Shani, Neomi, and Nastia are three impressive young Israeli women who serve as reservists in the IDF’s Battalion 926 of the Southern District of the Home Front Command, a force responsible for providing assistance to civilians in times of emergency and patrolling different areas in Judea and Samaria.
The three are also survivors of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Supernova music festival. Now, almost a year and a half after the harrowing events, the three warriors tell their awe-inspiring stories of survival and resilience and their brave decision to join the reserve service despite the horrid experiences they went through.
The following is a series of first-person accounts of that terror-filled day. They have been edited for length and clarity.
Shani
A 26-year-old acro-yoga instructor and MA student in chemistry at Ben-Gurion University, Shani got her first invitation to lead an acro-yoga workshop at the Supernova festival, which she was very excited about. On October 6, she had met with a friend to make their final preparations before the festival.
We arrived at the site a couple of hours before it all began. At 6 a.m., the sun began to rise, and I thought it looked beautiful. I took out my phone, which I don’t usually do, and took a picture that became iconic, depicting the serenity before everything changed. I had danced for three hours and decided to take a break. At 6:30, we suddenly saw flashes of light, which I thought were fireworks. But it turned out to be far from that.
The music stopped abruptly. We thought we shouldn’t get into our cars yet because of the sheer number of rockets being fired. It crossed my mind that we were in an ‘open area,’ out of the Iron Dome’s protection, so we stayed in place, protecting ourselves between tables.
After 20 minutes, a policewoman came and shouted something like: ‘This is much worse than it looks! Get out of here!’
I thought Israel must have taken out a Hamas official and that it would be over soon. We packed up our things and got into the car, and we saw an immense traffic jam. Two of my friends got out of the car, as one had forgotten her phone. In the meantime, we slowly moved forward in the traffic jam.
After 20 minutes, our friends sent us their location. They were already on Route 232 [which connects the kibbutzim adjacent to the Gaza Strip]. We drove around the complex and arrived at a wooded area, where we saw five policemen with their weapons drawn. Our friends found us and got into the car. We were the fifth car going up the road. Then we heard crazy screams: ‘They shot her!’
I froze in place, thinking about the police with their guns and the screams about the gunfire. I finally thought to myself, ‘Could these be terrorists?’’
Two minutes later, we saw people running away, and I thought that they were probably seeing something that we weren’t. So I told my friends that we were getting out of the car. We began running with them, with horrible sights all around. I thought about running to Kibbutz Be’eri. Of course, we weren’t aware of the situation in the kibbutz at all.
WE RAN toward Be’eri on Route 232. At some point, I noticed a guy in civilian clothes walking casually with a strange weapon that I had never seen before. He looked at me from afar, pointed the weapon, but finally decided to run toward the police officers in the forest instead. I realized that there were terrorists around us and that the situation was grave. I didn’t know how many there were, but we realized that we were hearing incessant bursts of gunfire.
Suddenly, someone ran toward us, directing us to an open field. We ran, hearing gunshots. The ground was bouncing around us. One of my friends had a panic attack when the sirens started, so I ran while grabbing her hand. She held on to me, and I told her to look at the beautiful sun and the sunrise. I thought to myself that no one would ever believe what I’m going through right now.
A hundred meters away from us, people began to fall like flies from the gunfire. I tried to gather my friends. We ran toward the sun, as far away from Gaza as possible. We reached a cliff from which we decided to jump. Then, someone we saw told us to turn off our phones because the terrorists were tracking our location.
Everything seemed surreal, in any case, so I reached out to turn my phone off. I contacted my partner and told him that I wouldn’t be available. As I was turning off my phone, I received a message from a friend that read: ‘Careful! There are terrorists in Be’eri, Sderot, and Urim!’
I realized there was no point in running to Be’eri, so we had to find a hiding place. After jumping off the cliff, we reached a dry riverbed where I saw large dense bushes that covered the area. I lay flat on the ground and screamed for my friends to come in as well. People kept running around us. There were many thorns in the bushes, which felt more like skewers than thorns.
We lay in the bushes for five to six hours without moving. I heard a tank nearby – I had served in the Armored Corps – and thought it was good news, but it never fired. I went into survival mode and started taking off any shiny objects. We saw terrorists passing by the bushes a couple of times. Thankfully, they didn’t see us, but they shot at everything around us, and we were very lucky that none of us was hit.
