Brothers Daniel and Neria Sharabi saved the lives of fellow festivalgoers at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7 by providing first aid and returning fire at Hamas terrorists. And today, they’re still working to save the lives of the survivors.
More than 250 people gathered on July 24 at Magen David Sephardic Congregation in Rockville to hear the Sharabi brothers’ story.
But their talk differed from others of its kind — it included a video with clips from the attack itself, recorded on the phones of survivors.
In the video, attendees followed the Sharabi brothers from dancing at the festival to taking cover behind cars, weaving through brush and making their way to a position behind an unmanned tank.
The video showed the harsh reality and overwhelming chaos as the festival’s thousands of attendees tried to escape. At one point, Daniel Sharabi, who served as a combat medic in the army, can be heard directing someone to apply pressure to a wound. While he tended to the wounded, he was on the phone with Yoni Skrisewsky, his reserve commander.
The synagogue’s attendees watched the 17-minute video in silence while the recorded sounds of fire from automatic weapons and RPGs echoed through the sanctuary.
Some of the gunfire heard in the video was from Neria Sharabi, who was returning fire at the terrorists using a fallen Israeli soldier’s weapon.
“The Sharabi brothers’ story needs to be told again and again. They are true heroes. In the midst of a massacre, they demonstrated extraordinary courage and calmness, saving not only themselves, but dozens of others,” said Deborah Miller, the JCRC of Greater Washington’s director of Maryland government and community relations.
While hearing and seeing the experiences of the brothers’ heroic actions inspired the audience, the gravity of the extraordinary psychological toll also weighed heavily.
“The world does not understand the trauma; they need to see this,” attendee Amy Melrose said.
Another attendee, Rachel Kauffman, shared Melrose’s sentiment, saying that the world hasn’t “bore witness” to what happened on Oct. 7, citing a “devastating” lack of compassion.
“I feel like only other Jewish people understand what we’re going through,” Melrose said.
At the synagogue, the hundreds of attendees shared an understanding. They listened as the brothers spoke, watched the videos taken during the attack, embraced the brothers and asked what they could do to help them help the survivors.
The brothers shared their hopes of providing emotional rehabilitation, financial recovery and social rehabilitation through their organization, For the Survivors and the Wounded. The brothers were motivated to create the organization by experiencing their trauma following the attack and by witnessing the struggle of fellow survivors.
In April, Guy Ben Shimon, another survivor of the festival, spoke at a parliamentary hearing in Israel to share that there had been nearly 50 suicides among the Nova survivors. While this number has been widely reported, it was refuted by Israel’s Health Ministry.
“We know of only a few cases of suicide. We must be cautious with numbers that could do public damage,” Gilad Bodenheimer, director of the ministry’s mental health division, said during the hearing.
At the synagogue, the Sharabi brothers shared how their traumatic experience continued to
impact them.
After the attack, traffic was no longer just traffic. For Daniel Sharabi, traffic could take him back to when the cars were jammed together while the festivalgoers tried to flee.
Neria Sharabi said he suffered similar flashbacks where hearing Arabic in daily life would take him back to Oct. 7.
Alongside their hurt, the brothers shared hope.
Daniel Sharabi shared the importance of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, a method used to help trauma survivors process the events.
“You don’t know how to understand what is the past, what’s the future, what’s right now — everything mixes,” Daniel Sharabi said, referring to his experience. “This treatment saved
my life.”
Neria Sharabi said the treatment made it possible for him to sleep again, though he still relives the events every day.
“We buried friend after friend,” Daniel Sharabi said. “For days after, we didn’t sleep more than three hours a night.”
