Page 42 - October 7 - Teresa Pirola

Another speaker is the mother of Yotam, 28, a young man with a love for music, a drummer who was looking forward to playing at a concert later that day on October 7. Instead, he was taken into Gaza by Hamas as a hostage. His final message, as terrorists entered his home and set it alight, and smoke filled his lungs: ‘I don’t know if I can survive this. I love you’. His family has had no word from him since, but he is believed to be alive.
Another in this little delegation is a close friend of Noa, the 26-year-old Israeli woman with Japanese heritage whose kidnapping was filmed as she was taken screaming on a Hamas militant’s motorbike. Her boyfriend, Avinatan, was also abducted. Earlier that day, as the pair fled the music festival with hundreds of others—amidst 360 corpses, stench, confusion and the barrage of bullets—she sent a desperate text: ‘Praying that someone will save us’.
Each speaker represents an individual family. Yet they all belong to one great family—the Jewish people—united in this room and throughout the world as they confront the devastating aftermath of October 7. The terror of that day continues to torment families, their lives held hostage by not knowing the fate of their loved ones. ‘It’s like being on Schindler’s List’, says one, with reference to the recent hostage negotiations. ‘Who will live, and who will die?’
‘All of you, with your thoughts and prayers, give me and Yotam strength’, says Yotam’s mother. ‘He is not just my son; he is yours too. He is truly a son of the Jewish people.’ Her words capture the message of this hour: there is a unity, solace and extraordinary strength that comes from being Jewish, from knowing that Jews everywhere—whatever their differences in culture, spoken language, political or religious opinions— share a common sense of family, of peoplehood.
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