Around the neck of both hangs a silver pendant. It says “NOVA”. THE Danielle Gelbaum and Clil Valiano, the young people sitting calmly across from me in the hotel lobby in downtown Athens, on the 151st day of the Gaza war, experienced the Hamas terrorist attack at the Supernova festival on October 7. Four hundred and sixty surviving participants wear today the exact same medallion, a point of reference, of identity, of unity.
Probably, like the 23-year-old smiling kids with piercings who are far from the fiery hell of Gaza in the heart of the Greek capital, they saw their friends being killed. Others to be kidnapped. Daniele and Cleal survived the inferno But they are not the same anymore.
“After the attack I’m still trying to find myself again”
“Until October 7, I was a manager of a perfume boutique in Jaffa. I had a very good position and prospects. After October 7, everything changed, I quit my job, returned to my hometown in Tel Aviv, and tried to find myself again,” Kleel tells us.
From “day 2”, on October 8, he searched for a healer and other survivors. “I needed us to be together and share our feelings, not so much our story.” The shock was over. “From 6:29 a.m. on October 7, when the attack on the festival began, I went into a robot phase. It took a month of psychotherapy to get back into my own skin. To be myself again,” adds the young man.
Daniele, a homeopath, had returned to Israel from Latin America three months before the attack. “Coming home I would never have suspected that I would experience a terrorist attack on such a large scale.” The next day, on October 8, he voluntarily returned to the army for two months, without entering a psychotherapy program.
“The best I could do was psychotherapy”
“It was the best I could do for myself. My psychotherapy. It helped my mental health to know that I was serving my country by offering to my fellow citizens. I felt good,” he tells us.
As soon as the two months in the army were over, “I started feeling restless, having nightmares.” That’s when he realized he needed to enter a treatment program. “I started individual and group therapy together with my sister, who was together in the attack. We were dealing with the same trauma in the same house, and that was very supportive.”
Is it easy five months later to talk about the moment of the attack? “It depends. When we heard the first explosion we knew something was up. We looked at each other. “Okay, we’re in southern Israel, we thought at first, it might be a plane, but when after 3 seconds we heard three more explosions along with the barrage of rockets, we knew,” says Kleel, calling him and Daniele “lucky.” And it was.
“Our campsite was at the emergency exit. Seeing people running out and getting into their cars, we did the same. We started running amid gunfire and rockets,” says Daniele. “While we were running for safety, I turned around and saw a terrorist in a khaki shirt, walking confidently, calmly, as if he were a king. A boy, maybe younger than me, runs, falls, gets up and finally takes a bullet and falls flat on his face. I will never forget this image as long as I live. When he shot him, he did not ask him if he is a Jew, a Muslim or a Christian. Even I, who was almost murdered, was not asked if I was Jewish. They also kidnapped Muslim Bedouins.”
“I used to believe in peace – I’m under no illusions anymore”
Until October 7, Daniele believed in peace. “Now that I’ve seen the hatred of the terrorists – I’m not referring to all Palestinians, because not everyone hates Israel – I’m under no illusions,” he continues, noting that “anti-Semitism never died, let’s be honest. It didn’t flare up because of Gaza. You must always be on your guard if you speak Hebrew, if you wear the Star of David around your neck, whether you are in England, where anti-Semitism has increased, or in France, or elsewhere. Anti-Semitism is very trendy today, we see it on Tik Tok and Instagram. I am 23 years old and if I want to shop, for example in a department store in London, I have to be careful. Why; Why should I be afraid and threatened in 2024? Why should my life be in danger while I was celebrating life at a festival with my peers?’ he wonders.
There are people who question the Holocaust. “There are also those who question October 7. But I was there and I saw it, I lived it,” continues Daniele who, as an Israeli army official, cannot judge her government publicly. However, he admits that on the day of the attack “there was a systemic vacuum. I could not imagine that thousands of terrorists would cross the border so easily. There were many gaps. Investigations are underway. I hope there will never be another October 7th again.”
“We are a people in permanent defense”
“The level of brutality, despite the gaps, was not something we expected,” adds Kleel. “But even if Hamas is annihilated, the ideology that advocates that Israelis and Muslims cannot coexist in the same land will survive. The ideology did not start with Hamas, nor will it end if it disappears.”
“We are a people in constant defense,” he continues. “We are being told, like the president of Brazil, Lula, that we are committing genocide, while we were attacked in our homes and killed. All we want is to be able to be safe in our country. We are on the defensive.”
“When you get killed and raped you don’t sit around waiting for the next time”
And the 30,000-plus dead in Gaza, among them a huge number of children and infants, that led the international community, even the US, to call for a ceasefire? “No genocide is being committed,” insists the 23-year-old Israeli. “The Israeli armed forces are doing their job as best they can, targeting houses that hide weapons and rockets. The world is always watching what Israel does. We are careful and precise. We did not go into war blindly. But it is impossible not to have collateral losses. When they kill you, they rape you, you don’t sit around waiting for the next time it happens again,” says the young Israeli, who before October 7 was sure that “I didn’t want to raise my children in Israel. In Tel Aviv they are more expensive than Singapore and New York.”
After the shock of the Supernova massacre he revised. “Israel is the only place where we have the ability to protect ourselves in the right way. I’m not going to leave,” he emphasizes. “I have both an American and a European passport. But Israeli is the most important to me. If I decide to move from Israel, what will stop others from doing the same? I can’t imagine a safer place in the world than Israel to walk down the street, to speak Hebrew,” says Daniele.
“If I leave, who will remain in Israel?”
“The system is crooked, not only in Israel. Everywhere. We’ll see what happens after the war. I hope that Israel will never again suffer another October 7th and that the Palestinians will never again suffer from the actions of Hamas and Israel’s response to them.”
But she is realistic. “Maybe next week I’ll wake up and see another terrorist attack in Israel on the news. This may never end, no matter what government we have and with the best prime minister, since even 10-year-olds have been taught that it is a sin to be Jewish. But if I go away, who will remain in Israel?’ Danielle wonders.
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