On the night of Friday, October 6th, 2023, sisters Norelle and Roya Manzuri gathered with their family for a festive meal to mark the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah. As they celebrated, the conversation turned to Norelle’s wedding plans – at 25, she was engaged to marry Amit Cohen the following year. Her younger sister Roya (22) shared in the excitement.
After dinner, the dual US-Israeli citizens prepared to drive south from Hod Hasharon, a city in the centre of Israel, to the Nova music festival with Amit and friends. The outdoor venue near Kibbutz Re’im lay just kilometres from the Gaza border. As they left, their mother Sigal gave Amit a simple instruction: look after the girls.
She would never see her daughters again.
“At 6:29 we were awakened by sirens. We called the girls and they were lying down covering their heads as the rockets flew in. Ten minutes later Norelle called us and said they had managed to reach their car,” recalls Sigal.
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But the road north towards home was blocked as Hamas gunmen were in the area shooting at vehicles. The road towards Kibbutz Re’im was also blocked so the three of them, along with two other friends in the car, including Gal, the girls’ cousin, ran into a roadside bomb shelter close to the kibbutz.
The tiny concrete shelter was packed with young revellers escaping from the festival. It was too dangerous to leave the shelter as Hamas gunmen were everywhere by now.
The last phone contact with the girls was at 7:39. The gunmen repeatedly opened fired into the shelter and tried to set it alight. Amit was hit in the head and was killed.
It wasn’t until close to noon that the first two Israeli soldiers arrived. Their assessment was that everyone inside the shelter was dead but there were survivors, some of whom were in and out of consciousness. The soldiers began checking the pulses of the bodies.
Gal, buried beneath a pile of bodies, regained consciousness and was one of 12 survivors out of the 40 people packed into the bomb shelter.
The girls’ father reached Beersheba’s Soroka hospital at 2pm but it was chaos there with hundreds of wounded soldiers and civilians arriving.
“He met Gal in the hospital and only then we understood this was something much, much bigger. We knew deep inside there wouldn’t be a happy ending for us. But parents never give up on their children until you get the knock on the door,” recounted Sigal.
The parents searched the festival site and the surrounding fields and gave DNA samples to the authorities. “We kind of hoped they had been kidnapped to Gaza because this was our only hope they would be alive,” says Sigal. “Maybe the fact they had US citizenship would help.”
A few days later, Amit’s parents were informed he had been killed. The Manzuri family got their first knock on the door on Wednesday morning, four days later, informing them that Roya’s body had been positively identified. During the Shiva, the traditional Jewish seven-day mourning period, they got the second knock on the door, informing them of a positive identification had also been received for Norelle.
“Instead of watching your girls build a new chapter in life, with a wedding around the corner and maybe grandchildren around the corner, now everything seems meaningless,” Sigal said. “So I made it my life mission to continue their legacy, to make sure nobody will ever forget what happened on October 7th.”
But Sigal believes Israel cannot really move forward until all the 48 hostages are returned and this message is repeated by all the bereaved relatives.
“We are praying they will come back soon and the war will stop. Only then can we begin our healing process and start to rebuild our country. Not just to live but to be able to laugh and feel joy again.”
Of the 1,200 people killed on October 7th, 378 were at the Nova festival.
Twin brothers Gali and Ziv Berman were 26 years old when Hamas militants stormed their kibbutz on October 7th. Now 28, they remain captive in Gaza – two of just 20 hostages believed to still be alive. Kibbutz Kfar Aza sits barely a kilometre from the Gaza border.
From the charred remains of the twins’ homes, the eastern neighbourhoods of Gaza City are clearly visible across the fields.
Liran, their eldest brother, says growing up in the Gaza periphery was “95 per cent heaven and 5 per cent hell”. The trouble started after the Hamas takeover of the coastal enclave in 2007, he says, but the previous rounds of cross-border exchanges of fire lasted only a few weeks at most.
At 7:15am on October 7th, Liran, who lives in northern Israel, saw an image on his phone of a white pickup truck, full of Hamas gunmen, in the border town of Sderot. “I realised immediately that this was something new but we still didn’t know the scope of it.”
Liran is still on the Kfar Aza WhatsApp group that was soon full of messages from residents reporting gunfire inside the community and shouting in Arabic. Some of the Hamas gunmen arrived on hang gliders.
Ziv entered his safe room. Gali took a kitchen knife and went to his friend and neighbour Emily Damari, to be with her in her safe room. The last messages the brothers sent were at 9:30. The army arrived later on Saturday but the fighting on Kfar Aza continued until Tuesday afternoon.
Eleven days after October 7th, the army confirmed that both brothers had been kidnapped to Gaza. Emily was also kidnapped but was released in January.
The militants drove all three in Emily’s car across the fields to Gaza, a 15-minute drive, straight to Gaza City’s Shifa hospital, where Emily, who lost three fingers in the gunfire, was treated. The brothers were taken to the Hamas tunnels beneath the hospital and separated.
Liran went to 11 funerals in the two weeks after October 7th. Sixty-two people were killed on Kfar Aza and 19 were kidnapped, two of whom were shot dead accidentally by Israeli troops.
“We knew Hamas would keep Gali and Ziv until last because they are young and not fathers. We know from other hostages that they were moved around a lot, above and beneath ground, and were last confirmed alive in February.”
Liran has spent the last two years travelling the world, raising awareness over the plight of his brothers and advocating for their release.
“Now they are talking about a final deal to bring the last 48 back,” he said. “If the international community on October 8th had unanimously condemned and put pressure on Hamas, including Arab countries, then everyone could have been home by now.”
Forty-two hostages were killed during captivity in Gaza – some by their captors, some from Israeli fire. “I fear for their lives every time I hear the bombing. We can hear it and even feel the vibration on the floor here on the kibbutz, so imagine what are they going through?”
Kfar Aza residents were evacuated after October 7th and are expected to return next year but Liran believes only about half will do so. A lot depends on the ceasefire and how safe the border will be.
Two years after October 7th Israel remains a broken country, still at war and desperately seeking closure for the loss and pain. The first essential step in this process is a ceasefire that will bring all the hostages home and end the fighting.
[ Explainer: How close to ending is the war in Gaza?Opens in new window ]
