MELANIE PHILLIPS ·
בתי בן צבי
Trigger warning: disturbing content
On October 7, during the massacre at the Nova party, Bar Miransky was there.
You haven’t heard her story yet, but now, five months after the last bullet was removed from her body, it can be told.
The grenades thrown into the shelter. The terrorist squads returning again and again. The moral dilemmas in the face of unimaginable scenes. And the message she asked Yuval Rafael, who hid with her in the shelter, to pass on to her parents:
“I opened my eyes, looked right and left, and saw that I was lying beneath a body. Constant, endless screams, people dismembered. At this stage there were severely wounded people—most could have survived—but they slowly died from their injuries because no one came to rescue us. To my left, a girl whose hand and leg were blown off by a grenade; behind me, a head. To my right, a girl was dying. We realized we were in a death trap.
They entered the shelter, shooting and spraying repeatedly. Then I felt something hit me—three bullets in my back. I had four bullets in my body; you don’t understand why the air leaves you, you feel hollow. Whoever is still alive tries to cover themselves with bodies; we were essentially fighting over corpses. A woman beside me was dying for five hours, screaming ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ I only thought about how to make her quiet—because if she didn’t, the next squad would kill you.
The smells intensified, people lost their humanity, they urinated on themselves, the air was thick. You realize you’re not getting out of here. In the sixth hour, another squad came and fired again—I got a fifth bullet in my lung. I understood my time was running out and every breath was critical. In the corner of my eye, I saw Adar and Yuval, and I told them, ‘Tell my parents I love them.’ Another squad threw in two Molotov cocktails—they wanted to burn us. Someone got up and ran out. I counted in my heart: one, two, three, four, five… at five I heard a shot.
We found a bottle of water. By unspoken agreement, anyone still alive took a sip. You live between light and shadow—between the front of the shelter, where the terrorists laughed outside, and hiding among the bodies. You are dying inside yourself, just waiting for your turn. I reviewed my life in ten minutes. It was fun—and that’s it. The bodies of pure people who had just gone out to dance—now they are my shield. And my turn will come soon, and then others will use me as a shield. The guy next to me moved my hand, trying to see if I was still alive. I felt like a failure, because they were murdered and I’m here. Because I silenced the last breaths of people so they would be quiet.”