The Daily - Golan’s Story

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Warning: this episode contains descriptions of death.In the week since Israel suffered the deadliest day in its modern history, fresh accounts have emerged in village after village of just how extreme and widespread the violence was.Today we hear the story of one man at the epicenter of that violence: Golan Abitbul, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri, where more than 100 civilians were killed.Guest: Golan Abitbul, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri, in southern Israel.Background reading: Video: a son’s conversation with his mother as gunmen attacked her kibbutz.The long wait for help as massacres unfolded in Israel.Follow the latest updates on the Israel-Hamas war.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. In the weeks since Israel suffered the deadliest day in its history, fresh accounts have emerged in village after village of just how extreme and how widespread the violence actually was. of just how extreme and how widespread the violence actually was. Today, the story of one man at the epicenter of that violence. It's Friday, October 13th. Hello? Hi, Golan. This is Sabrina Tavernisi from The Daily, from the New York Times Daily podcast. Hi. Hi. Thank you for talking to us.

Hi. Hi. Thank you for talking to us. Yeah, of course. I'm on my way to the, I think it's the most quiet place I can find. Great. Perfect. Golan, thank you so much. I know you must be absolutely exhausted. Yeah, it's not easy. Where are you right now? We are, all the community were evacuated to an hotel in the Dead Sea. All the refugees, we all got to this place. Practically, I think 90% of the hotel is people from Mikey Boots. Golan, can you identify yourself for me, please? from my kibbutz.

Golan, can you identify yourself for me, please? Tell me your name, your age, and where you live. My name is Golan Abitbol. My age is 44. I live in Kibbutz Be'eri. And I was born in the kibbutz. The kibbutz was established in 1946. It's older than the state of Israel, and it's a quiet place surrounded by nature.

And I've been living there all my life with my family. How many people in the kibbutz? We family. How many people in the kibbutz? We have like a thousand people in the kibbutz. And we know each one of them by name because we lived with them since I was born. And we know the name of the kids. We know everybody. We all vouch for each other. We all take care of each other. And it's an amazing place to raise your kids in.

Do you have children? I have four kids. The older one is 15. His sister is 14. And my twin girls are nine oh twin girls yeah and the kids are going freely they don't have any traffic inside the kibbutz just go send the kids to the grandparents on the other side of the kibbutz and they can go and you don't worry because nothing bad can happen. us now to the attack. But first, I want you to tell me about Friday. How did you spend the day before the attack began? What was Friday like for you? On Friday morning, five in the morning, I got up in Reykjavik, Iceland. Oh, my goodness. I woke up in Reykjavik, Iceland. Oh, my goodness. I woke up in Reykjavik, Iceland, coming back from work and landed in Israel in about six in the evening. And two hours later, I was at home. So this was my Friday. And I saw my kids after a week.

I didn't saw them. I spent time with them. We ate dinner together. I saw my kids after a week. I didn't see them. I spent time with them. We ate dinner together. I saw my friends. We had some drinks. And went to sleep like a normal Friday. And then we woke up in about 6.20 in the morning to the sound of launching missiles. It was a huge, huge launch.

And I remember telling my wife, what is going on? It's out of the blue. We are on the border of Gaza. We know what it's like to have a missile attacks we are used to it

but this time it was weird it was suddenly and it was so intensive and a few minutes later we got a text message we have an app of the community, we got a text message. We have an app of the community. So we got a text that there is an invasion to the kibbutz

and that we should lock ourselves in the shelter. In the second I got this message, I went to my safe and took my gun. It's a pistol. It's a small 9mm pistol, and it's what I have for personal defense. So the first thing that felt right to do for me is to take the gun out and lock my family in the shelter, and then took a front position in the kitchen where I can have a better view of the neighborhood and if someone come I can respond and engage before they come to

my house and next we started to hear shooting and we started to hear talks in Arabic, and I was looking outside of the kitchen windows. And then I saw in the outside perimeter of my neighborhood, I saw some terrorists standing outside with RPGs and heavy machine guns. What did you think at that moment? fighting vest with all the equipment, the gear and the helmets and behind them three guys wearing civilian uniforms and they were exiting my neighbor's apartment and