After six hours, around 12:10, I decided to take my phone out of flight mode and text my partner to let him know that the situation was serious.
IN MY mind, I was sure that everyone in Israel had gone back to sleep after the alarms went off and that everything was happening only to me. We tried calling the police, but to no avail. Then I tried calling my company commander, who yelled at me: ‘We’re at war! Why are you not reporting?’ I told him I was still hiding, sent a location, and he said he would check if any forces in the area could rescue us.
Forty-five minutes later, the friend that had warned us from Be’eri wrote to me: ‘Careful! People are saying that terrorists are dressed in IDF uniforms and are driving around in white vans.’ Fifteen minutes later, a white van with a soldier in bloodstained clothes started shouting names of people, but I hushed my friends because I thought he was a terrorist. We were all shaking with fear.
Finally, the van left, but after five minutes it came back. The soldier shouted again: ‘Yam, Nikol, Maya, Shani, Yuval, Yoav!’ Those were the names of everyone in the bushes, which meant that someone must have managed to pass on our names. We decided to leave the bushes, and then we discovered that there were 16 of us in there, and we all climbed into the van.
During the crazy drive in the fields, the soldier told us, ‘I’m Leon from Gedera, and my wife didn’t want me to come here, but here I am to rescue you.’ We were in utter shock; no one spoke. Leon took us to Oz Davidian [a resident of Moshav Patish], who led us to [neighboring] Moshav Maslul. Leon then made a U-turn and went back to rescue other people from the party, promising he would come back. In Maslul, they took our names, and that was the story of my rescue.
However, Leon Bar [a retired colonel], the guy who rescued us, did not make it back. He was murdered a day later, after having saved dozens of people, and we owe him our lives.
Neomi
Neomi, 22, from a moshav in the Negev, was still on active duty on Oct. 7. She was excited that for the first time in a while, she was home from the army at the same time as another friend of hers. Neomi spoke with great anticipation about the music festival that was taking place close to home, in the Gaza border area.
We arrived at the festival several hours before sunrise. At around 5:30, we left the dance floor and met with friends. One of the friends took out her phone and said a red alert was sounding. The music was still loud, but she started to have a panic attack, waking people up and saying that ‘something terrible’ was about to happen. She had served as an IDF observer, and she knew that they [Hamas] were training for something big.
We didn’t believe her at first, but when I looked up, I saw the whole sky was rows of black clouds left by rockets. People started running, which intensified the panic.
I tried to calm my friend. People had already fled out of the area, but I thought there was no point in leaving because there would be a traffic jam at the exit, so we should let things calm down first. I also reminded myself that we were in the Gaza border area, and rockets weren’t rare here. I wrote to my dad that we were fine and that we’d be making our way home. Twenty minutes later, things didn’t calm down, and I realized that something bigger was happening. The security guards rushed everyone out, opening the emergency fences, and we made our way to the car under rocket fire.
ON OUR way to the car, my friend got a phone call and heard that war had been declared. My friend who was having the panic attack tried to explain to us that there would be an infiltration of terrorists. As far as we were concerned, we were thinking of a small squad of three or four who crossed the fence. We never thought that there were thousands of terrorists around us.
We also heard rumors of terrorists paragliding into Israel. My friends wanted to hide in the forest, arguing that rockets would hit us in the car. But I decided that I was driving out of there, and I wasn’t leaving any of them behind. I convinced them, and we drove through the forest toward the exit. There was a massive line of vehicles, but we had a 4X4, so we managed to drive around the edge of the road. I slowed down when someone over ran to us, who said he was a paratrooper in the reserves, shouting: ‘Listen, it’s gunfire!’ At that moment, I understood that all the loud noise we had heard wasn’t just rockets but also real shooting happening near us.
It’s impossible to describe the panic, the pressure, and the noise happening at the same time. The brain can’t process everything. I continued driving along the side of the road and saw vehicles coming in front of us, making a U-turn, with people screaming that there was a checkpoint ahead.
I took a left turn toward Be’eri, and strangely, the road was completely empty. Suddenly, a security guard signaled, ‘Don’t go there; there’s shooting and wounded people!’ I looked to the side and saw people on the ground, bleeding. Those were really horrible sights. My brain couldn’t process what I was seeing, and my body went into survival mode. I knew I had a mission: I promised my father I would come back.
