How one police officer saved dozens from certain death in Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7
Sharing his story with army and police, Eyal Aharon tells how he charged into battle to save his sons when they fled the Supernova massacre and found themselves surrounded by terrorists
Times of Israel
Jun 4, 2024
When Police Superintendent Eyal Aharon began his journey towards Kibbutz Re’im from his home in the southern Kibbutz Beit Kama at 8:00 a.m. on October 7, he was determined to get his sons back — alive.
An hour and a half earlier, Hamas had launched what would be the largest terror onslaught in Israeli history, as thousands of gunmen flooded into southern Israel under the cover of heavy rocket fire.
Aharon’s two sons, Geva, 20, and Shaked, 23, were at the Supernova music festival on the Gaza border near Kibbutz Re’im when the rockets started flying overhead. Fleeing the chaos, they quickly jumped in their car and drove to the kibbutz while dialing their father.
But without realizing it, the boys were following a truck full of terrorists. Passing several dead bodies at the kibbutz entrance, they cruised into a neighborhood crawling with invaders. Still unaware, they parked next to more Hamas vehicles and made their way to a public bomb shelter.
“Dad, don’t come. There are terrorists,” they told him. But Aharon was already on his way.
The unprecedented scale of the invasion that day made the victims all the more vulnerable. It was unimaginable at the time that thousands of Hamas-led terrorists could breach the border and occupy Israeli towns for long hours on end.
Kibbutzim and villages were overrun with terrorists, who murdered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 to the Gaza Strip while committing horrific acts of brutality and rape. At the Supernova festival alone, 360 were killed and dozens abducted amid some of the massacre’s most gruesome atrocities.
Meanwhile, a young man who saw Shaked and Geva outside at the kibbutz told them to avoid the bomb shelter and ushered them into a safe room inside a home along with a dozen other confused partygoers.
That young man was 20-year-old Staff Sgt. Guy Simhi, an off-duty paratrooper who had also been at the festival. He stood outside the safe room with a friend of his who had a gun, and the two of them killed two terrorists before the rest of the invaders caught onto them and tossed a grenade into the house. The friend managed to escape, but Simhi was injured and then shot dead outside.
Aharon stopped at the Urim Israel Defense Forces base to drop off a bag for Geva, who was meant to report for duty there as soon as he could. But nobody opened the gate for him.
“There’s just no discipline in the IDF these days,” Aharon later said he was thinking as he drove off.
Inside, Hamas terrorists were slaughtering IDF soldiers.
Back in the safe room in Kibbutz Re’im, Shaked stood against the heavy door, holding the handle in place so the gunmen could not turn it. After several tries, the terrorists gave up and opened fire on the door.
Around that time, Aharon’s phone buzzed with several messages from Geva.
“Dad, they shot Shaked. Don’t come.”
Shaked was shot twice in the leg. He made no sound. The terrorists left the vicinity of the safe room, realizing they would need more power to open the door.
Looking back on it many months later, Aharon said he still does not fully understand what was going through his head at that moment.
He sent a WhatsApp sticker of Alf, the alien from the late 1980s TV show of the same name.
His next stop was the Ofakim police station. Only when he arrived at around 8:30 a.m. did he begin to understand the scope of the situation.
“I see one officer with a bullet in his head, another with a bullet in his abdomen,” he told the group in Sderot. “Then I finally got it.”
An encounter with ‘police officers’
After exchanging information with the officers at Ofakim and securing an M-16, Aharon was back on the road to Re’im.
“It was apocalyptic,” he recalled. “There were dead people still in the driver’s seat of their cars, still on the road. And those who tried to run were [also] shot dead.”
His phone buzzed again with incoming text messages from Geva.
“Shaked is bleeding.”
“Are you coming?”
“Dad???”
“They’re at the door. They’re outside.”
“I’m on my way,” he replied.
Aharon was forced to enter the kibbutz on foot after terrorists shot at his car, disabling it. Dodging bullets and RPGs, he dashed into the kibbutz at full speed.
“What did I think about? ‘Forrest Gump,'” Aharon said, laughing. “I swear. That’s what went through my head. Run, don’t look back.”
After a short while, he met a group of Border Police and Magen (police anti-smuggling unit) officers. One of them was bleeding from a wound in his back but insisted that if he could walk and shoot, he could still fight.
Aharon stayed with that group for some time, carefully making his way through the kibbutz toward the house where Shaked and Geva were hiding. Suddenly, he heard a voice calling out in Hebrew.
“Don’t shoot! I’m a police officer! Don’t shoot, police!”
A young man emerged from the bushes about 25 meters (82 feet) away, smiling. He wore a blue Israeli police officer’s uniform, speaking unaccented Hebrew.
The smile fell when he realized Aharon was not alone.
“Which station are you from?” Aharon asked as his companions drew closer to him.
“From the Yasam.”
