Adi Efrat was held captive by Hamas until a firefight with the IDF forced them to retreat. Photo: Andrew Crowley
For 51-year-old Adi Efrat, life will forever be divided into two parts – before and after October 7, the day Hamas terrorists took her from her home in Kibbutz Be'eri, the day her house was burned to the ground, the day when dozens of her friends and neighbors were killed. She was held captive by Hamas for more than 12 hours and was left alone with 15 terrorists until a firefight with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forced them to retreat. Thanks to the “miracle” and resilience of these soldiers, Efrat survived, as did her husband Avishai, her 21-year-old daughter Dvir and 34-year-old adopted son David, who were trapped in their homes nearby. They are among the lucky ones. More than 100 people from Kibbutz Beeri were unable to come, and at least 10 people are still missing.
Until October 7, Efrat was the manager of a resilience center in Sderot, helping trauma survivors prevent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through animal therapy. Sderot has since been evacuated, and Efrat and the surviving residents of Kibbutz Beeri have been relocated to the Dead Sea, but her connection with the animals remains. Every other day, she made the dangerous six-hour trek back to Be'eri to feed the kibbutz's farm animals and stray cats – requiring special permission to enter the zone, accompanied by two armed guards. “It’s nice to deal with life, to deal with innocent creatures,” she says.
She is in London this week to share her testimony. “First-hand testimony makes a big difference,” says Rabbi Naftali Schiff, head of the charity Jewish Futures, which brought her to Britain. “It took 50 years for Holocaust denial to begin. This massacre took five minutes,” he says of the social media whitewash and recent denial by the head of Hamas. For Efrat, what should feel like a respite from the war zone turns out to be stressful in a different way. “Seeing all these demonstrations… it's too upsetting,” she says.
In silk trousers and a smart white top – “everything is donated, all I have are pajamas and the robe that was on my back” – life on a kibbutz seems worlds away. “This is a socialist way of life—a collective community,” says Efrat of the kibbutz. Finances are pooled, they have a common dining room, a kibbutz car park, and they make common decisions about the future of the kibbutz. Efrat considers herself a “humanist” and has always believed in the equality of all races and religions. In fact, her master's thesis was on the relationship between Arabs and Israelis, in the importance of which she always believed. “To me, people are people,” she says. “I believe in humanity. I believe in goodness. And of your own free will.
'It took 50 years for Holocaust denial to begin. This massacre took five minutes.” says Efrat. Credit: Andrew Crowley
But that faith was put to the ultimate test on Saturday five weeks ago when she woke up to the sound of bombing. “It was louder than usual,” she recalls. “There are frequent rocket attacks coming from Gaza. Usually you hear a siren and go into a safe room. You close the door and wait 10 minutes and then go back to life. This is how we have been living for almost 20 years, since we soon left the Gaza Strip.”
At that moment in 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in exchange for “peaceful coexistence,” Efrat was full of hope—for Israel and for the Palestinian people. “I thought it would be the same as with Egypt or Jordan,” she says. “I thought we would go to the beaches in the Gaza Strip. I thought we were going to go buy falafel at their markets…” she says, trailing off. But then “the bombs started falling. At first they looked like fireworks, but then they became stronger. Soon every home would have a safe room. We built the Iron Dome and had to protect our borders.”
But on that fateful morning, when some 3,000 rockets were fired and an equal number of terrorists broke through the fence, the Iron Dome was unable to protect them. Efrat checked her phone and received hundreds of messages on Whtasapp – panic set in. “I saw people in the area where my husband lives writing that they heard Arabic outside the window, that terrorists were trying to break into their houses. My heart just sank.”
Efrat had been living separately from her husband for several months, but they had spent the previous two days “trying to be together again.” “We decided to do something special. So we went to Tel Aviv, trying to celebrate life and resolve our feelings for each other. We went to restaurants, to the beach and visited markets. It was wonderful. It was peaceful.” Is there a chance that she will ever feel the same way again? For the first time in our entire conversation, her stoicism breaks and she falls silent, and this blissful memory from her past life is now so painful. “I know it's possible. But I don't feel like it's possible yet. There is a difference,” she says, regaining control in trauma mode.
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