Swept up in the bad news frenzy that comes with war – which can hit everyone personally, directly affecting individuals, their family and friends, as well as communally and nationally – the soft stories of humanity tend to escape us: both those of us working in the journalism realm, as well as all of us on the consumer side of it.
In the whirlwind of all this, many journalists fall short in their responsibility of telling the stories of individuals.
From the moment Hamas’s brutal cross-border infiltration attack began on October 7, those accounts began flowing in at a sickly speed, along with everything else that day.
The stories of bravery and humanity during Hamas’s massacre
On that disastrous Saturday morning, IDF St.-Sgt. (res.) D. managed to get to Kibbutz Be’eri, which bore one of the larger brunts of violence on that tragic day. Upon arrival, he saw a house with flames licking up its side. He inched closer to see if there was anyone trapped in the house, and saw an elderly couple; he helped them out and brought them to safety, the IDF said.
Rami Davidian, from Moshav Patish in the northern Negev region, received a phone call early Saturday morning from someone begging him to help the friend of a friend stuck at the Supernova music festival in Re’im.
An aerial view shows damage caused following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel, October 11, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/ILAN ROSENBERG)
“By about 11 a.m., I understood the full picture of what was going on,” he said. The friend at the party sent him a GPS location for pickup. On the way, he said, he saw more young party-goers attempting to escape – some injured, which significantly slowed them down – among the trees and in the fields. “I picked them up as well,” Davidian said.
From that point on, he said, it became a race against time to try to save as many people as possible. He set up a system with a few friends to spread out as far as they could to rescue the injured. All of this under constant fire both from the Hamas terrorists and the IDF, because it was a chaotic situation where communication was cut, and he had no protection for himself.
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Jaqueline Glicksman, 81, from Ein Hashlosha, went into her bomb shelter at 6:30 a.m. and closed the door “as usual,” she told Channel 13. A short while later, to her shock, the door is opened, and on the other side is an armed Hamas terrorist. Without words, he motioned two things to her: to be quiet, and whether she had a gun. He took her tablet and phone and closed the door.
A group of them then rounded the house and arrived at the window of the bomb shelter, broke the screen, pried it open, and asked her if she had cash. She did not. They then came back into the house and she could hear them pouring something on the ground. At this point, she said, it clicked for her that she had to get out.
She jumped out of the window and ran one and a half kilometers to safety.
These unbelievable examples of bravery, which happened both on and off the battlefield, demonstrate a fighting human spirit, desperate to stay alive, keep others alive, and sanctify every minute.
Israel Hayom ran a piece highlighting medical professionals: Dina Cohen, 28, from Kibbutz Re’im; Dr. Ron Lubell, Director of Emergency and Disaster Management at Barzilai Medical Medical Center, from Moshav Netiv Ha’asara; and Dr. Shani Caspi, 34, a general-practitioner working for Clalit Health Services from Kibbutz Magen. Each tells a unique and unbelievable story of bravery, drive and focus, under impossible conditions.
And then there are the stories that became more famous and are now more on our national and global radar – Rachel from Ofakim, Amit Mann from Be’eri, to name just two – that will be easier to recall as time passes and October 7 sinks into memory.
But there are so many stories of humanity and bravery that get missed in the news cycle. They get buried under other, more timely headlines, ones that ask us what will happen next, what it is we want, and who may get hurt. As this war transitions – to a slower phase or to whatever comes next – it is both important and necessary to seek out these stories, and not let them get lost in the shuffle.
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