That was the wrong answer based on context and the officer’s uniform. But Aharon was willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
“There was a party,” Aharon explained to the IDF soldiers gathered in front of him in Sderot. “Things got crazy, and maybe he ended up in the wrong uniform.”
“I’ll ask you again,” Aharon told the strange police officer. “What station are you from?”
“From the Yasam.”
He then noticed the green Hamas bandana poking out from under the police helmet. He saw a group of men in Israeli Border Police uniforms join the strange officer. The time for words was over.
Aharon fired the first shot. His group killed three of the gunmen, whose comrades returned fire and launched RPGs at extremely close range. Eventually, they ran off, leaving behind their fallen.
Shmendrick!
Aharon quickly messaged his sons to tell them he was all right and parted ways with his group to continue his mission.
He moved slowly and carefully, hiding every time he saw a terrorist, waiting for them to pass before starting to move again.
Then, another voice called out to him.
“Shmendrick!”
He turned to see a disgruntled elderly resident of Kibbutz Re’im approaching from behind.
“You left me three dead bodies. What am I supposed to do with them?”
He instructed the man to go back to his safe room, which he did, muttering angrily about terrorists.
Aharon kept going. As he reached the kibbutz dining hall, a bullet flew past his face. He located the source of the gunfire, took out the attacker at point-blank range, and kept moving.
He reached the kibbutz infirmary. Seeing more and more terrorists wearing Israeli uniforms emerging from all sides, he took cover behind a house.
“Shhh!”
Aharon turned around to see a young man holding a newborn baby inside the house. His hand was over the baby’s mouth so it could not cry out. He could see the tiny veins popping out of the little one’s forehead as he tried to scream.
The father was holding a loaded gun in his other hand.
“Either come inside or get away. Don’t stay out there.” Aharon was making them a target, so he left.
He crept toward the location his son had sent him on WhatsApp, dodging groups of roving terrorists whose numbers seemed to be increasing as he drew closer to his destination.
Finally, he found the house. It was empty, the walls riddled with bullet holes. There were pools of blood on the floor. He was too late. He abandoned all hope and lay down on the couch, ready to die.
A moment later, he received a text message from his sons and realized he was in the wrong house.
Aharon sprang back into action. Leaving the house, he saw several Hamas gunmen set fire to another home.
“I saw the house up in flames. I saw [terrorists] trying to get into the safe room,” he recalled. “I knew there must be people in there. But I couldn’t do anything about it. There were maybe 17 people there, with RPGs, grenades, and Kalashnikovs. I had no chance.”
Aharon promised himself he would return after completing his mission and saving his sons, but he had to keep going.
He reached a beautiful area with four homes surrounding a shared pergola. His children hid inside one of those houses, and he was now entirely sure which house it was.
It was the house crawling with Hamas operatives.
‘Close enough to smell the man’
He hid behind one of the other houses and found himself mere feet away from a Hamas terrorist standing apart from the group, speaking on the phone.
“I was close enough to smell the man,” he told the soldiers gathered in front of him months later.
Aharon was going to have to kill him. It was the safest, most direct way forward.
He first lifted his M-16, but decided against using it. Getting a proper angle with the large weapon would require him to move, exposing his position.
He took out his handgun and raised it in the direction of the terrorist’s head. Then he thought better of it. The noise of the gunshot would alert the group to his presence immediately.
He took out his knife, realizing he had never used it in the field.
“What is easy in practice is very hard in real life,” Aharon said, describing the tense moment.
Holding the knife, Aharon recalled, a million thoughts ran through his head all at once. What angle would he slice at? What motion would he use to slit the terrorist’s throat? What if he sliced his hand open? What if he lunged and then couldn’t finish the job?
He steeled himself, took a breath, once again inhaling the scent of his target, and got ready to pounce.
And then the man walked away. Aharon exhaled, sheathing the knife.
He quickly found a more secure hiding place among some tall bushes on the courtyard’s edge and texted his sons.
“There are some 20 terrorists in your house. Stay silent.”
Geva, meanwhile, heard footsteps in the house and unlocked the safe room, expecting his father to open the door. When he received that text, he nearly had a heart attack.
He locked the door again, hearing voices speaking in Arabic approaching the safe room. He peeked out of one of the bullet holes from earlier.
Aharon had been maintaining contact with his commanding officer throughout the morning, keeping him informed of the situation. At that point, seeing dozens of terrorists converge on the house where his children were hiding, he urgently requested backup.
He heard gunshots close by. His phone buzzed.
“Dad, are you okay?”
Aharon ran into an empty house and snapped a selfie, smiling. He knew it might be the last time his children saw him alive.
For the better part of an hour, he silently watched the Hamas terrorists coming and going in small groups, receiving orders from their commander, who had a detailed map of the kibbutz.
At 12:40 p.m., Israeli reinforcements arrived under the command of Col. Roi Levy. This time, it was Aharon who said, “Don’t shoot, police!”
