Testimony Excerpt
From Rotem Israel's testimony: "I saw the barrel of a rifle between the closet and the wall, as if death was looking into my face"
The Full Testimony
Testimony of
Rotem Israel
On that Shabbat morning, Rotem, who was eight months pregnant, locked herself in the safe room with her two small children. She heard gunshots and terrorists in her neighborhood. She pushed a large cabinet to block the safe room door and asked her 8-year-old son to be quiet and keep his 3-year-old brother from waking up so the bad people outside wouldn’t hear them. After many long hours of fear, as terrorists broke into her house, Rotem thought that might be the last time she saw her children, and she began to say goodbye to them. That evening IDF soldiers rescued her, and only then did Rotem see the extent of the destruction outside. She broke down when she found out that her neighbors had been murdered. She was evacuated to Kibbutz Gvulot. There, she met Adi, a girl only seven-and-a-half years old, who told Rotem that she saw her mother being murdered while she was hiding in a closet.
Place of the event:
Holit
Name:
Rotem Israel
Organization:
None
Language:
Hebrew
Credit:
Date: 03.11.2023
Interview: Galia Shiloach
Photography: Ari Bloch
Video Editing: Yuval Brill
Content Editing: Tali Segev
Translation: Allison Ofanansky
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