This story is almost unbelievable: how, thanks to one second of courage and resourcefulness, the residents of an entire building in Sderot were saved from death on Black Saturday.
On 7 October, around 10 a.m., a squad of six Hamas terrorists surrounded the joint building at 8 Nahal Ashalim Street with weapons drawn. One of them shot and broke the windows of the lobby window. With extraordinary courage, while the terrorist walked around the ground floor and the terrified residents locked themselves in the safe rooms, neighbor Alon Ronen ran up the stairs to the electricity room on the ninth floor and cut off the power to the two elevators.
In retrospect, the decision turned out to be fateful. The murderers were apparently lazy to climb the stairs and gave up the building. One of them only entered the garden apartment, which was empty of its occupants. Half an hour later, which seemed like an eternity, during which the terrorists were caught on the building's security cameras, they left. From there, they went to nearby houses, murdered a civilian who was hiding in a safe room, shot at a worshipper who came out of a synagogue, and wounded a woman in her yard. The building's residents remained besieged in their apartments for three hours until security forces searched all floors. The next day, most of the 40 families who lived in the building left, and it is still almost empty.
"Luckily, with us, the raid ended with everyone alive." The entrance sign to 2 Nahal Ashalim Street in Sderot, photo: Efrat Eshel
The Mishayev family from the third floor returned to the building this week, but they are examining where they can move. Sivan Hatuel from the second floor refuses to even think about returning to Sderot, and agreed to return to the building with us for the first time just to examine her feelings. For many minutes, she stood in front of her apartment door with trembling hands, struggling to turn the key in the lock. "It's delusional. The house feels like a stranger to me, like it's not mine," she muttered through tears. "I see the blankets and pillows in the safe room and think back to October 7. That morning I was sure our lives were over and said goodbye to the two children with a hug. I heard loud knocking on the front door. Maybe they were the terrorists. I thought about the Jews during the Holocaust. I guess that's how they felt
When they hid from the Nazis. The anxiety is hard to describe. I imagined that the terrorists were murdering me in front of my children. It was only thanks to Alon that we were saved from a certain kitchen."
Vicky and Yaakov Mishayev and their children. "My worst nightmare has come true",
From Gaza: An Unfounded Situation
Even before Black Sabbath, the new, tall building in Sderot became a symbol for residents of Gaza's western neighborhoods. He appears in quite a few photographs from the Beit Hanoun neighborhood, as a kind of virtual target, and is the right of two prominent buildings. The straight distance is less than a kilometer, and when visibility is good, the ruins of Beit Hanoun can be clearly seen from the building.
"The situation of terrorists in the city was not far-fetched for me, although I didn't think about an invasion of thousands," Alon says. "I was with friends on the eighth floor, and from upstairs I saw the terrorists flanking the building. I understood that something big was happening, because the first videos came from the kibbutzim and communities in the envelope. None of the neighbors had weapons and there was panic in the joint WhatsApp group. People from the lower floors wrote that they were banging the door. I knew something had to be done. I was scared, but I quietly climbed the stairs when I heard the terrorists firing at the building and balconies. As far as they were concerned, we were easy prey."
Your neighbors believe that thanks to you, their lives were saved.
"I think it's fate. Luckily, it was a squad of relatively lazy terrorists."
Do you ever think what would have happened if you hadn't unplugged the elevators?
"No, we'll never know what would have happened in retrospect anyway. It's lucky that with us, the raid ended with everyone alive. In my testimony to the police, I heard that five of the squad had been killed by the SWAT team in the neighborhood next to us, and the sixth had been arrested. According to the description, I linked him to whoever appears on the cameras. This is the younger of the two, with a white ribbon on his forehead. We will never forget his face, and the one who walked around the ground floor."
Lobby. A terrorist with his hand bandaged looking for victims, photo: from the security camera
Day before: Unclear panic attack
This week, an unusual commotion was seen at the entrance to Sderot. A large tent has been erected on the intersection, and dozens of police officers and soldiers roam next to it, some manning the metal barrier on the road. Immediately afterwards there is silence. The roads are empty of cars and the streets are pedestrianized. Just an older couple, he with a cane and she with a bag of sandwiches in hand, sitting on a shaded bench alone and their gloomy gaze expresses everything. Lively Boulevard has become a ghost town. The square where the white van of terrorists was photographed, with one of them hanging on the door while driving, also looks abandoned.
A black shuttle vehicle suddenly crosses the road at speed. He turned toward where the local police station stood. The car stops and a few English-speaking tourists get off. Morbidly, this battered complex has become a tourist attraction. At the police station, one of the heroic battles of October 7 took place, and only a day later were the 25 terrorists who had barricaded themselves in the area eliminated. Eight policemen and a SWAT fighter fell. The large building remains a sand lot. In the center is a huge menorah surrounded by Israeli flags.
