Life has taken on new meaning for Natalie Sanandaj. One year has passed since he narrowly escaped death in the brutal massacre in Israel on October 7th.
An Iranian-Israeli New Yorker changes his career in real estate and takes a job advocating for Israel and the Jewish community, speaking to audiences across the country and around the world and warning against the Islamic regime's proxy forces. Ta.
“Before Oct. 7, I was more naive,” she recently told the Post. “It was bliss.”
“It was much easier than it is now.”
Sanandaj, 29, who grew up on Long Island, narrowly escaped the Nova Music Festival after Hamas terrorists massacred about 370 people, mostly young people like her.
She recalled the “endless” hours-long journey to survive amid “gun fire and rockets exploding overhead.”
“I was running for my life,” she said.
Sanandaji returned to her hometown of New York shortly after the attack, but has returned to the Jewish state many times since then, and the pilgrimage has helped her heal.
“Israel did not try to kill me. The party did not try to kill me. Hamas tried to kill me,” she said.
During my first visit last December, I was reunited with Moshe Sati, a stranger who was loading people onto a truck. He ended up saving her life.
“It was kind of a full-circle moment for me to look back and see the pictures of where it all happened and all the people who didn't survive and pay my respects to them,” Sanandaj recalled.
Sanandaji plans to spend his anniversary on Monday doing something he's come to love over the past year. As a spokesperson for the Fight Against Anti-Semitism movement, he speaks to audiences about his own experiences and the dangers of anti-Semitism and terrorism.
“What I want to do most that day is participate in something that feels meaningful,” she said.
Although the unusually cheerful Sanandaj is generally “healthy and happy,” she pointed out how many survivors suffer from severe PTSD.
“Many survivors are not okay,” she noted.
With so many Nova survivors, including young people, struggling to reintegrate into the world,Let's try something” and other nonprofit organizations are helping send them to healing centers in Thailand.for survivors and injured” provides mental health and treatment services to victims of terrorism.
But this brave survivor refused to believe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time on October 7, insisting that it was quite the opposite.
“I was in the right place at the right time because of every little decision I made, whether to turn left, turn right, hide, keep running,” she said.
“Actually, I was in the right place at the right time, and that's why I survived. That's why I'm here today.”
