Content warning: This article contains descriptions of violence and sexual violence.
Maroons for Israel hosted Gal Cohen-Solal, a survivor of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, during a “Faces of October Seventh” event on February 24. Approximately 27 students, along with deans-on-call, gathered to listen to his account.
Cohen-Solal was a cosmetics company manager living on Kibbutz Re’im, located less than 4.5 miles from the Gaza Strip. On October 7, the kibbutz was attacked by Hamas fighters for around eight hours before Israeli soldiers arrived to help its residents escape.
Cohen-Solal described “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’s name for the attack, which took over multiple Israeli bases and kibbutzim outside of Gaza on Shemini Atzeret, a Jewish holiday.
According to Israeli authorities, the October 7 attacks killed 1,200 people and at least 250 people were taken hostage.
Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 46,600 people, and over half of the identified victims were women, children, or the elderly. An estimated 10,000 bodies are left under the rubble and not included in that death toll, with almost 60 percent of buildings in Gaza damaged or destroyed by airstrikes. Kibbutz Re’im, to which Cohen-Solal’s family had moved on October 1, 2023, was subjected to particularly sustained assault due to its strategic location near a road junction, according to Cohen-Solal.
He described “hearing lots of sirens” early in the morning, waking his wife to arrange an evacuation suitcase, and preparing to leave the kibbutz.
“It was very difficult and hard to get out because there were lots of sirens, and we started to hear lots of gunshots,” Cohen-Solal said. “My wife asked what it was, and I said the terrorists were probably firing rockets.”
“At 7:30 a.m., the guy in charge [of the kibbutz] gave me a call, and I told him we wanted to leave, [because] there was a [hole] in my safe room.” However, he was told to stay in his safe room “or die.” He credits this information with saving his life, recalling burnt corpses in cars on the road leading out of his village.
Cohen-Solal showed a video of Hamas fighters pulling up to the kibbutz gate in a convoy of white pickup trucks and forcing their way through the gate. As residents attempted to flee down the road, “they were shot like ducks in a range,” he said.
But he noted that the distraction they provided may have saved his family, which “[he] will think about until the end.”
As the [Hamas] soldiers began to enter the kibbutz, “they got distracted trying to shoot people, like, fleeing from the Nova [music] festival, so they were distracted from their mission,” he said.
The Nova festival was a trance festival targeted by Hamas on October 7. The attack resulted in hundreds of deaths as confused attendees, often under the influence of psychedelics and other drugs, attempted to flee.
Cohen-Solal showed video footage of fighters leading two hostages out of the kibbutz to vehicles at 8:15 a.m. According to Cohen-Solal, only “six armed guys” in the kibbutz were left to fight against “about a hundred terrorists.”
By this point, Cohen-Solal knew more about what was going on, having received updates from the kibbutz WhatsApp group chat.
“When the terrorists entered our kibbutz, they knew exactly where to go,” Cohen-Solal said. “They had pictures.… Some of our workers were from Gaza and took pictures.”
Cohen-Solal recounted his feelings huddled in the safe room as Hamas fighters drew closer.
“You just sit and wait for your own death. Simple as that.… So we start to hear all the shooting coming towards me, and I start to hear them by my house. At some point… the bullets started to hit my house.… I was 100 percent sure I was going to lose my life. The only thing that I thought about was how I was gonna keep my family safe,” he said. “There was a vent in my safe [room], where they could just throw in a hand grenade from outside… and I thought, I will jump on that grenade so I will save my family’s life.”
“We heard them laughing, and shouting [outside], my kids started crying and screaming, but we had to get them to stop.” Cohen-Solal continued. “My wife put her hands on [their three-year-old’s] mouth.… He didn’t understand why he needed to be quiet.”
He then related how the fighters attempted to break into his residence before seemingly giving up, leaving them to hide until Israeli forces retook the kibbutz.
“Eventually, they tried to enter the house.… They just tried to open the door… and [they] started to shoot at our door from the outside,” he said. “At this point in our safe room… there was no food or water.… I had to crawl to the restroom [for water]…. It was like that until 2:30 when the army finally arrived.”
Cohen-Solal described how fighting continued until 6:30 p.m., when, after 12 hours in the safe room, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) finally entered the house to check for fighters.
“After that [the IDF] went to [my neighbor] Ben’s house…. Ben forgot to lock the door, so the terrorists threw a hand grenade in his living room. But it didn’t explode, and this is what saved [his family’s] life,” he said.
He then described moving to another house late at night and only emerging to safety the following morning. “In some kibbutz the war ended in a few hours, in ours it took 24.”
“They literally burned all they could… Maybe they thought if the smoke entered our safe rooms we would get out [or] get strangled by the smoke,” he said.
Cohen-Solal also described how the army brought in tanks to hit houses with fighters holed up inside and uncovered bodies of rape victims as well as graffiti left by Hamas fighters.
He also showed a video of a house where escapees from the Nova music festival had been burned alive.
He ended his testimony by dedicating the talk to his former IDF commander, killed by Hamas on October 7, and a cousin who was killed fighting in Gaza.
“If ever someone tells you something about our soldiers, this is the photo you need to see,” Cohen-Solal said, displaying a photograph of his cousin, whom he described as an aspiring musician, helping an elderly Palestinian woman through rubble.
“I used to be much more happy.… You will not see me smile now. If each one of you will take something small from what you just saw and take it forward that will mean so much for me. I am very afraid that people will forget us, both in the United States and Israel,” he continued.
In response to an audience question, Cohen-Solal addressed his feelings on student protests in the U.S.
“I don’t feel that it’s against us, against me.… It’s not a new movement,” he said. “In the beginning, when there were protests inside campuses… I think there was lots of ignorance and that people don’t know the full picture of what happened on October 7; some of them don’t really want to know about what happened, [but] this is why it’s so important that I come.”
Cohen-Solal has spoken about his experience at a number of campuses, including Case Western Reserve University and Washington University in St. Louis.
The event was cohosted with CAMERA on Campus, a pro-Israel media advocacy organization that says it provides “support for bravely and publicly defending Israel against hostility and distortions on campus” by connecting students with speakers, organizing events, and funding student groups.