Five minutes drive from the police station, in the parking lot of the building empty of cars, Sivan (31) stands in front of the place that has been her home for the past three years and tries to catch her breath. Together with her husband Nuriel (32) and their two sons, Lavi (5.5) and Ari (two and a half years), the family was evacuated to a hotel in Tel Aviv, which houses many Sderot residents.
Recently, a Clalit Health Fund branch was established there for them, and she currently serves as deputy administrative director in the Tel Aviv District. As she sat on the sidewalk, struggling to get close to the entrance, Sivan recalled how, just hours before the raid, she was overcome by severe distress.
"After the holiday meal, I watched the news," her voice broke. "I saw a caption referring to tension in the fence and the possibility of riots. It wasn't new, but at that moment I had a feeling something bad was about to happen. I told Nuriel that I thought we would escalate after the holiday, but I didn't realize how close it was."
"I didn't realize how close it was." Sivan Hatuel, Photo: Efrat Eshel
Sivan and Nuriel Hatuel with their children. "We had a feeling that something bad was about to happen", Photo: Efrat Eshel
Tamar Ronen (35), Alon's wife, also had premonitions. They live in the garden apartment adjacent to the entrance with their three children – Amit (10), Omer (8) and Rom (2). "Two weeks before the massacre I had an unclear panic attack," she says honestly. "I felt like someone was about to come into our house and I kept locking everything up. Every time a motorcycle passed on the road, I felt like they were going to shoot us. It came out of nowhere. Alon didn't understand what I was going through. Every night, after he and the children went to bed, I closed all the windows, including the iron plate of the safe room window.
"On Friday morning, Alon brought the new refrigerator we bought, and on the way it broke. Unlike usual, I stayed calm and told him: 'There is nothing, atonement for iniquities. Apparently something bad should have happened, and instead the refrigerator broke.' In the evening we went to my parents for Sukkot dinner. When we came back the whole apartment was flooded with water because of a pipe that burst. I asked Alon, 'What other bad thing will happen to us?' A few hours later, we got the answer."
Alon with his wife Tamar and their children. Living in the garden apartment adjacent to the entrance, photo: Efrat Eshel
Alon (36), who owns an independent clothing and equipment business for cyclists, went for a ride with friends on Saturday at 6 a.m. With him was also a colleague, his neighbor from the eighth floor. "We planned to meet in Bari and train for a mountain biking competition," he recalls. "I usually ride from Sderot, but that morning I left with the car. In retrospect, that was one of the decisions that saved me. When we got to the gas station at the entrance to the village of Gaza, I heard a lot of booms. The sky was full of interceptions and smoke. The sirens didn't stop and I was sure it was a response to some kind of assassination in Gaza. We went into the shelter and I called Tamar. She didn't answer, because she forgot her phone outside the safe room, but something didn't work out for me. I also had a bad feeling."
At 6:50 A.M., Alon decided to return to Sderot. "I drove at 170 kilometers per hour without knowing that the terrorists were already in the kibbutzim and surrounding communities. The road was empty and only explosions were in the air. I also continued driving at red lights and stop signs. I got home within five minutes. If I had lingered a little longer in the village of Gaza, the terrorists would have caught Amit and me and probably killed us."
Moments of anxiety: shooting and saying goodbye to the children
The deadly surprise attack, which began at 6:29 a.m., caught Ilan Peretz, 59, who lives alone in a ninth-floor penthouse, calm. Every day, before he goes to his brand store in Netivot, he drinks his morning coffee in front of the view of Gaza. "We got used to it," he says. "Over the past five years, since the building was built, I have seen before everyone else every missile that comes out and also the shelling by the IDF. I know the pictures they take from Gaza, in which they see our building as a stationary target. I learned to live with this fear, because this is our country and we have no other, but on Saturday the number of red alarms was very unusual."
The correspondence of the residents in the building's WhatsApp group shows the terrifying turn of events. At first, an official announcement was sent by the municipality, according to which the residents are asked to remain in the protected areas. At 7:08 a.m., Shirley Schlafman sent a panicked message from the eighth floor. "Listen, did you hear gunshots???? I came out of the safe room and heard a lot of gunshots," she wrote.
Six minutes later, Allon wrote, "There is an infiltration, stay home." At that moment, he and Tamar decided to leave the safe room and went up with the children to Amit's apartment on the eighth floor, next to Shirley's.
Tamar: "When we got upstairs, I told Alon that he had to bring us things, because we hadn't even brushed our teeth, and I asked him to close the door to the house."
