Israel’s first 24 hours under attack: ‘We are all going to die’
Inbar Shem Tov, 22, sent a video to her father while hiding from Hamas gunmen in a garbage skip, assuring him she was safe. When he arrived she’d vanished. Now he fears the worst.
Minutes after Palestinian militants began pouring out of Gaza on Saturday morning, Aharon Shem Tov started receiving frantic texts from his 22-year-old daughter, Inbar, saying she was pinned down by gunfire and hiding from the attackers in a dumpster.
“Everything is OK,” she whispered in Hebrew, giving a thumbs-up, in a brief video she sent him at 8:45am that showed her and five others nestling in the open container alongside trash bags. He grabbed his gun and began a panicked four-hour drive from Tel Aviv to the location in southern Israel where his phone showed his daughter was.
But at 11:40am she texted: “we are going to die.” It was the last time he heard from her.
“Maybe the terrorists took her or she ran away, I don’t know,” said Shem Tov, who saw 30 dead bodies after he finally arrived. None of them was his daughter.
In one of the worst 24 hours in Israel’s history, hundreds of Israelis were killed or taken hostage while others huddled in their homes and shelters as gunmen from the Palestinian militant groups Hamas rampaged through towns and overran military bases.
Unlike the surprise attacks of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Saturday’s onslaught occurred inside Israel itself against civilians and communities left at least temporarily undefended by a security establishment that has long prided itself on pre-empting terror threats from its periphery.
The first blow landed just after 6:30am, when sirens wailed in southern and central Israel warning of incoming aerial attacks. At an all-night outdoor rave in an open field near the Gaza border, the party abruptly halted as nearly 3,000 revellers who had spent the night dancing heard the sirens and saw hundreds of rockets flying overhead.
As many as eight pick-ups and seven motorbikes carrying militants from Hamas, which is designated by the U.S. as a terror group, were in the first wave that poured through gaps opened that morning in the Gaza fence, along with dozens more on foot. Based on footage posted by militant groups, the gunmen bombed observation towers and then attacked security personnel at three Israeli military bases along the border.
Within a few minutes they had reached the site of the rave. Shouts of “terrorists, terrorists!” rang out across the crowded field along with the rapid pop of automatic weapons.
Eilat Shalev, 47 began to run and became separated from her husband, Shai, in the confusion. She called their daughter, Shaked Shalev, who wasn’t at the rave. “She was stressed and I heard shooting in the background,” said Shaked Shalev. “It was chaos.” Eilat Shalev hid behind a grapefruit tree, while others ran to their cars, lined up along a nearby road. She is alive and back home but her husband is still unaccounted for.
Another partygoer, Shani Amin, 18, who had attended the music festival with her boyfriend, called her grandfather, Ami Halfon, over video at 8:26am. “Grandpa help me! Help me! They are shooting at us,” she told him. Her grandfather tried to ask her where she was and what had happened but received no answer. Blood was visible on her neck. “Adam wake up, open your eyes,” she said to her boyfriend before the call went dead. Neither have been heard from since.
Over 250 dead bodies were later found at the rave location, according to Israeli state broadcaster Kan, citing a volunteer search-and-rescue group.
Israelis in border towns began reporting the presence of masked Palestinian gunmen in the small cities of Ofakim, Sderot and Netivot and in multiple villages. Hamas fighters roamed deserted streets on foot and in vehicles, sometimes in military formation. Israelis were found shot dead in their cars, numerous bodies were piled up at a bus stop, and reports spread of militants burning houses to force out residents.
At least 700 people have been confirmed dead, according to Israeli authorities. Dozens of Israelis, including army officers, are being held hostage, according to the armed wing of Hamas. Palestinian officials say more than 300 people have been killed in Gaza in Israeli counter-attacks. Israel says it has killed hundreds of Gaza militants so far.
Many of the Israelis were killed or taken hostage in the first hours of the Hamas assault, when Israeli army, police and border guards were themselves under attack, unable to come to the aid of besieged towns.
