Two years after the October 7, 2023 attacks, one Israeli woman—Hadas—still wakes up inside that day. She was visiting her childhood kibbutz near the Gaza border with her mother, daughter, and niece when militants stormed the area. They hid for more than 30 hours in a safe room as gunfire, shouting, and explosions closed in. Her brother Tal, a beloved community protector, was killed that morning.
Hadas joined us to speak about those hours, the long road since, and what “normal” means now. Her story is searing and simple: nothing is normal, but life and love still insist.
“I’m Still on October 7”
When asked how the last two years feel, Hadas doesn’t hesitate: “I don’t feel that it’s been two years. I’m still on October 7.” Hostages haven’t all come home. The kibbutz is nearly empty. Her family is scattered. “My brother is gone and we are really trying to recover.”
She bristles gently at the idea that life has slipped back into routine. “People went back to work and normal life, but nothing is normal. Nothing.”
The Day Everything Changed
Hadas grew up in the kibbutz and later built her life in northern Israel. She and her family visited often—every few weeks or months—to be with her mother and brothers. On October 6, they came for a family celebration. “I had to be there,” she says. “It’s a crucial point in my life—I feel I had to be there.”
At 6:29 a.m. the next morning, the “red alert” siren wailed. The family ran to the safe room—routine for life near the border, though still surreal. Very quickly, it was clear this was different. “Beside the bombings and the alarm, we heard shootings.” Messages began to flood neighborhood WhatsApp groups: people saw armed men approaching homes; first responders were overwhelmed; the council head had been killed.
In another house nearby, Hadas’s brother Tal told his family to get into their safe room and ran toward the gunfire. He was murdered that morning. The family in Hadas’s safe room didn’t know.
Hours in the Safe Room
Inside the small room, Hadas, her mother, her daughter, her niece, and her younger brother waited, barely speaking. They listened—to footsteps, to shouting, to the crack of rifles. Mid-morning, voices in Hebrew cut through the chaos. Soldiers had entered the house with a wounded comrade. They told the family to stay put, allowed brief trips to the toilet, and asked for help mapping the kibbutz—where the dining room was, the pool, key buildings—so they could reach people calling for help over WhatsApp.
Then the soldiers moved on. The house fell quiet again.
By afternoon, the electricity failed. The only phone that still had a signal belonged to Hadas’s niece; they rationed its battery, using a cable to pull a little charge from their dead phones. Night came. At one point soldiers returned with a password to confirm they were real, promised a rescue team, and disappeared again.
“I don’t remember the words,” Hadas says of comforting her terrified daughter. “There are no words. You hug, you feel the breathing, the heartbeat. You try to breathe more deeply. I couldn’t say, ‘It will be all right,’ because I didn’t know.”
“Hold the Door. Don’t Let Anyone In.”
On Sunday around noon, an air force officer called. “Your house is surrounded. We’ll send a rescue team when we can. Hold the door and don’t let anyone in.” It is the kind of sentence that lands like a verdict. Still, Hadas says, “I didn’t feel we were going to die. I don’t know why.”
Soon, tank fire struck a nearby house used by militants. Two gunmen sprinted toward Hadas’s home. The family hurled their weight against the safe-room door as footsteps pounded and glass shattered. Hadas held a kitchen knife—more a plan than a weapon. “I knew I needed a plan so I wouldn’t freeze,” she says. “Even if it wasn’t realistic.”
Soldiers, who had seen the two men run inside, followed. They checked the safe room—“Five civilians? All of you here?”—and then the battle erupted within the house. After a flurry of gunfire, they cracked the door again: When we open it, take nothing. Run low across the balcony. One by one.
Smoke hung in the air. A line of soldiers formed a human wall between the family and the fighting. They ran. It was Sunday at 3 p.m.—some 33 hours after they first shut the steel door.
Hunger Without Appetite, and Other New Realities
In a nearby home—with lights, air conditioning, and a bowl of grapes—Hadas realized something odd: “We hadn’t eaten in 35 hours. I was starving but had no appetite. It was the first time I understood the difference.”
The rescue brought safety but not answers. For days, the family called every hospital, clinging to rumors about unidentified wounded. They knew Tal had been hurt—he’d sent a message to his unit about militants wearing army uniforms and carrying M16s. Eventually, someone from the kibbutz found his body; the official identification took a week.
“What is normal?” Hadas asks now. “For me, normal is understanding the priorities in life.”
A Heart That Still Believes in People
Hadas resists drawing a hard line between “before” and “after.” “It’s the same Hadas—just with a broken heart,” she says. “I believe in peace. I believe that people everywhere want to live quietly and safely.” What happened that day, she says, was “unhuman… pure cruelty,” and it shattered something inside. But it didn’t destroy her convictions.
The most significant change is in her priorities:
- Family first. “Being with my daughters, seeing them, hugging them. That’s everything.”
- Meaningful work. She had worked for a global tech company, but returning to corporate life felt hollow. “I needed to do something different. To act for goodness, for peace. To make a difference.”
- Community healing. After months with the evacuated kibbutz community—sharing meals, stories, and grief—she joined volunteers in her town to create a healing space for survivors and bereaved families. “Doing something saved my life. You get up in the morning. You see faces that understand without words.”
Can Israel Be What It Was?
Asked if Israel can return to what it was on October 6, Hadas chooses hope—but not nostalgia. “I hope it will be much better,” she says. She longs for moral leadership, clean politics, and a government that truly serves all civilians. “I believe it can happen. I’m waiting for it.”
Optimism isn’t optional, she adds. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to live.”
What Helps: Speak Up, Learn, Don’t Be Silent
To the many Christians and friends around the world who have prayed for Israel, Hadas is deeply grateful. “It’s heartwarming,” she says. Support, in her view, looks like:
- Learning the facts and explaining the situation with clarity—especially the need to free Palestinians from terrorist rule.
- Speaking out against terror and for the dignity and safety of ordinary people on all sides.
- Supporting credible nonprofits that provide recovery, counseling, and practical help to families rebuilding their lives.
- Refusing silence. “Don’t keep silent,” she says simply.
A Final Picture
Hadas remembers the purple glow of a small LED, the breath of her child beneath the bed, the warmth of a grape she couldn’t force herself to swallow. She remembers the feel of a doorknob under five pairs of hands, the weight of a knife that was really just a plan, and the strange coolness of air conditioning after survival.
Two years on, she still lives with October 7. But in the same breath, she speaks about courage, community, and a future she insists on believing in. “Nothing is normal,” she says. And then she smiles softly, as if to add: But love still holds.