I saw another dirt road leading to the fields and drove there. My parents were on the phone with me, trying to figure out where we were. My father wanted to come and rescue us. We tried to send our location, but it appeared that the cellular network was down. There were no mapping apps, and the stress disoriented us. Suddenly, I looked at the beautiful sunrise and said, “I’m driving east toward the sun, while Gaza is in the west!”
THE SUN became my compass. I told my mother on the phone, ‘Mom, I’m going east!’ She said, ‘Great, just go east!’ and started singing to me on the phone. It was a long drive through the fields along the Gerar Stream. Suddenly, we saw people starting to run, and I realized that terrorists were following us.
I drove for my life. My head was processing scenarios and reactions. I noticed two people whose car had stalled, so I slowed down, and they jumped into the car. They arrived with new information: the white vans. I told them I didn’t want to hear anything. I’m focused on my mission, and that’s it.
We got to the Urim Junction, and we had already heard that there were terrorists in Kibbutz Urim. I sped up to 160 km/h to escape the place that was infested with terrorists. We drove through Tze’elim and Retamim, where we met the kibbutz emergency standby squad. One guy we had rescued saw a white van and jumped out of the car out of panic. We calmed him down and picked him up again.
We continued driving. I received a message from my friend – she said she was in a bomb shelter in Re’im and that she was fine. We stopped at Telalim and told her family she was okay.
I live in the middle of nowhere in an area that no one knows – the safest place in the world. On the way home, rockets caught us a few hundred meters from the car. We saw smoke plumes around us. The pressure was high, and my friend had already called her parents to say her goodbyes. We were riding on gas fumes, but finally we reached home at 10:30. I hugged my parents and went straight to the shower to wash away this day.
Nastia
Friends of Nastia, a 30-year-old computing and information security worker and former IDF officer from Ashdod, had opened a WhatsApp group ahead of the festival. They were filled with anticipation about the production and had bought tickets months in advance. The Friday before, as she was having Shabbat dinner, Nastia joked with her parents that she would be going to a party in Gaza. Despite her parents’ stress, Nastia’s life in Ashdod made her accustomed to living under alarms and sirens.
I arrived at the music festival early that morning. After a round of dancing, around 6:15 we went to rest in the car. We sat calmly and enjoyed the sunrise. There was a lot of music and people and joy. Suddenly, we looked at the sky, and it was filled with rockets. Immediately, I told my friends that we were getting out of here. As in a matter of minutes, the party would stop, and we’d get stuck in traffic.
My friends told me I shouldn’t exaggerate, that it’s normal for the Gaza border area to get some rockets. But my instinct told me that we should get out, and even if it was an overreaction, we could still just come back. We ended up being among the first 10 cars that left, so we didn’t get stuck in traffic, but, boy, did we run into other things!
I realized that we were in a so-called ‘open area’ and that at any second a rocket could fall on us. I overtook cars and drove around them. My friends told me we should pull over, but I kept pressing forward. Now our vehicle was the first one in the line. After Kibbutz Sa’ad we turned toward Ashkelon, and I spotted figures coming out onto the road. I slowed down the car and took a long look at them. They looked like civilians, but then I saw that they were in uniforms, which was strange. I thought to myself, ‘What are the chances the police would stop vehicles under rocket fire?’
Then I saw they had weapons, ones I didn’t recognize from the IDF. Somehow, it struck me: They were terrorists. I stopped the car abruptly and tried to keep my cool. I told my friends to duck, with scenarios running through my head: ‘If we drove forward, would they shoot? Driving backward would be slow, but there would be a better chance of survival.’
AS SOON as I started reversing, we heard an immense salvo of gunfire. I took a bullet to the shoulder, but luckily it just grazed me. My friend sitting next to me lost two fingers. Nothing happened to my friends in the back seat, but they were in a panic.
I slammed into reverse and stopped an inch from the car behind me. One friend jumped out of the car from all the panic, so I had to slow down to pursue him to get back in. All this time, there was non-stop shooting from the five terrorists ahead. My friend got back into the car, and we drove back toward the party. We honked and warned everyone that there were terrorists: ‘Don’t go there!’
We thought these were the only terrorists who infiltrated Israel; we had no idea of the real scale. We tried to warn as many people as we could. We stopped near bomb shelters at the side of the road and told people to get out of there because there was a terrorist infiltration.