In some communities, residents said, they received warnings to hunker down in bomb shelters that are common in Israeli communities, and to lock their doors and stay quiet. Accustomed to rocket attacks from Gaza, many Israelis said they initially weren’t prepared for what amounted to a ground invasion.
After the first wave swarmed into Israel, militants opened another gaping hole in the security barrier with a tractor and more fighters crossed over on foot and on motorcycle. Footage posted by militants showed convoys of additional pick-ups and motorbikes climbing the dunes and streaming into Israeli territory.
They began rounding up hostages and shuttling them back into the Gaza Strip. Captured Israeli military vehicles were later driven into Gaza and paraded there.
In one video, an ATV carrying at least one Israeli hostage sped down a sandy roadway inside Gaza. In another, an elderly woman was shown being driven down a Gazan street in a golf cart. A middle-aged Israeli man, identified as an Israeli commander, was shown being dragged through a street, barefoot and wearing only underwear and a T-shirt.
After militants managed to strike an Israeli tank along the border, footage posted by militants shows Gazans pulling an apparently dead Israeli soldier out of the smoking vehicle.
One of the hardest hit communities was Kibbutz Be’eri, near Ofakim, 3 miles from Gaza.
Gunmen patrolled the deserted streets, residents said, shooting and capturing residents. Around 50 Israelis were held hostage in the dining facility of the Jewish collective and would only be freed after a seven-hour ordeal after Israeli soldiers raided the facility, according to an Israel Defense Forces spokesman.
Miri Gad Messika, her husband and three teenage children had locked their door and hid in their second-floor apartment for five hours after local authorities informed residents by an app that terrorists had infiltrated their kibbutz.
At midday they heard Arabic-speaking militants threatening their elderly neighbour downstairs. Soon the men came up to try to bash open their lock, Messika said. When that failed, they set the building on fire.
Smoke came out from electric sockets and began to fill their shelter. One hour later, the family found it hard to breathe and decided to jump through the second-story window. Messika said her 15-year-old son broke his foot when he landed, so they had to help him hop to a neighbours’ home, where they took refuge in another shelter.
“When we looked back, there was nothing,” said Messika of her cement-block home. At 1:30pm the military said troops were working to clear communities that had been overrun by gunmen. Messika said that the Israeli army didn’t show up until the evening to rescue her family. Meanwhile, about a third of the homes in the 1,200-resident community were set on fire, she estimated.
One reason it took the military so long was that it was under attack across southern Israel. Militants stormed an Israeli army training base called Zikim near the Gaza border full of recruits who had only been in the army for four weeks.
Israel Defense Forces were still working to clear southern Israel on Sunday, and estimated around 1,000 intruders had entered. Deputy international spokesman for the army Nir Dinar said it was doing its best.
A mother of one of the soldiers on the base said that after the Hamas rocket barrage she was frantically texting her daughter, an Israeli soldier, who was at Zikim for the weekend as part of her army duty.
“I sent her messages every hour begging for a sign of life,” she said, but heard nothing.
A furious gunbattle was raging at the base. Her daughter finally contacted her at 7:11am. Sunday, describing how veteran soldiers at the base had battled the militants while less experienced recruits took cover as “crazy shooting” went on for hours. There were several moments, her daughter told her, that they thought they wouldn’t make it.
She couldn’t come home after the weekend, she told her mother. Her unit had been given new orders and needed to stay in the field.
Among the Israeli victims is Idan Herman, 26, who is fighting for his life at Soroka hospital in Beersheba, in southern Israel. Herman and his girlfriend Eden Naftali, 23, were among the thousands at the rave near the Gaza Strip Saturday morning when the attack broke out, according to his father, Avri Herman.
His son was hit with shrapnel in his leg and chest, Avri Herman said. He arrived at Soroka Saturday afternoon, but his parents didn’t learn he was alive until 9 that evening when they arrived at the hospital to fill out a missing persons form and a social worker told them he might be among the victims there. It took them almost 10 minutes of standing over his body to be sure it was their son, said Herman.
His girlfriend hasn’t been seen or heard from since Saturday.
