November 22, 2024 • 89 mins
Danielle Sasi Peretz, a Los Angeles native, was in Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays in 2023. She and six of her family members went to the Nova Music Festival on Simchat Torah, the most joyous day of the Jewish calendar.
Nova was a music and dance festival that attracted thousands of people from all over the world and all walks of life to celebrate music, peace, the environment and life.
At the break of dawn, 6:29am, Hamas terrorists overran the party via truck, motorcycle, and the now infamous hanggliders, to massacre as many people as possible. The atrocities that occurred that day defy humanity and many are too barbaric to even think about.
By the end of the Hamas terrorist rampage, 365 Nova attendees were left murdered. Four of Danielle's family members among them.
It is only by a miracle of God that Danielle is with us today to tell her story.
In this LIVE conversation, Shana Meyerson of YOGAthletica and Danielle Sasi Peretz discuss the Nova Festival, the massacre, and the aftermath for the survivors of the most diabolical terrorist attack in modern history.
If you are a yogi or yogini who either denies the atrocities of October 7, mitigates or justifies them, you owe it to yourself to listen to this discussion about terror, survival, and what innocent victims really look like.
VISIT THE NOVA EXHIBITION: https://www.novaexhibition.com/
SUPPORT THE NOVA SURVIVORS: https://www.safeheartil.com/en/donations-main
SEE MY 45-MINUTE VIDEO IF THE NOVA EXHIBITION: https://www.facebook.com/YOGAthletica/videos/782509517178684
Danielle Sasi Peretz was born and raised in Los Angeles to Israeli parents. Growing up, she attended Jewish private schools and visited Israel at least once a year to see family. Danielle married her husband in 2022 and had their first born son in May 2023. In September of 2023 they went to Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays. They wanted to dance the night away at the Nova Festival. That was a day before they were supposed to fly home. Out of seven family members who attended the Nova Music Festival, only three made it home.
🔇 YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0 🔇
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Shana Meyerson with the Yoga Award podcast here today with Nova Festival survivor
(00:09):
Danielle Sassi.
If you appreciate and find value in these important discussions, please consider supporting
the show so I can continue to bring you such amazing and esteemed guests.
Details are pinned in the comments below.
Danielle Sassi, a Los Angeles native, was in Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays
(00:33):
in 2023.
She and six of her family members went to the Nova Music Festival on Simchat Torah,
the most joyous day of the Jewish calendar.
Nova was a music and dance festival that attracted thousands of people from all over the world
(00:54):
in all walks of life to celebrate music, peace, the environment, and quite honestly, life
itself.
At the break of dawn, it was 629 a.m., Hamas terrorists overran the party via truck, motorcycle,
(01:14):
and the now infamous hang gliders to massacre as many people as possible.
The atrocities that occurred that day defy humanity, and many are too barbaric to even
think about.
Imagine going to Burning Man or Coachella or Lollapalooza and having it invaded and
(01:38):
overrun by hundreds of maniacal terrorists.
Or can you even imagine?
By the end of the Hamas terrorist rampage, almost 400 Nova attendees were left murdered.
Four of Danielle's family members were among them.
(01:59):
It is only by a miracle of God that Danielle is with us today to tell us her story.
How much of the world has lost sight of October 7th, and 101 hostages remain under brutal
Hamas captivity?
We are here today to remind you.
(02:23):
Jewish lives matter, just like yours.
Danielle Sasse was born and raised in Los Angeles to Israeli parents.
Growing up, she attended Jewish private schools and visited Israel at least once a year to
see family.
Danielle married her husband in 2022 and had their firstborn son in May of 2023.
(02:52):
In September 2023, they went to Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays.
They wanted to dance the night away at the Nova Festival.
That was the day before they were supposed to fly home.
Out of seven family members who attended the Nova Music Festival, only three made it home.
(03:16):
Danielle, thank you.
In light of the tremendous trauma you have endured, I know this isn't easy.
It's not going to be easy for you or for me or the listeners.
And I deeply appreciate your coming to share your story.
Thank you for having me.
(03:40):
So today is Friday.
How are you feeling?
Fridays are really hard for me and my family members.
Fridays are the end of the week when we all get together and sit around the table for
(04:06):
dinner and laugh and have fun and be together.
Well, it's been really quiet for a year and two months already on every Friday.
And it's really, it's just really hard.
I don't even put it in my, I don't think about it Thursday night.
(04:28):
I just wake up Friday morning.
I'll call my sisters and everyone has puffy eyes.
My mom's cooking without music.
So everything is just different now on Fridays.
(04:49):
I can only imagine and I think that when a trauma like this occurs and everybody talks
about post-traumatic stress and how it recurs, but I think that particularly because of significance
in Judaism that every single week, every Shabbat is its own renewal.
(05:11):
How that would just come back in many painful.
And I would assume, I hope that sometimes in joyful ways that every week, hopefully
is also a reminder of the beauty that your father and other family members brought into
(05:32):
this world.
Do you have as a family, these sort of bittersweet Shabbats where it's a combination of what
the emotions that are coming up, but also the memories?
Of course.
So someone painted this huge mural of a portrait of my dad and now it sits in my sister's house
(05:57):
right center of the dining table.
And many times we'll laugh and we'll talk.
And then one person out of the 20 that we're always, I have a large family, we'll look
up and look at him and it's like a portrait of him smiling with his eyes, knowing that
(06:18):
he's there.
And either we'll all start crying or we'll all start speaking to the portrait.
And I think it goes for almost every Jewish family here and in Israel.