it was horrible. I didn't know what to do. If he's alive, if he's dead, I didn't know. I just saw them exiting the apartment. And then there was units starting entering the neighborhood. I saw them going near one of the families

and start shouting, like IDF, IDF, to make my neighbors think that they are from the IDF and they will give up and get out. To make your neighbors think they were actually from the Israeli military. That's the IDF. Yeah. And this group were dressed like an Israeli police officers, but something about the way they were dressed, they were, I don't know how to describe it, a bit sloppy, sloppy. You know, it's not, it didn't felt right for me. And I text my friend, I don't think it's the IDF.

Don't open the door. And then I heard Arabic from real, real close. And I heard shooting from real close. And I saw from around the corner, tourists. I saw them going towards my balcony. I was standing at my post at the kitchen. I saw them going towards my balcony. I was standing at my post at the kitchen and I just saw them coming from around the corner.

I saw their face and you could see murder in their eyes. I saw in their eyes, they're gonna kill my family. I need to shoot now or else it's going to be my family. It's now or never. So I started shooting. I gave a burst of five or six bullets towards them and they shot back at my home. They shot with automatic weapons. So then I'm shooting now from here and I'm going to a different position to shoot from a different position because you don't fire twice from the same position. So it will seems like there are more than one armed person inside the house. In Israel, you join the army at the age of 18, and then you do a reserve duty until you are about the age of 40.

So you don't think, you act like a warrior. You switch to a different mood, and it's like a muscle memory. And it's like a slow motion movie. Everything is slow. Everything is, you see every move like flow. And then you hear them shooting back and then it's like a fast forward. You jump to the floor and hide from the bullets.

So the time moves slowly and is suspended and then the time moves very quickly and speeds up. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a weird dream or something. Yeah, like a weird dream. Do you remember feeling fear? Yeah, of course. Of course.

If you don't feel fear, you're an idiot. I felt fear and I felt fear for my family and my neighbors. But the fear is set aside and now it's time to engage the enemy. So then after several bursts of fire toward the balcony and toward the rest of the house, they shot the house from many positions. But my family were in the safe room and the safe room can stand the heat of a missile. So I wasn't worried about them. It's okay, shoot the house as much as you like.

I'm on the floor. It's okay now. And then I don't know why they left they decided to go they went to a different house then it got quiet it got quiet when I quiet, I mean I didn't see any attackers, any terrorists outside. You could always hear all the time the noise of weapons shooting outside. I can hear them throwing grenades, but I didn't see for like an hour anyone else. And then I heard one of my neighbors texting in the group of the neighborhood that they're in his house and they're trying to break into the safe room. But he was holding on to the lever so they won't be able to open the door I guess they got tired of

trying to and they just set the house on fire and at first I didn't saw the fire then I heard a weird noise a weird unfamiliar noise of cracking stuff.

It seems like stuff is cracking, cracking wood. And I looked outside and I saw all the top floor on fire. And they started texting that the fire, the smoke is getting inside the safe room. fire, the smoke is getting inside the safe room. And in the kibbutz text group, they said, you need to put wet fabric on your mouth to shield you from the smoke. But the house is on fire. And in certain time, it wasn't safe for them anymore. And I told them, I don't see anyone outside from my position. So they jumped to the ground level, the family with the two kids, and ran straight to the neighbor's house and got inside his safe room together with him. So the whole village was giving them instruction by text?

No, no, no. The whole village was giving each other instruction. We were all under attack. Not only our neighborhood. There were some neighborhoods closer to the eastern side, the side of Gaza, that were heavily attacked, much heavier attacks than we got. They got RPGs on their house, on the safe rooms.

