Eden Geffner said it must have been a miracle that she survived the Oct. 7 attack as she and others hid in a safe room, listening nervously to Hamas gunfire ring out from the front door and Hamas terrorists rummaging through the house.
“Over time, we’ve [were] There are a lot of terrorists on the kibbutz, because [could] See people writing in the community WhatsApp group.”
“You can hear people yelling, ‘Kill the Jews!'” she said.
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She said she is still upset about it.
“I can’t help but think that I didn’t do anything on Saturday morning. I just woke up as a Jew. So, really [we were] In the Holocaust.”
Edna Geffner, 28, was born and raised in Kibbutz La’im, Israel, three miles from the Gaza border, the site of the Supernova Sukkot music festival and a stone’s throw from where Hamas killed 364 civilians on October 7. She nearly died in a terrorist attack and recently spoke out about her experience. (Eden Geffner)
Gefner, 28, was born and raised on Kibbutz Reim in Israel.
This is just three miles from the Gaza border and a stone’s throw from the site of the Supernova Sukkot music festival, where Hamas killed 364 civilians on October 7.
That day, in an instant, she went from being a regular millennial thinking about the future to believing she was now in the Holocaust, that she and her family would die simply for being Jewish.
She went from being a regular millennial thinking about the future to believing that she’s in the Holocaust right now.
She now thinks, “I didn’t graduate. I didn’t get married. I didn’t achieve all my dreams. And that’s all there is to it.”
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In a recent episode “Lighthouse Faith” Podcast Recorded in East Hampton, New York, Geffner speaks just before sharing his survival story to a small group at the Chabad of the Hamptons.
This is part of the “Faces of October 7th Project”, which aims to “humanize the consequences of terrorism and challenge the support that terrorist organizations like Hamas have garnered, especially among young people”.
Geffner said her mother often spoke about Gaza’s beauty.
Rudi Glazer, whose brother Ranani Glazer, 23, was killed in the Oct. 7 attack, embraces his brother during a celebratory photo at the Super Nova music festival site in Reim, Israel, on Dec. 18, 2023. The music festival was one of the first venues attacked by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7, sparking the current war between Israel and Hamas. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
“My parents [these] He has wonderful, nostalgic stories of his visit to Gaza, his visit to the markets in Gaza, his visit to the beaches in Gaza… it was so beautiful.”
For years, her mother had assured her that nothing would happen, that peace would come. Gefner lived with a sincere belief that Jews and Palestinians could coexist.
Geffner, her parents and her boyfriend were woken up by the sound of civil defense sirens, which is not uncommon, then the sirens rang a second time, then a third time.
Geffner, who studies business administration and psychology at Reichman University in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, said Hamas attacks have intensified in recent years.
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“You could almost say that Hamas emerged from the kibbutz tunnels in 2014.”
Still, she considered these to be normal incidents of microaggressions — until the morning of October 7, 2023.
Geffner, her parents and her boyfriend were woken up by the sound of civil defense sirens — not an uncommon occurrence — but then the sirens rang a second time, then a third time.
This image from undated body camera footage taken by a downed Hamas terrorist and released by the Israel Defense Forces shows the Hamas terrorist wandering through a residential area in a location in southern Israel. (Israel Defense Forces via The Associated Press)
The group turned on the television and saw that Hamas had launched a major attack on the area, shooting at civilians and taking hostages.
The family took refuge in a safe room, but the room was not equipped with a lock in case of fire.
The decision was made that if we were to die, we would die together.
Geffner said she remembers her grandmother, who survived the Holocaust in Europe, always saying the attic was a safe place to hide from the Nazis.
The family wanted to head up to the attic, but the father decided not to.
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So the decision was made that if they were going to die, they would die together, and they returned to the safety of their room.
Soon after, gunfire was heard near his home, and Geffner recorded on his cellphone the sound of rapid-fire automatic rifle fire nearby. Having served in the Israeli army, he knew the weapons were Hamas, not IDF.
