KIBUTZ RE’IM, Israel — The two fighters were in front of him, firing from their motorcycle at passing cars. One of them was driving, the 50-year-old man said, and the other sat behind and opened fire on any target he saw. At least one was wearing a bulletproof vest.
“He didn’t see me,” Michael Silberberg said. So Silberberg made a decision.
He and two friends had already managed to escape the massacre at the Tribe of Nova music festival, where hundreds of militants from the Palestinian group Hamas had forced their way through the crowd, killing at least 260 people and taking an unknown number hostage. .
They survived another attack a few minutes later: two of them hid in a roadside bomb shelter, while the third hid outside.
Shortly after that they were already in Silberberg’s car, trying to get away from the massacre, when they saw the motorcycle.
“I knew it was: either I hit it, or I know I’m going to die, or other people are going to die, or someone is going to die,” Silberberg said.
So he stepped on the accelerator and rammed the motorcycle with his four-door sedan.
The shooter, he said, died immediately. The driver survived, but was left crawling on the pavement, seriously injured.
“They were neutralized,” Silberberg said.
The war conflict intensifies.
The men drove away quickly, with the front of the vehicle badly dented, the car alarm blaring and smoke billowing everywhere. They drove like this for 20 minutes until they reached a friend’s house, where they found safety.
Silberberg, an Israeli-born German, said he had long been politically progressive, and hoped for a peace that would give the Palestinians their own country.
“You know: ‘Everything’s fine. Let’s all live together. Let’s give them the land.’” But not anymore.
“My opinion has changed. “I’m sorry…I’m not sorry,” he said, sitting in his beachfront apartment in Tel Aviv, where he and his two friends took refuge after the attack.
“You can’t make peace with these people,” he said. “They don’t want to coexist with us. “They want to kill us.”
During the actions, some 250 hostages were released.
Early Saturday, Hamas militants left the Gaza Strip, penetrated the Israeli security fence and entered Israel. The attack killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, and subsequent Israeli bombings killed more than 1,530 people in Gaza. Israel says approximately 1,500 Hamas fighters were killed on Israeli territory.
In the days since the attack, Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip with airstrikes as it prepares for a possible ground incursion. The Israeli government has also cut off supplies of food, fuel and medicine to Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, prompting aid groups to warn of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. Israel says the siege will remain until the hostages are freed.
The Tribe of Nova festival, held in the semi-forested fields outside Kibbutz Re’im, just a few miles from Gaza, was one of Hamas’ first targets.
In the videos you can see fighters arriving in trucks and motorcycles, and then running into the crowd and shooting people as they tried to flee into the fields.
Israel released several photographs of dead babies to demonstrate Hamas atrocities. WARNING: Images are very disturbing.
Israeli communities near the festival were also attacked, with Hamas gunmen kidnapping people — soldiers, civilians, the elderly and young children — and killing dozens more.
The massacre shocked Israel, which had not seen bloodshed like this in decades.
On Thursday, a man tending bar at the festival returned to the site of the attack. He said he had no choice.
“I feel like I owe, you know, all the people who were here and were killed,” Peleg Horev told an Associated Press journalist who was allowed to visit the site. “I’m alive, I stayed alive. I have to tell your story. That of each and every one of them.”
The bodies have been removed from the festival site, but the remains of the attack can be seen everywhere.
Bullet-riddled cars, many with their windows shot out, are scattered around the festival area and nearby roads. Clothes spill from torn suitcases. A woman’s shirt is still on a tree where she was hung to dry. A pair of glasses lies on a window sill. The lockers are covered in gunshots.
“Lost and found,” announces a festival poster hanging from a fence. “Camping area,” says another.
Leaves lift in a gentle breeze as soldiers patrol the area, occasionally throwing themselves to the ground at the sound of distant gunshots. Security forces are concerned that fighters could attack again, or that some are still hiding in fields and undergrowth.
Peleg escaped after walking for hours, deeper into Israel. He avoided the roads, where many of those who tried to escape by car died when they became trapped behind other vehicles that were attacked.
“All this time you hear gunshots and screams from afar,” he said. “We just went as far as we could and as fast as we could.”
He is deeply moved by the reality that he survived and many others did not.
“I owe them a debt, really.”
2023-10-16 00:25:40
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