The children of Israel and the Oct. 7 massacre

I visited Israel for the second time recently. The first time was approximately six weeks after the Oct. 7th massacre by Hamas.

The country is still working to eliminate Hamas and the country will be forever changed by the evil attack. On this trip I tried to focus mostly on the children of Israel and what their future will look like. The future of any culture is dependent on their ability to remember the past without the bias of the media and for the culture to remember what their core beliefs are. In Israel, the children seem to have a very strong family bond and they do not seem to be as involved with social medial influences as the children in America are. I see a future for the children of Israel, I am not sure where the children of this country will end up.

When I arrived in Tel Aviv with CityServe, we met with Nissim Louk. His daughter, Shani, was brutally killed by Hamas terrorists while fleeing the Nova Music Festival. A picture of her lifeless body on the back of a pickup truck was described as the “picture of the year” by some institutions. I do not understand how such a horrible image could be described in those terms. We spent a lot of time with Shani’s parents, Nissim and Ricarda. They described a creative, compassionate 22-year-old girl who was constantly helping strangers. She was also an aspiring tattoo artist. While fleeing the rockets fired on the morning of Oct. 7, she came upon a group of damaged cars on the highway. She thought people might need help and she stopped to call an ambulance. She had no idea terrorists had created all the carnage. She could have kept running and maybe she would have survived, but she was not the type of person that runs without helping others. She and her two companions in the car were killed. She was shot in the head by Hamas terrorists. She most likely did not suffer that day and she did not suffer the rape and abuse that the hostages have been routinely subjected to by terrorist animals. Pure evil lives in those people.

Later in the trip we met with both of Shani’s parents in their home. They provided coffee and a heart-wrenching story of their daughter’s short life. Her mom gave a touching description of Shani. She was a creative young adult full of compassion and she had an interesting life until Oct. 7th. You could tell she had a bit of a wild streak but it makes her story that much more relatable. Ricarda has one of Shani’s tattoo designs on her right wrist as a tribute. Shani’s brother plays guitar so I expect to hear some beautiful songs from the Louk family in the future.

We also visited Hostage Square in Tel Aviv which shows a clock ticking off the days, hours, minutes and seconds the hostages have been held captive in Gaza. There is a representation of the type of tunnel the hostages have been living in for nine months. There is also an empty crib. Recently, four hostages were freed from captivity in Gaza. Their captors were a physician and journalist living in Gaza. It is inconceivable that a physician like myself could keep anyone held captive in his home.

The next day we went to Sederot. We walked to a children’s playground. The most disturbing part of the children’s play area was the presence of several bomb shelters. The children are trained to quickly run to the shelters if a missile alert sounds. They have 15 seconds to get into a shelter. The structures are painted with pictures of Smurfs and two are decorated like giant snakes. How odd that the knowledge of good and evil all started with a snake and now a cartoon version of a snake potentially protects children from the evil behind a rocket attack. Imagine your children hiding in a concrete bunker waiting to hear a missile explode.

We also stopped by a missile shelter next to a bus stop. These shelters are everywhere. Every home in the area has a bomb shelter and there is nowhere in the area where you are not seconds away from a shelter. Sadly, the shelters do not have locking doors and they became death traps when terrorists entered them with grenades and showered the occupants with machine gun fire. The shelter we visited had a grenade blast on the wall and bullet holes everywhere. The shelters served as collection points where brutal terrorists were able to kill many innocents. I remember seeing a handprint in black ash in one of the shelters. What was going through that person’s mind? Many died when terrorists lit fires at the doors of the in-home shelters. They brought tires from Gaza for this very purpose.

We toured Kibbutz Re’im. The devastation was surreal. Evil visited that place. There are stories of heroism and of individuals dying to save their neighbors. Again, imagine this in your peaceful suburban community. Terrorists were there for hours killing and torturing. How do children recover from such inhumanity?

The site of the Nova Musical Festival was another surreal experience. There are numerous pictures memorializing the dead. A sign eerily warns that missiles are still a threat. The Nova Music Festival attack left 364 children dead and approximately 40 more were kidnapped by Hamas. The site is quiet except for the wind that blows through rustling the Israeli flags. Ironically these were the same kind of young adults that might be students at colleges in the United States. Both groups probably listen to the same electronic dance music. The uninformed students in the U.S. seem to indirectly support what Hamas did to the young people at the Nova Festival. It should be mandatory that the protestors at these campuses tour the site and look at all of the mementoes left to honor the dead. If they had been in Israel before Oct. 7th they probably would have been at the party.

The next stop was for Shavuot at Ein Habesor. This moshav actually was able to defend against the terrorists. Armed with a few M16s and a rock they were able to keep the terrorists from entering the community. Nothing short of a miracle and their extreme bravery saved their lives. The festival celebrates when the Torah was given to the Jewish people by God on Mount Sinai. While the festival was going on you could hear the bombs dropping in Gaza. A reminder that a war is going on. The moshav is also building a sports complex for children. Childhood trauma is best treated with activities such as sporting events. There will be basketball courts, pickleball courts and a “Ninji” course.

One of the main points I took away from this trip was the terrible toll this terrorist attack will take on the children. Some were trapped in bomb shelters for hours while their parents tried to hold the door shut as terrorists shot through the unlocked doors and lit fires to smoke out those trapped inside. Many were murdered or taken away to be held prisoner in tunnels under Gaza. These tunnels were of course paid for by the United Nations and the international community. Some of the young adults in Israel were listening to electronic dance music at the Nova Festival just before missiles started streaming overhead and shots started ringing out from AK 47s. Students just like the ones at elite American colleges except these party goers were being shot by the Hamas terrorists glorified on our misguided college campuses. Unlike the college students protesting in the United States, the kids near Gaza are used to bomb shelters on the playground and safe rooms in their homes.

There is hope in Israel as Hamas is being destroyed. The kids in Israel seem to come from strong families and they do not constantly walk around with their eyes glued to a cell phone. Hopefully they can piece back together their lives by relying on the strong relationships within the family. The sports complex being built at Ein Habesor should also help with the healing. We know that evil will eventually be destroyed on this earth, but hopefully it will be in our lifetimes.

Dr. John A. Jenkins is a neurosurgeon who has practiced in Orlando since 1999.