Morning Wire - Strength After Tragedy: Israel’s People Speak | 10.15.23

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

In this special episode of Morning Wire, we bring you powerful accounts of resilience, hope, and human spirit in the face of immense tragedy. Join us as we hear from survivors and witnesses of the horrifying Hamas attack on Israel. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Warning: Sensitive Content Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Saturday's Hamas attack has had a broad and profound effect on Israel and the world. Many are saying it's the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. In this episode of Morning Wire, our news crew, who is on the ground in Israel, speaks directly to individuals who lived through some of the most brutal attacks. I want to warn you that the content of this episode could be disturbing for some listeners. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Sunday, October 15th. And this is a special episode of Morning Wire direct from Israel.

I have a friend. He's killed. He's dead now. I don't understand why. He's dead. We start talking and people start crying. I can hear them still crying. Help us. Help us. They're here. Two or three houses to one side they were murdered. And two of three houses to the other side they were murdered. They killed. My wife, they killed. Innocent people. You're hearing the tragic and heartbreaking stories of several Israelis whose families endured the brutal Hamas attacks on Israel last Saturday.

Our reporter Natalie Mann, who lives near Tel Aviv, traveled the country to bring you some of these firsthand accounts. The first person we're going to hear from is an ambulance driver named Avi. Avi was one of the first responders to arrive at the scene at the Nova Music Festival, the event at which over 240 people were killed. He describes what it was like to arrive at the massacre scene. So we're here in Ashkelon, which is one of the cities that have been most hard hit by the war that we're in right now. And this is an ambulance that usually fulfills dreams for children who are suffering from cancer. And right now it's become the ambulance of nightmares because they're volunteered to help Zaka, which collect the bodies and body parts.

Something very important to Jews is to make sure you have. every single piece of a dead body. You tell us you, we're one of the first people to arrive at the scene of the party after the party. And can you tell us what kinds of things you saw? Where did you find the bodies? What situation?

I'm not believing what I see. It's not real. I think all the day what I see, what I do and it's not understand it because it's not believable. We come with ambulance. We come to the department. and I see just everything is bodies, everything. A lot of blood, a lot of shooting.

And then you were telling us that you were driving around to look for more bodies, like where did you find the bodies? Yes, where I'm not going. Where I'm not going to see bodies. I'm not, I'm going here, I see. I'm going here, I see. In cars? In cars, inside.

No matter where. Where you see, you see, you see bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies. I'm driving and I take my car, left, right. People not believe me. I'm not believe it. I'm not believing. Do you know how many bodies you've collected since you started?

Because, I mean... Me? Yeah. Just you personally or all the friends? Yeah, one other? 100? This is in four hours, something like this. Four hours.

Four hours, we go out. All the bodies, we take them. What do you think about the Hamas now? Did this change anything for you? You know, I think before, I think, you know, we're not like us. Okay, but now Nazis. I see stuff and only in Shohar, we see this. Why?

I'm not believed it. This is the first time I speak with it and I'm not speaking with my family. My family call all the time. I don't know what we do more. What do after this is... What next? We had to cut the interview short because they've been called

to go and collect more bodies now in the south. It's just not ending. One of the hardest hit areas was Kabuts Kvar Aza. Kvara Aza is just one kilometer and a half from the fence with Gaza. Some background, a kibbutz is a collective farm settlement where residents live and raise families in a communal way. Natalie spoke to Dorone Admoni,

age 67, who lost his wife Mikal and his 25-year-old son. At the time of the attack, Doron was in California visiting his son, Ran, and meeting his newborn grandchild. How are you? Terrible. We have a difficult situation now. My name, Doron Admoni. I am 67 years old. living in Kibbutz Kfarazha. My wife was Mikal. She was 66 years old. I have four kids.

And that's all now where the terrorist killed my wife, Michal, and my son, Guy. They was at home on Saturday morning. Mikal is 100% disability. And Guy came to a weekend to be with her because me and my older daughter, we've been in the U.S. to visit our new granddaughter. She's born three months ago. And when it was happened, we've been in U.S. 6 o'clock in the morning, Israel time on Saturday morning. My wife, Michal, sent me SMS. The terrible situation now at home.

The dog is run away from home. She's worried about him, our dog. And after five minutes, there are no contact with her anymore by phone. And after when I will get SMS from the kibbutz, our friend, we start to understand the situation now in the kibbutz. And after 15 minutes, I felt I was in California. I felt that at that moment that Mikal and Guy killed. They are not with us anymore.

This was my feeling. No chance for them. And now we know exactly that Guy and Mikal killed at home. They found them. and I know that Guy supported his mom and he never leave her, leave her.

And they kill them when they are together. This is first of all it's helped me. It's met me yesterday when they told me about it. I was happy for Mikal and Guy and Guy all the life when he was young in his class teacher,

ask the kids, what do you think everyone will be another 20 years? He said, every kid said I will be doctor, he said

I will be a prime minister or I will die for my country. And he died, he killed for his country. He was dreamed to be a soldier

to protect his country to do the best that he can do for his country. If to die, to die for the country. This was the way that he died. He disappeared from our world.