And then in the text group, a daughter of one of my best friends just sent a recording of hers she wasn't shouting she was whispering help us my mother and brother are dying my father is hurt and he's dying they're trying to enter the house and he's on fire and she just kept on sending this kind of message and and i know this girl and i know she's a good friend of my girls and she's been to our house several times and i used to work with her father and we are one family we are like one family and i hear her recording, just help us, help us. My father is dying. My mother is already dead.

My older brother is lying dead. And you feel helpless. How old is she? I think about 10 years old. How old is she? I think about 10 years old. She had to see her parents critically injured in front of her eyes and just... She couldn't do anything. And I couldn't do anything and no one could do anything.

Later on I heard they managed to rescue both of them after shooting with a tank because there were terrorists inside their home and they survived. The girl is okay and their father just got out of surgery. He lost his leg, but he's alive. He lost his leg. But he's alive. He's with us. Not like a lot of my friends. But the rest of her family was killed. The rest of her family was killed.

Golan, when did you finally leave the house? And when did the police finally respond? We heard a big noise, a really weird one. And I opened the window to get a different view, and I saw tanks, tanks on the neighborhood. It's not something you're supposed to see. So I knew things are going to change, but I don't know how long it's going to take. And then a unit of the army came and took us out.

It was nighttime, but we could see a lot. To see the kibbutz burned to the ground, it was horrible. We could see the house of my neighbors. Normally, when you have a fire in the house, the firefighters are coming and they put out the fire. But here I could see the fire dies out after burning everything. We were

encircled by the soldiers who kept us safe and took us. And they told us to close the eyes of the young kids so they won't see the dead bodies of the terrorists lying outside. So they won't have to have these kind of memories in their mind. They won't be scarred more than they are already scarred.

And we went to the entrance of the kibbutz, and they took us to the evacuation area, and we were just about to go on a truck, an army truck to evacuate us, and then from the bushes, one of the terrorists just started shooting at us with no cover. And we had had to lie on my kids and protect them, my twins. I had to shelter them with my body

and shout to my kids. I lost my two grown up kids. I shouted to them, where are you? Where are you? And it seems like forever, but they killed the terrorists very quickly, the soldiers. And no one was injured. What time was that approximately? Do you have any sense of that? That was 10 o'clock at night, 10.30, when we left the perimeter. And it began at six in the morning. That is so many hours. That's eternity.

It's, I just can't describe the feeling. It just felt like an eternity. And later on, we were evacuated to the hotel in the Dead Sea, where we are now. Did anybody in your neighborhood die? We don't know. We don't know. We get drips by drips of names. And today, all the grown-ups in the community got inside the conference room of the hotel. And they were sitting there there some members of the community with the list and they were starting to read the names of the people we know are dead

and each one of the members got the page and start reading like 10 names and then collapse back. And then the other ones next to him stand and start reading some more names and sit back. And like, I don't know how many, I don't know how many, I couldn't count. And then I know each one of them, I know each one of them and they read the names and they paused and said now we are gonna read the names of the people we don't know where they are

and it was just as long a good friend of mine. She was. They broke into her safe room. They pulled her out. She and their kids. And they told them to sit outside. And they took. All the men. And the boys.

From this group. Put them on a truck. And just went went to Gaza. And they took her son, he's the best friend of my son. He's 16 years old and he's the most adorable, gentle kid and they just ripped him away

from the hands of his mother. And my son is devastated and we are all devastated. And we don't know what happened to our family. We don't know what happened to our friends. We know that they killed one

out of ten of our community. One out of ten is dead. But a lot more were taken they took babies they took kids they took elderly people 80 years old woman she was like my grandmother I I know her from the day I was born as she was like my grandmother. I know her from the day I was born. She was like my grandmother. And we were laughing together like two weeks ago. And now they took her.

Why? What kind of... They are not human beings. They are not human beings. A human being couldn't do this kind of... They are vicious killers. They are not freedom fighters. They are not fighting to liberate

their country. And our community donated every year money to some people who used to work in the kibbutz. These are people from Gaza?

