Simchat Torah should have signaled the end of a special family break for Deborah Mintz. She had just spent the week on Kibbutz Nirim with her daughter and son-in-law, Aimee and Uriel Labban, and their newborn baby, Kai, helping the young family in a way only a grandma can as they welcomed their first child into the world.
With the brit milah [circumcision ceremony] duly completed, Deborah decided it was time to give the family some space and return home to Eilat with her beloved dog, Mickey, who traveled everywhere with her.
Like all communities on the Gaza border, however, Kibbutz Nirim came under a sustained murderous attack by the Hamas terrorists on that morning, October 7, leaving 11 dead and five kidnapped. Those who survived spent hours in their safe rooms, hiding from the terrorists who had invaded their homes.
A horrific ordeal on October 7
Deborah and her daughter’s family weren’t spared this horrific ordeal, which she recounted in detail to The Jerusalem Report.
With only 15 seconds to find shelter when the sirens sounded at 6:30 a.m., she jumped out of bed and ran to the safe room in her shorts and T-shirt to join the others, while her little dog cowered in fear under the couch in the living room.
At first, none of them had any idea about the scale of the attack that was unfolding all around them, although the sheer number of rockets indicated that this was no ordinary attack (residents in the area are used to rockets from Gaza).
While Deborah messaged her friends in Eilat to let them know what was happening, things took a turn for the worst, as the terrorists invaded the kibbutz, and gunfire could be heard outside the safe room window.
An hour into the family’s ordeal, the terrorists set fire to their house, before entering it to find them. A struggle ensued as Aimee and Uriel prevented them from entering the safe room by holding the door closed. “They held that door with all their might,” Deborah recalled. Eventually, the terrorists, who only managed to crack open the door for a brief moment, gave up and left the family to die in the burning house.
That momentary open space proved almost fatal, as smoke filled the safe room and the temperature rose dramatically, causing a suitcase by the door to melt.
Mickey’s agonizing screams could be heard as he perished in the flames on the other side of the door, at which point Deborah’s “body gave up… I was out of it for six hours until we were saved,” she said. “I don’t remember very much; I know what happened, but it’s like I wasn’t there.”
Fortunately, Aimee and Uriel took control of the situation, something which Deborah credits for their survival, along with the fact that 10-day-old Kai was with them.
THE FAMILY’S desperate situation was compounded by the fact that they only had half a cup of water among them as the smoke continued to seep under the door through the clothes that had been placed there, and gunshots were fired at the window by the terrorists who knew they were hiding inside.
Meanwhile, Aimee managed to keep a cool head, despite having given birth only days before. She called the fire brigade, who said they were unable to come to their rescue. They advised her to put her newborn on the windowsill and open the window so he could get some air. But with armed terrorists prowling around the house shooting at them, they were in an impossible situation.
It soon became unavoidable, however, as Kai began to slip away in his father’s arms – suffocating from the smoke. When they were as sure as they could be that the terrorists weren’t nearby, they placed the baby on the windowsill and opened the window ever so slightly, gathering around him to keep a lookout and take a few breaths themselves.
This harrowing situation continued for over six hours before the army came to rescue them. With the soldiers’ help, they all managed to escape through the window of the safe room. Uriel went first, then Aimee, who placed a wooden shoe box by the wall to help her mother climb out after she’d grabbed a pair of her daughter’s flip-flops, which were two sizes too small, so she had something on her feet.
With no ambulances available, the family, dressed in their pajamas, was driven by two soldiers to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. As groups of terrorists were still on the loose, indiscriminately attacking anyone who crossed their paths, the vehicle sped along those roads. “The roads were full of carnage,” Deborah recalled. “I saw the body of a headless woman out of the car window.”
They were among the first evacuees to arrive at the hospital, where the back gate was opened for them. Deborah was treated for smoke inhalation and was discharged later that day, while her daughter’s family was kept in for three days for monitoring.
FORTUNATELY, BABY Kai hasn’t suffered any long-term effects, despite his ordeal at such a young age. His grandmother ascribes this to his breastfeeding routine, which meant that he could be fed and soothed during their six-hour nightmare.
Not surprisingly, Deborah and her daughter haven’t fared so well since their near-death experience.
While they were physically unscathed, the mental scars remain.
Aimee and Uriel lost everything in the attack. All of their belongings, including the baby paraphernalia that they’d lovingly picked out for their newborn son, were destroyed, along with their home.
Indeed, coming to terms with their own survival is something that Aimee has been grappling with, given that so many suffered “horrendous” deaths: “Why didn’t they shoot us?” she often asks.
Deborah, too, has been struggling to come to terms with what happened to them: “I’m not all right,” she said matter of factly. The anguished screams of her beloved dog as he died in the fire still haunt her. “I hope one day to wake up without him on my mind,” she said.
“What if… ?” type questions also plague her thoughts. When friends point out that she should be thankful to be alive, she’s unable to muster any enthusiasm. “I don’t feel alive,” she lamented.
Although she has therapy every week, Deborah is finding it hard to move on and can’t see a time when she’ll be able to resume her job as a teacher. “I don’t know how to get out of it; I can’t find the door to get out.” The feeling of anger is still very raw. “I’m angry that it happened; we were like sitting ducks,” she said, although she’s trying to work through the pain. “You either drown or get out; you can’t carry on spinning.”
Despite it all, in one sense, Deborah is glad to have been there to support her daughter and her family in their “hour of need” so she can better empathize with them. Had she not been there, she said, she probably wouldn’t have understood the sheer terror they experienced, and any ongoing problems would have been met with “snap out of it.”
Instead, Deborah and Aimee have supported each other through the ordeal, even returning to Kibbutz Nirim together a little while ago. In the kitchen of the destroyed house, they found the remains of Mickey: a flank of skin and some bones, alongside his “gay pride” bow tie – all of which they buried in a touching ceremony.
To their amazement, they also found Honey, one of Aimee’s two indoor cats among the ruins of the burnt-out house. Having assumed that none of their pets could have survived the inferno, it took a while for them to realize that it was Honey who was running between their legs as they wandered around the rubble. Deborah took the sooty, stressed kitten home with her that day, where Honey is recovering from her ordeal with the aid of Deborah’s two newly adopted dogs, Mickey and Minnie, who, coincidentally, were born on October 7, 2013.
Sadly, however, Ginger, Honey’s sister, perished in the room where Deborah had slept. Her remains were discovered stuck to the floor, together with Deborah’s credit and ID cards.
Deborah still finds it hard to fathom how she and her family managed to survive against all the odds on that fateful day while so many others didn’t. Some say a series of small miracles kept them alive, although Deborah, who doesn’t believe in miracles, puts it down to luck – and her grandson Kai.
He was the “reason that we survived,” she wrote in a recent Facebook post. Because of him, “the kibbutz home front guards kept firing toward the terrorists who had surrounded our house because we were in a bad situation and had a baby with us.”
While Deborah may not believe in miracles, Kai may think differently when he eventually learns about October 7 and how he and his family managed to survive against all the odds.
This special boy continues to give his family strength and hope. “Am Yisrael Kai,” Deborah said with a small chuckle as our conversation drew to a close. ■