It was a light for the world. And this year was very happy. Last month he was with his girlfriend in Paris one week. He was very high. He died with his mom, his love. and now we have to see how we

continue our life our life that's all I must to that I must to be strong and rebuild the family from the beginning now

I've seen what you're amazing amazing, amazing amazing, amazing thank you chasm how's that we're Here's an account from a woman named Eleanor who fled with her husband and children into a safe room

when terrorists invaded their home in Kabutskfarasa. My name is Eleanor, and I live in Kibbutz Kfarhaza for the last 15 years. So Saturday morning, October 7th, was the day of Sukkot holiday. And so 6.30 in the morning, the siren went on. And it's a drill that we know. We know what we do when we get the siren, we get into the shelter, into the safety room, and we lock the door. And I think it took at least seven 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. So he starts running around the house, closing all the house. closing on the doors and all the windows, before we even understand and we understood something happened, I heard him grabbing things, so he brought this huge three kitchen knife. Now I'm thinking it was so naive and so we could not even imagine

that people can do whatever happened there. And I think it was less than 10 minutes, even before the official announcement from the kibbutz management arrived, that he looked at us and we all sat and he told the kids, please open your eyes there's terrorists in the kibbutz I need everybody

to listen to me and the look on his eyes was terrible I mean he looked at us lots of pain but also he had a lot of courage and he says I will tell you what to do

we heard noises we heard people running outside we heard Allah We heard noises that not in a normal neighborhood as we used to have. And suddenly we heard this huge bomb and we were sure the terrorist in our house. We let the kids under my son's bed. We heard people walking. We heard them, we thought they were in their house.

We heard them walking around the house for sure. We heard them on the roof. And every once in a while they just shot. just shot. I don't know if they shot someone or just to terrified us. They kept us in stress for so many hours and they terrified us in every single way they could have done it. And and the stories keep going on. Who saw family? Who did anyone talk to this? And we already knew that our friend who was the mayor of our council, Reginal, got murdered. He was, was in a Mikey boots and his mother-in-law, 83 old lady surviving cancer, why would you shoot her?

What she could have do anything to you? And his son is missing, still missing. And his nephew jumped on grenade. Thank you. And this is how he rescued and survived his girlfriend. And one family who lost five people for nothing. And in the whole community, we're still counting, we're still not sure. We lost 65 people in our community. Just unbelievable that we survived it. I think emotionally, we will never forget it. Sorry, no words. We just actually celebrate our 15th anniversary in Kvaraza on Sunday and when I told my kids that October 8th is the date, my oldest child who's 19, look at me and says, we got a present. We got our life. And of course, we immediately cried.

Is there any message you want the world to know? They butchered us. He butcher us, family after family, house after house and it's horrible it's just horrible I don't think I have the words in English to describe how furious I am

and how sad I am and how just in my normal life and just want to be again Eleanor that's it, not Eleanor from Farah where I'm saying where I am from

and everybody's looking at me and more from me it's almost a week almost a week that we're outside of home. Sorry. I didn't think I will cry. You don't have to. To know.

The next interview is with a man named Mark Jaffe. Mark and his wife immigrated from England about 20 years ago. Mark's adult son manages their thrift store WhatsApp group from his home in Tel Aviv. That text thread quickly became the main source of information and communication between the hundreds of members for the 23 hours that they were held captive in their safety rooms. The messages are now an accurate record of which house got attacked when. Here's Mark's story. We're very used to being woken up by warnings of rockets. We had such a warning at 6.30 in the morning, something of that sort. And we have 10 seconds, basically, between the warning and the rocket falling. So we're very used to not thinking and

jumping out of bed and running for our safe area in the house, which is what we did. We're also close enough to the border to hear all the rockets leaving. In other words, when the Hamas fire rockets, we can hear them leaving. The rockets are big enough to make a sound when they get fired off, the long-range ones. So I began to realize that there was a very large rocket attack. And at that point I started hearing lots of shouting outside in the vicinity of the house.

And I started getting dressed to go out and help, which is what I usually do under those circumstances. And I was just about to open the front door when this started being accompanied by long bursts of automatic fire, which is at the point I realized that I wasn't going to go out of the house. So we went back in the safe form. It must have been about 7 o'clock at that point. Closed the door. And we were there until 2 o'clock the following morning when we were rescued. Luckily, we had electricity all of that time.

So we could follow what was going on outside. And we could hear everything that happened in our area as well. We had two main WhatsApp groups that were running at the time. People joined it from all over. It had about 400. 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're coming in. They're on my roof. Shots are being fired outside my house. Come and help. This sort of thing. They managed to force their way into two of the same. and murdered the people who were in it. And with that, you could tell from their last WhatsApp messages,

where they said they forced their way in, or they're trying to force the way in, and then they stopped sending messages. So we were basically sitting there waiting for it to be our turn, and they didn't. So I guess at about two or three, I'm not really sure the time. We were evacuated from there to Netivort, which is a town about 10 kilometers away.

So you and your wife are okay, and your children are okay, thank God. Thank God. Yes, and I don't know how. I mean, it's a complete Russian roulette as to who survived it, okay, and who didn't. I can't explain it. There's no explanation as to why they didn't even try and get in our house. I don't.

Just luck. I mean, and I don't know why people are still psychologically whole here. It's part of the Jewish way. Life goes on, keep moving. Yes. Yes. Over a thousand lives were lost in the terror attacks on October 7th. These stories represent just a few of the human tragedies.

Special thanks to our correspondent Natalie Mann for bringing us these interviews from Israel. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in this morning. This has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.