Family and friends of hostage Yarden Roman Gat, who was kidnapped barefoot from his kibbutz in a Hamas attack on October 7, are seen marching through Tel Aviv in a show of solidarity, walking barefoot through the outline of the road. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
There was a knock on the glass front door, then another knock, then a gunshot.
“We are [could] We hear the door shatter and then like in a horror movie everything goes quiet and we hear only his footsteps as he tries to find us.”
Her father and boyfriend gripped the door handle with all their might, knowing it was a matter of life and death.
“The devil was all over our house, in our home, and my dad started saying goodbye to my mom.”
They had already received a text message from a neighbor that another neighbor had been shot and killed in front of their young children.
“That was the most terrifying moment for me and my family because the demons were actually all over our house, in our house, and my dad started saying goodbye to my mom.”
Geffner said she looked at her boyfriend and saw his eyes as if to say, “How are you going to survive?”, she recalled.
This is another photo from undated body camera footage taken by a downed Hamas terrorist and released by the IDF, showing the Hamas terrorist roaming a residential neighborhood in an undisclosed location in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces via The Associated Press)
The terrorists were inside the house. “Suddenly I saw the door.[knob] It’s going down — like [he was trying] I tried to open the door but my dad and boyfriend tried to stop me. [had] This kind of door fight.”
A literal tug of war ensued for several minutes.
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Then there was silence again.
Endless silence.
Would a terrorist try to shoot up the safe room?
The family remained in the secure room for 30 hours, not knowing what they would find.
Were there Hamas terrorists waiting for them to come out? Would they try to shoot up the safe room? Maybe he was in the attic, maybe he was setting the house on fire to burn it down. But there was nothing.
“To me it was a miracle,” Geffner said.
Police officers move pro-Israel protesters away from crowds gathering for a demonstration in support of Palestinians in Washington Square Park in New York City on November 24, 2023. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas following the October 7 attack, which Israeli officials said killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians in southern Israel, and took about 240 hostages. Hamas released the first group of hostages held in the deadliest attack in Israel’s history on November 24. (Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images)
Mystery and Gratitude
In other kibbutzim, Hamas was less strict on the security room doors.
Geffner said he has high school classmates who are now orphans because Hamas used explosives and shot out their doors.
“I don’t understand,” she said today. “He [the Hamas terrorist] we [were] They entered the house because they were trying to open the door and were met with resistance from us on the other side. [were] In my mind… I still keep thinking, why did he give up?
Pro-Israel counter-protesters look on as hundreds of anti-Israel agitators demonstrate outside New York University’s Stern School of Business in Manhattan on April 22, 2024. The demonstrators set up tents in front of the school and called for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
That remains a mystery, but Geffner says he’s still grateful for it.
In the months after Oct. 7, 2023, as Israel becomes preoccupied with its long-term offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Geffner faced political repercussions.
Her boyfriend, who served in the military for three months until November, told her about the network of tunnels Hamas had built in the Gaza Strip, and the safe houses and offices it had set up beneath schools and hospitals.
“It’s very simple: Israel must destroy Hamas.”
American politicians have also gone on the offensive in support of Israel in response to growing anger over the thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who have been killed in operations to eradicate Hamas.
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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) recently emphasized on “Fox & Friends” that the target is Hamas, not civilians.
“It’s very simple,” Rubio said, “Israel must destroy Hamas. Hamas basically defines victory as survival. The fact that Hamas still exists and can hold press conferences and make statements is a victory for Hamas.”
Geffner said he is frustrated by the rise in anti-Semitism and protests on American college campuses and in the streets.
“I wish all their hatred for the Jews and Israel would disappear. [that] They will just take it to Hamas,” she said.
It is not Israel or the Jews that are keeping Palestinians in chains, she said, but Hamas.
“Instead of ‘Free the Palestinians from Israel,’ they need to cry ‘Free the Palestinians from Hamas.’ Hamas runs Palestine, not us,” she said.
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But as a child of Israel who has never known a time when Israel did not exist, she is pleading not only for her own future, but also for the future of Palestinians.
“There is one planet,” Hefner said.
“I claim one space, and we all need to figure out how to live together.”
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