People from Gaza. They were our friends, and we donated money to them. The mother of a friend of mine was kidnapped. She used to go once a week to one of the border crossing with Gaza Strip and pick up with her car children and take them to get dialysis in Israeli hospitals. And now she's in Gaza. We are liberal person.

We don't believe that all of the people in Gaza are evil. We don't believe. We didn't believe. I'm sorry. We didn't believe. I don't know what I'm thinking now I don't know what to think now because we always thought that peace

and negotiation is the solution and I don't think anyone think now we lost our faith we don't think there could be any kind of reason

to talk with these animals that destroyed my kibbutz, kidnapped my family, and we want them back. We can't be a community without them. They are part of us. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. You can't take

one piece and it will be okay. The ones that are dead are gone. Okay, but we need them. We need the ones that survive. Get my neighbors back. I want them back. They are my friends. They are my family. I want them back. And I go in the hotel

and it's like a roller coaster of emotions because I hear someone just died and it break my heart and I collapse and second later I see someone arriving that I was sure that he was dead and I was afraid to ask. And then another one is dead and another one alive. And it's a rollercoaster of emotions. What are the children like in the hotel? How are your nine-year-old daughters? My twins are playing.

They talked to a psychiatrist, and they didn't saw anything. They heard the noise of the shooting, but they didn't saw the terrorist. They didn't saw the bodies. My older kids saw the bodies. They know about their friends that were kidnapped, and they know about their friends that were kidnapped and their nose about their friends that were slaughtered. They know. And there will never be kids again. Their childhood is over. And I know my son will never be the same again. His childhood is over. His friends are dead or gone in Gaza.

And now we need to start to rebuild our life from scratch. And from the moment we arrived here, we rebuilt infrastructure of the community. This person who is in charge of finding people a place to sleep in, someone who is in charge of activities for the kids, and we have a person who is in charge of the elderly persons, and the nurse of the kibbutz is in charge of getting people their medicines that they left back at home. We rebuilt our community here in the hotel so we could survive the day to come because we don't know how long we are going to be here. We don't know if we have a place to go back to. I don't know if my home is still standing.

I don't know. And it's still under army quarantine. So we can't go back home. We are here like refugees. So for now I'm still in the hotel and trying to hold on, trying to go on one day at a time. Do you feel that it changed you? I'm sure it did. I always say I was scratched already before with all the military service I've been through.

But this is a different kind of scratch. So many friends of mine died. So many. When half of your friends died, there is no coming back. I'm not going to be the same person as before. I'm trying to keep my humor as much as I can. But none of us are going to be the same again. My kids are not going to be the same again.

I'm not going to be the same again. My kids are not going to be the same again. I'm not going to be the same again. None of us. Israel is not going to be the same again. We went through a second Holocaust and unfortunately I had the opportunity to be in the front line. We're not going to be the same. The death toll from the weekend's attack in Israel stands at 1,200 people. Among them were at least 25 Americans. In Gaza, at least 1,537 people, including 500 children, have been killed in airstrikes that Israel has conducted in retaliation for the attack. And, late Thursday night, Israel's military told the United Nations that the entire population of northern Gaza, about one million people, should relocate to the southern half of the territory in 24 hours.

The UN said it had strongly appealed for the order to be rescinded to avoid making, quote, what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation. We'll be right back. for a leader when Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana withdrew his name for consideration for the speakership late on Thursday. Scalise was nominated for the role on Wednesday, but he failed to muster enough votes to be elected because hardline Republicans balked at supporting him. Instead, they threw their weight behind his challenger, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the right-wing Republican endorsed by former President Donald Trump. The surprise move left the House Republican caucus in chaos, with no clear end in sight.

Scalise said he would step aside in hopes that someone else could unite the fractious party. in hopes that someone else could unite the fractious party. Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison, Ricky Nowetzki, and Diana Nguyen, with help from Summer Tamad. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn, with help from Paige Cowett and Michael Benoit. Contains original music by Dan Powell,

Marian Lozano, and Alicia Baitube, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Alain Delacarrière. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you on Monday.