Survivors of Oct. 7 Hamas attack shared emotional stories, perspectives on the war

Zohar Lahav-Shefer was at her home in Kibbutz Gevim near the Gaza border when the missile sirens started blaring the morning of Oct. 7.

She woke her family, rushed them into a bomb-proof safe room and immediately started texting family, friends and others in the communal settlement to check on them. Fears of missile attacks are a reality of life for people living in that area of Israel — hence the safe rooms in most homes.

But it quickly became clear that this was different.

She began receiving messages — people pulled from their homes, gunned down in their safe rooms. Lahav-Shefer's sister messaged her that an elderly woman they grew up with had been killed. So was an entire family known by her 18-year-old daughter.

"We went from funeral to funeral to funeral," Lahav-Shefer said, recalling the days after the attack.

Four-and-a-half months later, Lahav-Shefer was at the Jewish Community Center in Whitefish Bay trying to bring her experience home to more than 200 audience members. She spoke alongside three other Israelis, two of whom also live in kibbutzim near Gaza and one who was attending the Supernova Music Festival, which also was attacked.

The event at the Harry & Rose Samson Family JCC is part of a nationwide program called "Heroes of Light" funded by the Israeli government, the Jewish Community Center Association of North America and the World Zionist Organization. It was focused on sharing personal stories of survival and ensuring that victims are not forgotten, the JCC's Chief Innovation Officer Jonah Geller said at the start of the event.

Hamas militants stormed into Israeli border communities, killing 1,200 people, taking 250 hostages and catching Israel's military and intelligence apparatus completely off guard. Militants still hold 130 hostages, although about a quarter are presumed dead.

Sharon Anna Yacobi, an 11th grade homeroom teacher, lives in the same kibbutz as Lahav-Shefer. She told the JCC audience that on Oct. 7 she received a deluge of messages from her students as she checked in on them. Since then, she's continued to counsel her students through the trauma, and their struggles with eating or studying.

Another survivor and school teacher, David Bar from Kibbutz Alumim, told the JCC crowd of his sister-in-law, who went for a run that morning. After attempts to reach her were unsuccessful, her children posted a missing notice to Facebook.

Bar and his wife feared the worst. Four days later, she was found dead.

Lahav-Shefer is a mother of three children — one of whom is currently serving in the Israeli military. She has lived in Kibbutz Gevim for nine years but grew up on a different Kibbutz a half mile away from Gaza.

While still in her safe room, Lahav-Shefer kept asking, "Where is the IDF (Israel Defense Forces)?" When prompted by an audience member, she said she still feels "angry," "disappointed" and "heartbroken" by the military's belated response that day.

But despite living with safe rooms, sirens and now a conflict with no end in sight, "It's the only home I have," Lahav-Shefer said.

Event largely avoids Israeli response

What was rarely touched on Thursday was Israel's response in Gaza, which has been condemned by many countries around the globe.

Israel’s retaliatory air and ground offensive has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced more than 80% of the population of 2.3 million. (The number killed comes from the Gaza Health Ministry, which is part of the Gaza-run government, but its figures in the past have largely matched those of United Nations agencies.)

Large swaths of the territory have been reduced to rubble, and several hundred thousand Palestinians remain largely cut off from food, water, fuel and aid. Civilians are at peril for disease and famine, according to the World Health Organization.

The pain of Palestinians has also reached Milwaukee.

Numerous local families have lost relatives back in their homeland. Last October, a Franklin man whose relatives in Gaza told him they were "waiting for their turn" to be killed in an airstrike, found out days later that an airstrike in the Gaza city of Khan Younis had killed at least 32 members of his family.

Last month, South Africa went to the United Nations International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and asking for an immediate ceasefire. The court ultimately stopped short of a ceasefire order, but did order Israel to "take all measures" to prevent genocide of the Palestinians.

Further, the U.N. Security Council has held three votes on resolutions demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. The United States vetoed each one. The most recent was Feb. 20, when the U.S. pushed a separate effort to have any ceasefire linked to releasing the remaining hostages.

The U.S. and European Union have designated Hamas, which has run Gaza since 2007, a terrorist organization.

At the JCC, the mood in the room was largely supportive of that idea — continuing the war until the hostages are returned.

Survivor David Bar seemed to go further when he said, "Israel cannot go into the cease-fire" and added that if it did not "finish" Hamas, the militant group would just regrow and the country would "go through this again and again."

Much of Thursday's presentation, however, was wrapped around the idea that nothing happening today or in the future should change the importance of those initial experiences at the start of the war.

"We have a responsibility to hear their (the speakers') stories, so that we can share them again and again and again," said Moshe Katz introducing the four speakers. Katz formerly served as chair of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the JCC Board of Directors.

"Nobody has the right to deny them their story and their reality," he said.

Galit Mutzarfi shared her story of attending the Supernova Music Festival. When the Hamas attacks started, she and her boyfriend frantically searched for ways to escape the site, which had quickly erupted into a "nightmare," Mutzarfi said.

For a while, they hid from the militant group, watching body after body fall to the ground. But her boyfriend feared they weren't going to survive.

"He was saying goodbye, that he loved me, and he was sorry about everything. And I tell him no, don't say goodbye. We are going to be OK," Mutzarfi said. After several hours of running, the couple reached safety.

Attendees wait, hope, reflect

One attendee of the event, Ilene Elias-Queen, said she's concerned about rising antisemitism across the United States.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Jewish and Muslim advocacy groups across the country say they’ve seen large increases in reports of harassment, bias and sometimes physical assaults against members of their communities.

Elias-Queen listened to the speakers with her son, Ben Sand, who is a dual citizen of Israel and the United States. Sand served in the IDF between 2019 and 2021.

He said attending the "Heroes of Light" event was one way to show support for Israel from afar.

"Everyone is affected by it (the war), there's no two ways about it. I just have to wait and hope my government does the right thing," he said.

Sand wasn't the only attendee there with a parent. Katz's daughter Cydney said she came in part to support her father. Like so many families, she said conversations about the war have been nonstop.

Then she added some perspective that went beyond just one event in Milwaukee.

"People just need to stop screaming from the rooftops," she said, "and just start listening."

Contact Claudia Levens at clevens@gannett.com. Follow her on X at @levensc13.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Survivors of Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel share stories in Milwaukee