We managed to warn several vehicles on the way. I don’t remember the location, but a little before Kibbutz Alumim, we saw an IDF force. We told them that there were terrorists up ahead, and they pointed us to the nearest military post. We realized that nobody in this base had been updated. For them, it was just a routine Shabbat with routine sirens.
We stopped and told the soldiers that we were civilians, and that there was an infiltration. It was strange the news hadn’t reached them. We entered the military post and bandaged each other. We were there from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., hearing explosions, rockets, interceptions. Eight hours of non-stop fighting.
The base had bomb shelters with wounded soldiers, doctors, and paramedics. Only then did we start to grasp the magnitude. It was not just us who ran into terrorists but many, many more. I went into combat mode and told the soldiers there: ‘Bring me a uniform and a weapon. I’m an IDF officer!’ Of course, they didn’t agree, but they asked us to help guard and bandage the wounded, give them water, and make sure they weren’t losing consciousness. I thought, ‘If this is the way I can contribute, I will obviously do it.’
Around 4:30 p.m., an IDF force took us to Soroka hospital. There were many difficult sights there, but that’s the story of my escape.
‘Everyone must serve the country’
Despite their harrowing experiences, for all three of the survivors, rejoining the army to fight in the war against Hamas was not even a question.
Shani, for instance, started her reserve duty a mere 11 days after the war broke out. “I decided that to join reserve duty while hiding in those bushes,” she recalled. “For the first 10 days, I was busy reassuring my mother and preparing her that I was going to return to the reserves. At Home Front Command, we’re responsible for civilians’ well-being, treating their physical and mental conditions,” she explained, adding that she feels her service is helpful and fulfilling.
As mentioned, Neomi was still on active duty on Oct. 7. “I was called up the day after. Following what I’d experienced, I was granted the option of not going into the reserves, but I had no doubt that I wanted to continue contributing.”
Neomi explained that serving as a combat soldier in the Home Front Command bears personal meaning “because I know that I am giving all that I have in order to protect civilians. Whether it is helping them in Ashkelon or patrolling in Judea and Samaria, our goal is to protect civilians so they can maintain a calm and peaceful life. Just as there were people who protected me that day, I had no doubt that when my turn came, I would report.”
Nastia also knew she would rejoin the reserves, while rockets and bullets were flying overhead. “Even while I was on active duty, I knew that as soon as I was discharged, I would report back. I was released from the hospital that night. My parents were saying they would buy me a ticket out of Israel for a while,” she said with a laugh. “But that entire day, I had talked to my company commander, and I reported the next day, though people thought I was crazy. I didn’t even think of not going. I realized that I was protected and saved, and it was my time to return what I had to do.
“Our missions were always to respond to the rocket threat and take part in rescuing operations, as well as taking up positions in Judea and Samaria. It’s a great satisfaction and an important mission. Ultimately, this is our country and our home. I will not give up on doing something for my country, and everyone who can must serve because we have no other place.”
‘Nothing like Israel anywhere in the world’
When asked what their main message would be, all three women highlighted the importance of the Jewish state and the special family-like bonds among Israelis.
“There will never be a better place for the Jewish people than the State of Israel,” Shani stated. “This is our home, and we will do anything to ensure that it remains [like that]. We are strong and resilient and interconnected. Where else in the world would you see citizens who risk their lives and rescue and help citizens they don’t know?
“One day after Oct. 7, some 400 psychologists got together and started calling all the Supernova survivors, completely voluntarily. Where else in the world would you see such unity? No matter where you go, you will always find an Israeli who would connect with you.”
Neomi’s word of choice is “continuity.” “On Passover, we say that in every generation, people attempt to exterminate us. We happened to be present in the largest terrorist attack in the history of the country, and, unfortunately, it will not be the last attack. But we are here to stay. This is the country in which I want to raise my children and grandchildren.
“History may repeat itself, but we are only evolving and getting stronger. The State of Israel is something unique, as all the contributions upon contributions from citizens to fellow citizens and soldiers can attest.”
Nastia also lauded the Israeli spirit. “We are the most loving, warmest, most embracing people there is, and that is also our strength. Despite what we’re going through, we continue to coexist as one people, and no one can break the bond that we have.
“We are already [more than] a year into the war, and we are still willing to do everything for the country. You see it in the smallest things. Distributing food and drinks to evacuees and soldiers, organizing donations, doing laundry for each other. In the smallest crisis, everyone mobilizes for each other.
“This unity doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”