Resident Shirley. "I heard a lot of gunshots", photo: Efrat Eshel
Alon: "I remained calm, even though videos of terrorists started coming in Sderot, and just in case I locked the door to the building. Amit and I sat on the balcony, looked at the street and also at Gaza, and waited for the Israeli response, which never came."
At 7:55 A.M., Allon spotted the terrorists. "For a split second I saw three people walking on the road and they disappeared behind houses of land. I wasn't sure who they were and kept peeking out. Then I saw them coming out of the adjacent neighborhood. Two of them had a white ribbon on their heads. While I was calling the police, they ran toward the building."
At 8:02 a.m., Alon wrote in the group: "There are terrorists downstairs, go home." The panic of the tenants reached a peak. One of them noted that they were shooting at the building itself. Four minutes later, Allon wrote that he had unplugged the elevators. Another resident added that he had checked the cameras and the terrorists were in the driveway.
Ilan: "When I saw Alon's message, I went out to the balcony and saw six terrorists downstairs. They walked around as if they were on the promenade or at camp. I went inside the safe room, took a knife and waited for them. I didn't mean to die quietly. First I would have killed one of them. I was mostly afraid they'd throw a grenade and set the whole house on fire. Luckily they were stupid."
The residents' correspondence in the building's WhatsApp group shows the terrifying turn of events, photo: from the private album
On the third floor live Vicky (34) and Yaakov (36) Mishayev. She tests software in high-tech, he owns an event photography company. They were both sitting in the safe room with their four children – Guy (14), Itai (8), Netanel (5) and Noa (3) – and were horrified when they heard loud knocking on their apartment door. "My worst nightmare came true that morning," Vicki says. "We knew that we were constantly being watched and photographed from Beit Hanoun. When Alon wrote that the terrorists were in front of the building, Yaakov and Guy went to our room to peek outside. I went out after them and saw a terrorist hiding behind the wall of a house, getting a little closer and hiding again."
Yaakov: "I saw two terrorists with vests, one with something that looked like an RPG on their shoulder and the other with a ribbon on their forehead. I froze. I looked at Vicky in shock and told her to get me a tranquilizer. It's a terrible situation. My family could be murdered and I have no way to protect them. It's an indescribable fear. Guy and I dragged the fridge and blocked the door, and then we also put the heavy dining area and sofas. I didn't think that's why they wouldn't come in, but I hoped it would delay them."
Vicky found herself in an impossible situation. "Noa had a fever and couldn't stop crying," her voice trembles. "I closed her mouth so they wouldn't hear her and I was afraid to strangle her. I kept hugging and kissing and begging her to calm down, but it didn't help."
Yaakov: "And there are bursts of gunfire outside. Then a loud explosion. I guess that's when they smashed the glass in the lobby. I took a kitchen knife and kept it by the safe room door."
Vicki: "For me, those were our last moments. I said goodbye to the children with hugs and kisses, told them that if we died it would be together, and that Mom and Dad loved them. I saw the fear in their eyes. In my heart I prayed to God to save at least the children."
Knocking on the door: "Our lives are over"
At 8:06 A.M., the six terrorists gathered in front of the entrance to the building and spoke to each other. Security camera footage shows one of them moving slightly to the side to keep no one coming from the adjacent parking lot. The other two walked around the building, looking for another way in. A terrorist wearing an olive-colored vest fired at the lobby window next to Alon and Tamar's apartment, and then broke the glass in his hand, wounding him. While bandaging the wound, an elderly terrorist with a blue shirt and a white ribbon on his forehead guarded by the broken window with his weapon drawn. Another video shows the wounded terrorist walking around the corridor leading to some of the garden apartments. He turned on the light, pressed the elevator button, and left blood marks behind.
Then he disappeared for long minutes. The terrorist entered one of the apartments and searched in vain for the occupants - a couple and an elderly mother who had previously fled and hid in the electric closet on the third floor. The terrorist opened the refrigerator, took an apple and sat down to eat near the dining area. Two members of the squad alternately guarded by the window.
At this time, Saliel Castjon (34) was from the seventh floor at work in Beersheba, as a member of the rescue forces. His wife, Corley, and their three children, ages 5, 3 and <> months, were alone in the safe room.
"I was nervous," he says in a heavy French accent. "I wanted to leave everything and go home. I read in the group that none of the neighbors had weapons and that they were anxious because the army and police hadn't come. I tried to catch my shift supervisor, but he was busy. My colleagues said that I had nothing to do in the building anyway, only with a gun in front of terrorists with long arms and RPGs. When I read that Alon had unplugged the elevators, I hoped that the terrorists would not have the strength to walk up to our floor. In my area, it was a mess. I ran from place to place.
"In one place they burned down a house, in another they shot people. I kept thinking I was saving people at a time when my family might be slaughtered. Fortunately, they uploaded the security camera footage to the group only when the squad was no longer there. I don't know how I would have acted if it had appeared while the terrorists were still in the building. I probably would have left everything, gone to Sderot and maybe been murdered on the way."
