We’re now hearing from Orit Meir whose 21-year-old son, Almog Meir Jan, was abducted by Hamas amid scenes of horror at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on 7 October.
Speaking on Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge, she describes her son as someone who “smiles all the time”.
She explains that on 6 October, the day before the Hamas attack, Almog was helping his grandparents after his grandfather had an operation which he did “from the bottom of his heart”.
After that, he went with his friend Tomer to the Nova music festival, and she says she pointed out to him that it was taking place “very close to Gaza”.
“So he said, ‘so what?’ They got their permission from the army, from the kibbutzim around. So what?”
Asked when she first realised something was wrong, she explains that he called her at 7.45am on 7 October, and through tears, she says: “[He] said to me, ‘Mum, they closed the festival, there are rockets and shooting everywhere. I don’t know what is going on. I think I’ll call you every half an hour. Mum, I love you.’
“This was the last call from him. And after I turned on the TV, I saw all the tragedy that happened there. And I realised he is in danger. My son usually doesn’t talk to me like this, [saying] I love you.”
Ms Meir goes on to say that she published his photo on Facebook, and three hours later she received a phone call from a friend who recognised him from a video published by Hamas.
“When I saw the video. My life… It was like a knife in my stomach.
“He was lying there on the floor with four other young guys. They were tied by their hands. Some of them were beaten.
“My son was lying on the floor. He covered his face with his hand. And he was looking frightened. Frightened.
“I started to shout. I understand that now my life is going to change. Nothing will be the same. Nothing.”
‘They had to pretend they were dead’
Ms Meir was told later her son and Tomer were initially hiding from the attackers and then decided to try to flee to their car to escape – alongside two sisters they met at the festival.
This was recounted to her by Tomer’s parents, who spoke with their son as events unfolded.
After a few minutes of hiding, they had to abandon the car and they ran in different directions.
The two sisters were on the phone with their father for an hour and a half as they tried to escape, she explains, and after a while, “they decided to lie on the floor to… pretend they were dead”.
She tells Sophy Ridge that the father heard the murder of his two daughters: “He heard it and even their last breath.”
She says that Tomer “went in another direction” and was killed by Hamas fighters.
“It took them two weeks to identify his body because they burned the body after the murder. And my son is the only one alive and he was kidnapped.”
Here’s a reminder of how events unfolded on 7 October at the Nova festival…
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