Levy told Aharon to go with a group of soldiers and evacuate the burning house he had passed by earlier. In the meantime, other troops would try to get to the house where his sons were hiding.
The battle raged around them, with Shaked and Geva in the eye of the storm. Aharon knew it would take time to reach them. He went to the burning house along with a group of Levy’s troops, managing to save all 15 people hiding inside.
Grounds for divorce
His phone buzzed — a voice note from his wife.
“Eyal, I want to make sure it’s you. Answer me with a recording, please. The kids are with you? In Re’im?”
He answered her in a message he later joked would have been reasonable grounds for divorce.
It opened with gunshots and shouting.
“No, the kids aren’t with me.” More gunshots, yelling.
“The kids are still hiding in — in the house.” More gunshots.
“There is a battle in their exact location. We are trying to get to them.” The message ends.
When Aharon played it for the soldiers listening to his story seven months after October 7, everyone laughed at the absurdity of such a message. But at the time, Aharon reminded them, his wife was grappling with the possibility of losing both her children and her husband at any given moment.
As he was evacuating the burning home, Aharon saw a body lying on the ground. He did not know it at the time, but he was looking at the body of Staff Sgt. Simhi, the man who saved his sons’ lives.
Aharon returned to the main battle site, where his sons were still hidden. He flitted from one house to another, helping different groups search and secure the buildings, dodging gunfire and RPG explosions along the way. There was still no sign of rescue for Shaked and Geva.
Time passed slowly while the battle raged on. Finally, Israeli troops reached the house and rescued Aharon’s sons and the other 12 people hiding with them. Shaked came out on a stretcher under heavy fire, accompanied by his brother and an IDF medic.
A grenade fell a few meters away as they were leaving the house. Geva immediately covered Shaked with his own body as the grenade exploded. No one was hurt, but Shaked’s tourniquet came apart. The medic gave his weapon to Geva and redressed the wound while Geva provided cover fire.
Another grenade fell less than one meter away.
Geva threw himself on top of his brother again and waited for the impact, but it never came. The grenade was a dud.
Meanwhile, Aharon was in a different area of the kibbutz entirely, holed up in a destroyed, bloody house, shooting at terrorists as they ran by under cover of smoke bombs.
One of the majors serving under Col. Levy approached.
“The commander wants to speak with you.” Aharon could not read his face.
“What happened?”
“Go speak to him.”
Preparing for the worst, Aharon went to speak with Levy.
“We have enough soldiers here, pops,” Levy said, smiling when Aharon arrived. “You’re getting in the way.”
Levy told him to go to the infirmary, where his sons were alive, waiting for him. They hugged, and Aharon left to reunite with his sons.
A few minutes after the joyful reunion, Aharon saw two medics bring another body into the infirmary. It was Levy.
“We have a wounded soldier here,” one of the medics told Aharon.
“No,” Aharon corrected him, “that’s your commander. The commander has been killed. Not just a soldier.”
He had no time to grieve at that moment. He still had to get his sons out of the kibbutz. While waiting for a vehicle to pick them up, Aharon called his wife.
“I’m with the kids.”
“You’re with the kids? Thank God.”
“…Shaked was shot in the leg.”
“What? Shaked was shot?? In the leg? Is he okay?”
A few hours later, she visited Shaked at Soroka Medical Center.
Lessons for the next generation
Aharon’s heroism made Israeli news in the early weeks of the war, and he eventually developed a formal presentation to share his story with soldiers and police officers. On May 7, he spoke with intelligence corps soldiers stationed in Sderot. The group was gathered in the NatureGrowth SafeSpace, a hi-tech office converted into a public coworking space.
As he recounted his tale, Aharon showed the IDF soldiers a few slides with pictures of the utter devastation wrought on Kibbutz Re’im that day and more photos of his smiling family in the hospital. He explained that both bullets hit Shaked’s bone, and Geva had dressed the wound incredibly poorly. Which was lucky; if he had successfully stopped all the blood flow with a proper tourniquet, Shaked would have lost the leg.
“We sent him to a medics course after that,” Aharon joked.
Aharon took a lot of lessons away from that day, he told the intelligence corps soldiers.
He learned that knowing when not to shoot is at least as important as knowing when to do so. He learned that keeping a cool head under pressure can save lives. He also learned that while a police officer should always be prepared for a shootout, he should never be too eager for one.
And although he is not religious, Aharon decided that God must have been watching over him and keeping him safe.
But the main lesson he wanted the soldiers to take away from his talk was this: Be good, have fun, enjoy life, and love others.
“Our lives can change in a moment,” he said. “We never know what the next step is. Always see the glass half full. Love each other. ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ is not just a phrase. Amid the darkness, you must always see the light.”
1 comment:
"Knowing when not to shoot is as good as knowing when to shoot." Good advice. (USA)
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