Survivor of Oct. 7 Hamas attack shares story at Illini Chabad

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CHAMPAIGN — Rom El-Hai loves to dance so much, he showed his moves to guests at Illini Chabad on Monday, twirling lights like he would at a festival — just like he did at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7.

The 29-year-old personal trainer studying insurance in Israel said he goes to every music festival he can, all over the world.

Nova was nearly an exception because of its expensive tickets, but then El-Hai got the chance to go for free if he worked for a few hours.

"At 5:30 a.m., I'm in heaven," he said, showing videos of himself dancing in the crowd beneath colorful lights.

At 6:30 a.m., he looked to the sky to see rockets exploding.

El-Hai said that the sight of rockets is familiar to everyone in Israel, so he wasn't worried at first.

"My only concern was they would close the party," El-Hai said.

They did. Police asked everyone to leave as more and more rockets filled the sky.

Sunrise is El-Hai's favorite part of a festival: Everyone starts to be able to see each other while the best DJ of the day starts their set.

By sunrise, he and his friends were headed to the car.

"To see a dance floor empty at sunrise — it's a very hard picture for me," El-Hai said.

The empty festival was one of the many scenes he documented with his phone camera that day, continuing to take selfies and short videos as he and his friends had to run and hide.

Before they knew how serious the attack was, they went to a nearby lake; if they couldn't enjoy the festival, they'd just hang out and relax for the rest of the day, they thought.

Then a car went speeding by, crashing into three parked vehicles.

El-Hai wondered if the driver was drunk, but someone opened the door and he saw that she had been shot.

One of his friends went to help, but El-Hai convinced him to start driving.

"We are not doctors," he said.

They didn't make it very far.

As traffic piled up outside the festival, police told everyone to abandon their vehicles.

"A lot of people were drunk, a lot of people were high, a lot of people were having panic attacks," El-Hai. "You couldn't connect with anyone."

In the chaos, El-Hai and his friends ended up hiding between cars. It was around 10:30 a.m., and the attack by Hamas had made it to the news.

El-Hai took videos of distant smoke, but the sound of bullets was far closer.

His mom called.

"If I don't answer, they're going to think I'm dead," he remembers thinking.

El-Hai remembers answering casually — "Hey, mom, how's it going?" — but he kept the call short, trying to stay focused.

The next batch of photos are selfies: El-Hai and his friends crouched in some bushes, trying to hide better than they could in the parking lot.

When they left, smoke was rising from the cars they had just been hiding in.

Reality began to set in.

El-Hai is an ex-Israel Defense Forces member and knows the sound of different guns.

"IDF, we now use M-16. Hamas use Kalashnikov," he said. "We're only hearing Kalashnikov non-stop for an hour, so we realize, 'OK, we're alone here.'"

At one point, they called the police for help, explaining they had been at the festival.

The response: "Pray for your lives."

El-Hai and his friends were surrounded, so they just decided to travel east — away from Gaza — hoping to find help.

They found other survivors and even a police officer, but he only took the women in the group to safety.

It was hot in Israel. None of them had slept and none had food or water.

They broke into an abandoned car and found warm mango juice and a bottle of liquor they decided to keep for a toast if they survived.

They hid in the sparse forest when they could, but could hear when Hamas members got close.

"I heard people die, I mean getting shot and making a noise that they're dying," El-Hai said. "The last breath, like their soul is coming out of their bodies. After I heard that, I heard a lot of celebration. ... They were very, very happy."

In early afternoon, they found a greenhouse where they hid, eating peppers that weren't clean or fresh but were nontheless "the best" El-Hai had ever eaten.

When the heat became unbearable, they moved on.

They were approaching a big tree, confident they couldn't be seen by whoever was on the other side, when they heard yelling in Arabic.

"Wait!"

So they waited.

An Israeli police officer was checking IDs of three Arabic farmers in the area, confirming they really lived there.

He was finally able to pick up El-Hai's group, taking them to a nearby village.

El-Hai remembers the generosity of the people there, offering food and showers and welcoming the group into their homes.

People were willing to break the Sabbath, offering the use of their phones so the group members could let people know they were safe.

El-Hai finally arrived home safe late that night, getting calls from all over to see if he was alive.

One of his close friends and a father-daughter duo he'd met at many musical festivals died in the attack, but he's since connected with many of the other survivors he met that day.

The music and the dancing won't stop, El-Hai said. They'll never stop.

"I'm 100 percent going back to the dance floor and dancing again," he said. "Celebrating life and mostly celebrating for those people who died, because I know them. That's what they'd wish for us: to dance again, live our life, be the Jews.

"That's what they tried to ruin. But that's why I'm willing to do that more now, in order to be proud of who we are."

At the moment, El-Hai is traveling the U.S., sharing his experiences with the hopes of connecting the American Jewish community to the one in Israel.

Illini Chabad, on the University of Illinois campus was his third stop. Monday's event drew a crowd of over 100 in person, plus some online.

The room was too crowded for dancing, but the crowd sang and clapped at the end of the night, celebrating El-Hai and each other.