of that day.
A 40-minute flight away, Cyprus has enjoyed closer relations with Israel in recent years – a development that is now paying off as Israel becomes increasingly isolated in the Middle East. It’s also home to a growing community of Israeli expats and investors.
Since Oct 22, the Secret Forest resort, which is owned by the Israeli businessman Yoni Kahana, has welcomed hundreds of survivors of the Hamas attacks as part of a four-day rehabilitation programme.
On offer are a range of activities led by experts to help deal with trauma, including painting, meditation and yoga.
‘Then we heard the bullets...’
On the day that The Telegraph visited, the new intake of 50 people was being ushered into the spacious stone compound for a kosher breakfast of eggs, bread, nuts, fruit and cheeses.
Among the more conservatively dressed paying guests, they were easy to spot. Many looked as if they had woken up late for a lecture, swaddled in oversized scarves and jumpers, betraying their youth and commitment to rave culture.
Omer, also 21, said that October’s party had been a momentous occasion for lovers of dance music, attracting famous DJs from Israel and abroad, and billed as one of the biggest parties that the country had seen.
The pair had been at the party for hours when Hamas fired the first rockets into Israel from Gaza at 6.30am.
At first, they decided to wait it out, thinking it would be over soon.
“Then we heard the bullets of Hamas,” said Omer. “It was the sound of automatics and we all split.”
Both hid separately among the trees and wherever else they could find.
Rom used the scarf he was wearing at the resort to tie makeshift tourniquets for two men who had been shot by Hamas, saying that they later thanked him for saving their lives.
It wasn’t until the evening that they were both rescued: Rom by a civilian in a car and Omer by the army.
However, their two best friends didn’t make it. One was shot in the face, the other in the stomach.
Others in the group at the resort tell similar stories.
Gal Ofir, 27, and his friends hid in a farm warehouse for 11 hours before they were found by civilians.
On the way to the warehouse, he said it was a miracle that only three bullets hit the car they were in when 17 Hamas fighters fired at them from the road.
“There were cars filled with dead people,” said Gal. “One thing I will never forget – never ever forget – is a person with no face; just gunshot wounds,” he said, adding that he has been forced to take a break from work because of the trauma.
While the Israeli government and charities have organised mental health and trauma services for survivors of Oct 7, many at the resort say that being out of Israel is restorative in itself.
Maor Arielli, the scheme’s lead psychotherapist, said that more than 400 survivors have been admitted since the free programme started, with a plan to accommodate about 1,000 in total.
He said that it was planned with a team of therapists and mental health experts in Israel and received money from IsraAID, an Israeli NGO.
Initially, the idea was to offer the survivors of the massacre a place to relax, but it was soon clear that it was helping to alleviate their mental suffering.
“We wanted them to be in a safe place and to rest. But then when they came here … they started to sleep and eat and smile. We feel it’s saved a lot of them from getting any post-trauma,” said Mr Arielli.
Cyprus emerges as ‘Israel’s back door’
Similar efforts to help Israeli citizens have been underway elsewhere on the island.
In the city of Larnaca, 80 miles to the east, the Jewish community centre has accommodated some 20,000 Israeli evacuees and families of those killed by Hamas, providing them with food and shelter.
Foreign reservists have also used Cyprus as a transit point to join the Israeli army. While at the RAF base in Akrotiri, The Telegraph counted dozens of American military helicopters that were thought to be supporting Israel’s war effort arriving and departing in the space of a few hours.
Cyprus has emerged as “Israel’s back door”, Zeev Raskin, the island’s chief rabbi, told The Telegraph.
It marks a shift from a more pro-Palestine stance to pro-Israel in recent years, aided by closer cooperation on energy issues and a surge in Israeli investment.
“People come to relax and recover. So we are running a few programmes now,” said Rabbi Raskin, who is the first rabbi to serve on the island in many years.
“They have been very helpful – when you move away from the news and don’t have the sounds of [air raid] sirens,” he said, adding that there are about 3,000 Israeli families in Cyprus, compared with about 1,000 a decade ago.
At the resort, Mr Arielli said that the forest offers an escape from the recurring memories of Oct 7 where amid the orange groves and pine trees, talk of war and politics melt away.
Yet as time goes on, he has been seeing post-traumatic stress syndrome set in among groups of participants. Some, he said, had also resorted to drugs and alcohol in an attempt to dull their pain.
“In the beginning the change in people was like: ‘Wow.’ But now people already have post-trauma.”
This has led to some tweaks to how the course is run, with more self-expression activities, and follow-ups with experts when the participants return home. The results are encouraging, said Mr Arielli.
As night fell, the guests introduced themselves in the resort’s circular courtyard and lit the fourth candle of Hanukkah in a large menorah.
A big Shabbat dinner of poached salmon and salads followed, before groups peeled off, with some repairing to a lounge room where an open fire blazed and songs were sung accompanied by guitar.
By the swimming pool, Rom and Omer had an air of contentment that a good meal brings.
With their cigarettes rapidly shrinking in the chilly mountain air, they looked relaxed, the tension etched into their faces when they arrived now softened by smiles.
“We’re good,” said Omer, when asked how he was. “The night is still young.”
