The attacks from Hamas have had a broad and profound effect on Israel and the world. Many say it’s the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. In a special episode, The Daily Wire’s “Morning Wire” spoke directly to individuals who lived through some of the most brutal atrocities.
On October 7, Iran-backed Hamas launched a devastating terrorist attack on Israel, killing more than 1,300 people and injuring roughly 3,200 more, targeting Israeli families, including infants. Israel declared war against Hamas last Sunday and has been responding militarily since. Daily Wire contributor Natalie Mann traveled the country to gather some first-hand accounts.
“I’m not believing what I see, it’s not real,” Avi, an ambulance driver who was one of the first responders to the Tribe of Nova music festival, where 260 people were murdered, told The Daily Wire. “We come here with the ambulance, we come to the party, and I see just every, everything is bodies, everything. A lot of blood, a lot of shooting,” he said.
In all, Avi said he collected 100 bodies in the span of four hours, saying that everywhere he went, there were more bodies. After his encounters, Avi said he holds no sympathy for Hamas and views them as Nazis.
“Morning Wire” also spoke to 67-year-old Doron Admoni, who is from one of the hardest-hit areas of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, just a kilometer and a half from the barrier with Gaza. Admoni’s wife, Michal, 66, and his 25-year-old son, Guy, were killed by Hamas in the attacks. At the time, Admoni was in the United States visiting his other son.
He said the last message he received from his wife was her expressing her worries over the family dog running away. Shortly after, he received a message from a friend in the kibbutz explaining the situation. After 15 minutes, Admoni says he could feel that his wife and son were “not with us anymore.”
“No chance for them,” Admoni said. “And, now we know exactly that Guy and Michal [were] killed at home. They found them. And I know that Guy supported his mom. And he never leave her. And they kill them when they are together.”
“And now we have to see how we continue the life, our life. That’s all I must do. I must be strong and, rebuild the family from the beginning now,” he said.
Another Israeli that “Morning Wire” spoke to is Elinor, who was from the same kibbutz as Admoni. Hamas terrorists invaded Elinor’s home, but she, her husband, and her children were able to flee into a safe room. Elinor said a siren went off around 6:30 a.m. last Saturday, prompting her and her family to enter the room.
“I think it took at least 7 minutes when the siren kept going on and on and on and on and on. And my husband looked at me and he whispered and says, ‘Something’s different.’ He says, ‘I smell something else,’” Elinor recounted.
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“Suddenly we heard this huge bomb and we were sure the terrorists [were] in our house,” she said. “We heard them walking around the house for sure. We heard them on the roof. And every once in a while, they just shot. I don’t know if they shot someone or just to terrify us. They kept us in stress for so many hours and they terrified us in every single way they could have done it.”
Asked what message she would want the world to hear from her experience over the past week, Elinor said, “They butchered us, family after family. House after house. … I just want to be again Eleanor, that’s it. Not Eleanor from Kfar Aza, where I’m saying where I am from and everybody’s looking at me and mourn for me.”
“Morning Wire” also spoke to Mark Joffe, whose adult son manages their thrift store WhatsApp group from his home in Tel Aviv. The text group has hundreds of members and became a primary source of communication and information during the 23 hours they were held up in their safe rooms.
“People joined it from all over. It had about 450 members in it very quickly. And it became the main way of people reporting what was going on where. It was a very unofficial and a very disturbing sort of line of, ‘They are here, they are coming in. They’re on my roof. Shots are being fired outside my house. Come and help.’ This sort of thing,” Joffe said.
While Joffe and his family survived, he said it was a game of Russian roulette as to who survived and who didn’t.
You can hear the full accounts of Avi, Admoni, Elinor, and Joffe by listening to the full episode here.