A helpless mother listened to her terrified 12-year-old son begging terrorists ‘I’m too young, don’t take me’ as he was kidnapped with his 16-year-old brother.
Renana Gome was on the phone to her sons as they cowered from Hamas fanatics hammering on the family’s door in Nir Oz kibbutz in southern Israel.
The incident
She said: ‘After the red alert, they called me. For two hours, every couple of minutes they called, they’re scared, terrorists are trying to get into houses. They can hear gunshots.’
Distraught Ms Gome, who is separated from her husband and lives in a different kibbutz, broke down in tears as she recalled: ‘Then I hear on the phone people speaking Arabic, thumping on the door. They snatched my two boys out of their bedroom and dragged them into Gaza.
‘The last I heard was my 12-year-old son saying “I’m too young, don’t take me”. And they took them. That’s the last I heard.’
She said: ‘I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I am in a living nightmare. It feels so wrong, because somewhere in Gaza I don’t know if they’re eating, sleeping, I don’t know if they’re tortured. I don’t know if they’re together. I don’t know if they’re alive.’
More than 70 terrorist rampaged through Nir Oz kibbutz, a community of about 400 about a mile and a half from the Gaza border, massacring whole families.
Ms Gome said: ‘There is no Nir Oz any more. Our community is gone. I always tell my kids, that the kids in Gaza struggle a lot harder, that they have a much worse life. ‘No running water, no electricity, my heart goes out to every child in Gaza who is killed.
‘But what kind of mother grows such monsters? How can it be that I’m so empathetic to them, and they don’t see us as humans? I used to be so pro-Palestine. But I found out on the worst way that they are not neighbours.’
40 babies were slaughtered…
Meanwhile young mother Shaylee Atary has told how her husband sacrificed his life so she could flee with their sleeping newborn in the village where 40 babies were slaughtered.
She and one-month-old Shaya survived a hail of bullets as she raced through gardens of their kibbutz, Kfar Aza.
They hid in a shed where she desperately tried to keep the dozing little girl quiet by using her little finger as a dummy.
Husband sacrificed his life for wife and daughter
Her husband, celebrated Israeli filmmaker Yahav Winner, had fought Hamas thugs in their home allowing them to escape. He was shot in the head.
Ms Atary said today: ‘My husband sacrificed his life for me and our daughter. Yahav was a talented filmmaker and a dreamer but the thing he really wanted more than anything was to be a father.
‘We waited 10 years, and when she was born she was like a miracle to us.
‘We ran to the safe room and locked iron door. We heard the terrorists shouting hello and laughing. We were completely quiet.
‘We silently signalled to each other “You’re looking after the baby, I’ll hold the door”. But they got us.
‘Yahav fought the terrorists and he sacrificed his life for me and Shaya.
‘I ran out without shoes….’
‘I ran out without shoes, hiding in bushes as they shot at me and my little baby girl, hiding behind trees, and the voices shouting.
‘I ran until I found garden shed, and the voices of the terrorists got louder.
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‘Shaya was still sleeping in my arms. I got inside shed and found a hammer and a screwdriver, and put them inside my pyjama pockets.’
Eventually they were taken into shelter in another family home, where they hid for 26 hours.
Sobbing Ms Atary said: ‘All our family is broken. They slaughtered us like a flock of sheep. They murdered families with children while they were begging them for mercy.
‘I don’t have enough sorrow in my heart to understand what we have been through. I look at Shaya, our beautiful child and I remember what we agreed: “I’m looking after the baby.”
‘I will miss Yahav so much until the last day of my life. The cruelty is so hard to understand.’