From right: Saliel Castjon, Vicky Mishayev and Ilan Peretz. "The children are still traumatized", photo: Liron Moldovan
Sivan cannot imagine a situation in which she was in the safe room with only the children, without her husband, Nuriel (31), who works in a factory in Ashkelon. "Ari cried, and Lavi told him, 'Shut up, shut up, because of you they will kill us,'" she says. "A 5-year-old shouldn't be afraid of death. Then they knocked on the door. My heart was on 200 and I felt like I was going to faint. A few minutes later, there was shooting at the safe room window, and immediately afterwards I heard a woman outside shouting, 'Mom, Mom, I was shot. I'm dead.' I took Psalms and prayed. The terrorists are here and there is no army. How do I look after my children? I wrote in the family group that I was going to die and there was no help."
Do you know if the terrorists were the ones knocking on your door?
"I have no idea, because the cameras are only in the lobby and outside and not in the stairwell or floors. Maybe it's a family that ran away from home, or maybe it's the terrorists. But at that moment I had a real feeling that our lives were over."
The signs of gunfire can still be seen in the lobby of the building. Some are at the front door, others are in the glass paneling next to one of the garden apartments. The shattered window is now sealed by a piece of nylon. The blood stains left by the wounded terrorist on the elevator button and light switch were cleaned, and the broken glass was removed. The silence in the place is thunderous. Although most of the residents were evacuated within the first two days, Ilan decided to stay home. "That's where I feel safest," he says. "Every morning I see Israeli Air Force planes and mushrooms of smoke over Gaza. In the past, we had an excellent relationship with the residents there, but now they don't interest me. After raping women and murdering children, the image of Satan is small on them. Our country has lost its innocence."
Are you going to stay here later as well?
"This is my home. I lived in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but 20 years ago I voluntarily chose to live here."
Saliel also remained in the building, but his wife and children flew to France for relatives. "It's because I work all the time and there's no point in them being left alone," he explains. "There were days when only Ilan and I were here. At first, I came back from my shifts and entered the building with my gun drawn. For the first two weeks, we left the elevators unplugged and only restored power when one of us left the house or came home from work."
This week, Vicky and Jacob examined how they felt at home from which they were evacuated. They stayed at a boarding school in Kfar Saba, and the time allotted to them was until the beginning of 2024. "I feel like being in our house, and we've been through all the operations and wars here, but this time I'm afraid," she admits. "There are no educational frameworks for children here and we will examine what the options are in Netivot. We haven't decided what to do yet and if we'll stay at all. We're still undecided."
How do the children react?
"They're still traumatized. Nathaniel behaves normally all day, but when darkness falls, he screams crying for no reason. Itai would not fall asleep at boarding school, and until early morning he would look apprehensively out the window. If a camper passed by, he was sure he was a terrorist. I still don't sleep at night either. The sights of Black Saturday come back to me. How we saw covered bodies on the way, bullet marks, blood in the streets of Sderot. In Kfar Saba, I met with a psychiatrist after every night I thought I heard people knocking on the door. Yaakov sometimes dreams that terrorists enter our home and murder the family. We have lost faith in the country."
Life After:
"We are not happy"
Sivan still has nightmares, but they have diminished since her family also entered therapy and saw a psychologist. "Every once in a while I dream that terrorists enter the apartment," she shudders. "Nuriel and I hold the safe room door by force and they fire at it. That's when I always wake up in a panic. I don't know how we'll get back to Sderot. How can I sit in my living room without thinking about terrorists? What will give me a sense of security? We have life until October 7 and life after, and both are completely different. I feel like we're not as happy as we used to be."
Tamar's feelings are the same as Sivan's. Although Alon travels weekly to the house in Sderot and checks that everything there is in order, she still refuses to return to the city where she grew up. The family is currently staying at a hotel in Ra'anana, and Tamar recently returned to her job as a kindergarten teacher in a special kindergarten opened in Kfar Saba for evacuee children.
"The picture of the terrorist is still in my head," she almost whispers. "Home is no longer my safe place, certainly as long as there is fighting. Lately, I've had a lot of nightmares about terrorists murdering us, and I wake up sweating and with a rapid heartbeat. Every door slam makes me jump. One time I forced Alon to come home from a meeting just because a door slammed. If I see motorcycles or a white van, I petrify on the spot. When Amit and Omer hear ambulance sirens, they seek shelter. At night, they sometimes wake up crying. They don't want to go back to Sderot right now, but if that happens, I'll probably surround our garden apartment with walls and bars. My stomach turns just at that thought."
TalA@IsraelHayom.co.il
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