Survivors of Hamas attack speak at rally in Zurich
Published: Monday, Dec 18th 2023, 20:30
العودة إلى البث المباشر
Two survivors of the Islamist Hamas massacre in Israel in October spoke about their experiences in Zurich on Monday. A woman who survived the attack on a music festival and a survivor from a settlement spoke at a rally.
The resident of the kibbutz first recounted in the premises of the Jewish Community (ICZ) how he and his family were attacked early in the morning. He had to fight a terrorist for several minutes for the doorknob to keep the attacker out. Armed only with a knife and dressed in his underwear, he had barricaded himself and his family in the house.
He later heard the attacker talking to a second terrorist. He panicked that the two men would try to force the door open in pairs. The Hamas men only left when he used the app to open all the doors to the house at the same time. "They probably assumed that the Israeli army was coming," he said. He and his family were only freed after a good eleven hours.
Reports are intended to shock
A representative of the Jewish community said that they felt compelled to show why Israel was engaged in a defensive war. The media must show how bad the attack was, said one visitor to the event.
It was originally planned that a freed Hamas hostage would also take part in the event in Zurich. However, the appearance was canceled at short notice. The reports are intended to shock, said the second survivor on Monday.
The young woman was at the music festival in southern Israel with four friends, where Hamas killed over 350 people and took 40 hostages. The survivor told of a chaotic escape. She hid with her friends in a small bunker by the road.
She pretended to be dead
Terrorists kept coming into the bunker and shooting at people, "you couldn't see the ground anymore, there were dead bodies everywhere," she said. She spent eight hours there.
She finally reached her father by phone, crammed in between dead and injured people. "He told me to play dead," she said. She and her friends escaped with injuries, "only 11 of the 45 people in the bunker survived".
Videos from October 7 underscored the dramatic events. The young woman's desperate phone call to her father was also heard at the event in Zurich.
Against relativization
The two survivors then spoke again to several hundred people at a rally in Zurich in the early evening. Several politicians, including Mayor Corine Mauch (SP), representatives of various religions and the Israeli ambassador also addressed the crowd on the Rathausbrücke. They warned against relativizing the events of 7 October.
The two Israeli survivors came to Zurich at the invitation of four private individuals. They had already organized a rally in October with around 1,500 participants under the motto "neveragainisnow" (Never again is now). They also wanted to draw attention to the anti-Semitism in Switzerland that they experienced after October 7.
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