October 7: A Survivor's Story, Part I
October 7: A Survivor's Story, Part I
“Thousands of them came by foot through Gaza, kidnapping, burning families alive, shooting everyone they saw. Shooting animals. It’s a miracle I’m here talking today."
Dear JEWDICIOUS readers:
In the six months since October 7, today’s story is likely the most important one we have been able to share with you.
Deborah Ben Aderet is a native of Highland Park, Illinois who made Aliyah to Israel 12 years ago and was raising her two young daughters on the Kibbutz Zikim, just a few miles from the Gaza border.
Deborah has been in the US for several weeks, telling the story of her family’s terrifying experience on the day of the massacre and assault on Zikim, along with vivid pictures and descriptions that are seldom, if ever, referenced in media coverage.
I will be speaking with Deborah soon for future publication, but today I invite you to view and absorb her extraordinary presentation at Congregation B’nai Tikvah. I am including a handful of excerpts below, but only the full narrative does her story justice.
Few of us have the words when it comes to October 7. Deborah has many, because she lived them.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Michael
EXCERPTS from Deborah Ben Aderet’s speech at Congregation B’nai Tikvah, March 22, 2024:
“And they were targeting kids, sending over Mickey Mouse balloons with explosives attached. And a few years ago, I started telling my kids to stay away from balloons. Can you imagine telling your three and five-year-old to stay away from balloons?”
“Two or three years ago, every Friday, Hamas would burn piles and piles of tires on the border. On their side, but at the border fence. And we got use to this…It would produce this black smoke. I later learned why they were doing this, because the smoke is so thick, you can’t see anything through it. And they were burying explosives along that fence, in preparation for October 7. For years. We didn’t know.”
“I saw my husband swerve around a stopped car and then my husband swerving around the stopped car, and I glanced and saw it had a huge bullet hole in the windshield, and it was one of the cars that a terrorist stole trying to infiltrate the next kibbutz. And was thankfully killed by the IDF.”
“In Judaism, you need to try to bury that person with as much of their body as you can. You know, when there’s suicide bombers and (the victim’s) body blows up, there’s a whole staff who’s job it is to go collect body parts. And I heard that bodies were burned so badly that they couldn’t separate them from the cars. And Israel has just burned dozens of cars, with the bodies.”
“It’s really something to note that this massacre was not just Hamas in their uniforms with their big guns. They started it, they literally opened the gates and broke through, but footage will even show us that hundreds and hundreds of Gazans on foot coming through and creating this atrocities.”
“They send their children to terror camps. It’s child abuse.”
“On a positive note, what I can say is that Israel always wins. It’s a tiny, tiny, teeny and it’s still there. And I’m not really worried there isn’t going to be an Israel. I want the rest of the world to change, and we have to just get rid of all the terrorists who don’t want us to exist. We’re here. We’re going to exist.”
**Organizations or media entities that would like more information about Deborah’s availability may email Michael directly at: michael@thegoldenmean.us. Special thanks to JEWDICIOUS columnist Amy Stoken for connecting Deborah with JEWDICIOUS.
From unpacking history and politics to navigating the nuances of family and personal relationships to finding the human angle on sports and entertainment — plus our unsparing take on what’s happening in the Jewish world — the canvas at JEWDICIOUS is limitless! JOIN US!!
