"Are You From Israel?"
Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the October 7th massacre. There are so many stories to tell, so much anger and sadness. What could I possibly write about for this horrible day?
There is one story that I can’t get out of my head. It’s about Romy, a six-year-old girl.
At 6:29 that fateful morning, the sirens blared, marking a date and time that will live in infamy. As they usually did during times of escalation, the young couple, Odaya and Dolev Swissa, decided to leave their home town of Sderot, the largest Israeli town less than a mile from Gaza.
Odaya and Dolev got into their car with their two daughters, three-year-old Lia and six-year-old Romy. Unbeknownst to the couple was the fact that the biggest danger lurking in their town was not the rockets but that the devil himself had entered their borders.
Indeed, dozens of Palestinian soldiers entered Sderot in Toyota pickup trucks and motorcycles. On their way, they murdered a group of 13 pensioners, some of whom were Holocaust survivors. Their main target was the local police station.
In a roundabout near the city. Two pickup trucks filled with Palestinian soldiers passed next to the couple’s car. As they noticed the devil's forces approaching them, the couple split up. Dolev took Romy out of the car and tried to run away with her while Odaya took Lia into hiding.
Dolev managed to cover only a few meters with Romy in his arms until he quickly got shot point-blank by the Palestinians. Romy watched all of that happen right in front of her. Miraculously, the Palestinians decided they had bigger fish to fry and decided to continue with their murder spree elsewhere. Romy was left unharmed.
Romy stood there on the pavement, right next to her dying father. Then, incredibly, Romy returned on her own to her mother, who picked her up alongside her sister and returned to the car. Not a minute passed by, and Shmuel Golima, a police officer, showed up and asked Odaya to follow him to the police station, where he thought it would be safe for them. A civilian who passed by quickly came up to help evacuate Dolev, who was still lying on the pavement, fighting for his life.
Amer Abu Sabila, a 25-year-old Bedouin construction worker who also happened to pass by, stopped and rushed to Odaya’s assistance. He took the driver's seat and listened to Officer Golima’s instructions to follow him to the station. And so they did.
This entire scene took around three minutes and was captured on CCTV footage.
Unfortunately, this was where the main battle had taken place. There, both Abu Sabila and Odaya were murdered by the Palestinians.
Seven minutes after that, at 7:03, the convoy encountered an ambush by the Palestinians, who cold-bloodedly shot dead both Odaya, Abu Sabila and Golima. The two girls sat in the back, covered in blankets. They were left unharmed.
Around thirty minutes later, as the battle went on around the Sderot police station between Israeli civilians and police offers against the heavily armed Palestinians, the girls screamed for help.
The rescue officer’s body camera captured the rescue scene. I’ve added English captions. You must watch this:
It’s impossible not to cry. “Are you from Israel?” Said Romy to her rescuer. “I am here with a baby”, said the six-year-old sister, who had just witnessed her mother and father shot. Words are not enough to capture the astonishment I have from this incredible girl.
“Are you from Israel?” I cannot stop thinking about this sentence. Are you with the forces of good? Are you here to save me, or are you here to kill me as you have just done to my mom? I need not expand anything beyond that; we’ve seen exactly what happened when the person was “from Palestine.”
The purpose of showing this clip is not to show how dark October 7th was but how heroic these Israelis were. There were so many heroes from that day; from that single incident alone, we had Dolev, who protected his daughter with his own body, his wife did the same, and the civilian who rushed to evacuate him. Officer Golima, who tried to bring them to safety, and Abu Sabila, the Bedouin worker who immediately jumped to help. The brave fighters who rescued Romy and Lia and fought back against the barbarians. There were so many.
October 7th showed the entire world how savage these Palestinians were. But it also showed how incredibly brave, courageous and heroic the Israelis were. So much humane beauty was shown in that darkest of times.
We must remember the fallen heroes of October 7th, and we must fight until total victory so that when Romy will never have to say, “Are you from Israel?” ever again.
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Heartbreaking