STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — They survived one of their nation’s darkest days, and on Monday, a group of Israelis shared their Oct. 7 survival stories with members of the Staten Island community.
Shani Teshuva, Hila Fakliro, and husband and wife, Ofer and Rony Kissin, joined about 100 people at the Joan and Alan Bernikow Jewish Community Center in Sea View. They shared their unique stories about living through the Hamas-led military attacks on Israel that triggered Israeli retaliation and a bloody conflict that continues today.
The violence has been chiefly taking place in and around the Gaza Strip since the Oct. 7 attacks, with clashes also taking place in the West Bank and Israel–Lebanon border.
Fakliro, a bartender at the Nova music festival attacked by the Hamas militants, recounted her escape from the violence that left hundreds dead, and said simple decisions she made that day were a matter of life or death.
“Are we running to our death? Are we going to get ourselves killed?” she recalled thinking as she and a coworker ran for their lives. “In the end, we ran for five hours, 13 miles, without water, alone through open fields with all the missiles and the terrorists.”
Each of the survivors shared similar experiences they described as miracles, helping them live through the violence that led to hundreds of deaths.
An initial Israeli estimate put the death toll at about 1,400 people, but government officials from that nation revised the number to about 1,200 in early November.
As of Saturday, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza had surpassed 17,700, about two-thirds of whom were women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory.
Rony Kissin — a resident of Kerem Shalom, an Israeli community within a mile of border crossings with Egypt and the Gaza Strip — said she almost became a victim when a bullet grazed her as she and her husband fought to stay alive.
The pair are trained medics with United Hatzalah and they were…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply