‘Like an apocalypse’: A year after Oct. 7, Israeli survivor faces grief – National
WARNING: This story contains graphic depictions of violence that may disturb some readers. Understanding is advised.
A year after Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel, one survivor says it’s hard to find an answer to how to deal with the trauma of that day.
“The short version is I’m fine,” Galia Sopher told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired on Sunday. West Block. “I’m alive, I’m healthy, I have a beautiful, lovely family.
“So it is easy to say that we are beautiful. But on the other hand, it is not. I’m not.”
About 1,200 people were killed in the attack, which sparked Israel’s war in Gaza that has killed more than 41,000 people in the Palestinian territory, according to figures from Hamas-run health officials who do not distinguish between civilians and civilians.
The violence has escalated into a major conflict in the Middle East between some Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon.
About 100 of the 250 hostages captured by Hamas on October 7 are still believed to be held inside Gaza, and negotiations for a ceasefire to free them have stalled for several weeks.
Sopher was camping with his two young daughters and other families outside his kibbutz, Mefalsim, just three kilometers from the Israel-Gaza border, when Hamas launched its early morning attack. Her husband was at home.
He soon realized that what had at first sounded like thunder before the storm was the sound of thousands of rockets exploding in Israel.
“It just kept going and going,” Sopher said.
His instincts from years of living near the Gaza Strip, which has long seen conflict between Israel and Hamas, told him to shield his daughters with his body inside their tent as the explosions continued.
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“I grabbed my phone and called my husband, I said, ‘Come and get us.’ And straight to voicemail. And I wonder, ‘What do I do?’” she said.
“While I was trying to think and trying to keep (my daughters) calm, I was like, ‘I can’t hear anyone outside.’ We are 30 families. There’s a lot of bombing, like a lot of bombing going on. Why don’t babies cry? What’s going on?'”
In the midst of this confusion, armed volunteers helped Sopher and her two little girls into a car, and rushed them to their home in Mefalsim where her husband was still safe.
Volunteers of the security forces were recommended to fight against Hamas terrorists as they attacked Mefalsim and to prevent any civilian deaths.
Inside their home, Sopher said there was no electricity. The family hunted with only the lights on their smartphones. They try to distract the girls by playing while trying to be as quiet as possible.
“How do you tell a three-year-old, ‘Be quiet, because there might be bad people out there,'” Sopher said.
A few hours after the attack began, the family received a message that it was safe to flee the area, and members of the Israel Defense Forces helped them into a waiting car.
“You can see they’re scared,” Sopher said.
As they drove, Sopher saw the horrific effects of what had happened in the past few hours.
“It was like the apocalypse,” she said. “I don’t know if you have seen it The Walking Deadbut it was no small thing in that, in real life. Dead bodies over there, burnt out cars over there.
“You won’t believe it. Like, I’m in a movie? Is this true?”
He said the smell is what keeps him in his memory the most.
“He puts the pieces together later to say, ‘My God, that’s what I smelled: it wasn’t the big fire that was lit the day before. Houses were burning, people were burning,” he said.
The soldiers took Sopher and his family to the central Israeli city of Netanya, where they stayed for a week with about 1,000 of their neighbors before going to Cyprus, where they still live today.
Sopher said that although no one was killed in Mefalsim itself, his family and others in his community lost friends and loved ones in the attack.
She and her husband are both undergoing treatment, and Sopher said her daughters realized what they were going through that day and began to talk openly about it.
“No three-year-old child, no six-year-old should know what kidnapping means,” he said.
As he continues to process his trauma, Sopher said he has criticisms of Israel’s response. He noted that the IDF members who helped them flee their homes took hours to arrive after Hamas launched the attack.
“That’s one of the things that makes me angry,” she said.
“We have a strong army, the best army, all the things we have been told over the years. Where were they?”
He also questions why Israel’s domestic intelligence agencies were unable to stop the attack before it began. To this day, he and other Israelis have been told little about what the government knows about Hamas’ plans.
“I’m still waiting to know who knew why they didn’t do anything,” he said.
“It is very sad that we are small pieces of the big people who rule our lives.”
But Sopher reserves his harsh words for the Hamas terrorists who caused the trauma he still faces today.
“Bad,” he said when asked how he would describe his daughters about terrorists. “The bad guys who wanted to do bad things to us for no other reason, we succeeded because we are alive and happy and healthy and we must stay that way.
“Now come and pass your bed, because you are not comfortable with that.”