I think that today where we all come together and there's always, every family knows of
(06:47):
a family or has a friend of family that lost someone or soldiers or hostages.
And it's kind of sad to say, but it's nice to know that we're all in this together.
So it's supporting everyone and being together with everyone, calling on Fridays more than
(07:08):
we used to before to our extended families or our friends.
But yeah, it's always bitter sweet.
Yeah.
Well, it's certainly everything.
And I know that as a family, as a piece of a broader community, the music festival community,
(07:32):
this is like a merging of so many different elements that came together at the NOVA festival.
If you're okay, I'd like to go back to October 7th, maybe a few hours before sunrise.
It's the middle of the night, the early morning.
(07:54):
There are some people who are not very familiar with NOVA and there are some people who are
honestly have zero familiarity and don't even seem to know what happens.
So before we talk about the events of the day, can you just tell us about the NOVA festival
(08:16):
itself?
Before anything happened, what is this festival about?
Who attends it?
What's the vibe?
How is it the same or different from other musical festivals you've attended?
Yes, of course.
So being from Los Angeles, most of the nature gatherings that I go to are here locally in
(08:39):
the States.
I've been to one nature gathering in Israel when I was in my earlier 20s and the NOVA
festival, it's called the NOVA Peace Festival.
DJs from all over the world were to attend.
It's 24 hours.
(09:01):
The location of the party was only sent to us earlier that Friday.
And when you look in the maps, you say, okay, it's pretty close, but chances are nothing's
going to happen.
When we arrived, I haven't been to a party, nevertheless, a nature party in over two years
(09:25):
because I was pregnant and then I gave birth.
When I arrived, I just remember the most beautiful people, the energy, the vibe.
Everyone was walking up to us because we didn't bring chairs or coolers or anything.
We just kind of came towards.
And my dad was with me, with us, and 65, has a lot of energy and a ponytail and he's wearing
(09:52):
all these colors.
And so, of course, people, Israelis being Israelis, they walk up to us, come to us,
come sit in our camp, come have a drink and very welcoming and loving.
And the music was great.
There were two different stages.
(10:14):
One of the stages was still closed when we arrived.
We arrived at around 2 a.m.
One of the stages was still closed, so we went to sit with people we just met.
We were drinking, having a good time, and then they opened up the main stage.
And I swear to you, it was thousands of people just running towards the stage, everyone screaming,
(10:36):
jumping.
It was, I've never seen anything like that in any of the festivals I've ever been to.
And the energy was just, I remember telling my husband and my dad, I was like, what am
I doing here?
I have a four-month-old baby at home.
I'm partying here like I'm 20 years old.
(11:00):
I all of a sudden didn't even feel like I was supposed to be there.
Like a part of me has changed that I'm a mom now and I can't party all night because who's
going to be with my son when I get home?
But everyone was just so beautiful.
The music, it goes into your body.
(11:22):
It's like the energy of everyone there.
You just feel their energy and you just dance and dance.
And my dad was dancing.
I'm telling him, dad, you want to go sit?
You want to go, you know?
He's like, no, we're great.
And then we went towards, there's a chill out lounge where they do a lot of like instruments
(11:42):
and more live sounds.
They have benches and like little daybeds on the floor and everything.
So we got there at around 5.30.
I promised my mom that we would leave as soon as sunrise because she was taking care of
my son.
(12:02):
So at 5.30, we went to this chill lounge.
We rested there for about an hour, a little bit less.
I told them, guys, it's time to go.
I saw that my dad was tired.
I was tired.
My cousins were tired.
My cousin who was there, Nichan, she was pregnant five months.
So she also seemed like it was time to go.
(12:25):
We got our things together.
We started walking towards the exit.
And in the trance world, there's a time, it's like two minutes where the sun touches the
horizon, the BPM of the music changes.
And it's like the most special, incredible few minutes of the entire party.
(12:51):
It's literally like the climax of every festival.
All of a sudden you're able to see who you're dancing next to.
You see people, faces, happiness, smiles.
And my dad looked at me and he said to me in Hebrew, he said, come, come, come, let's
go dance one last time.
And I was like, dad, mom's going to kill us.
We got to go.
He's like, don't worry.
(13:11):
Don't worry.
We'll take care of her later.
And we did just that.
We went to dance one last time.
And this was at daybreak at 630.
It was like six.
Yeah.
So my last video of us dancing is like 624.
(13:37):
And then it all started.
Coming from LA, I always say this out loud and I always feel so dumb.
I've never seen a rocket in my life or a missile.
And because of the sun and the vibe and the music and the energy and everyone's so excited,
(13:59):
I'm like, wow, look, they're fireworks.
But they weren't fireworks.
As who has fireworks in the daytime.
Right away, my dad and my husband, everyone started getting nervous because there's no
(14:19):
shelter.
And we were so close to Gaza that there aren't even sirens.
Why?
I'm sorry.
Why aren't there sirens?
Because you're close to Gaza.
There's not time for sirens.
We were in the forest.
The sirens were in cities.
Kibbutz theme, cities.
The music is so loud, two different stages until they started telling us on the speakers,
(14:45):
they turned off the music and they said red sirens.
Basically they were telling us to lay on the floor, cover our heads.
And I just wanted to get home.
I think we were probably some of the first people to get in our cars and get out of there.
(15:09):
We left at like 6.50 from the grounds.
Okay.
So, so the timing of that, again, just being sort of a miracle of itself.
So what did you witness in those 20 minutes between 6.29 and 6.50?
(15:33):
For people who haven't seen the videos, what did you see in the sky?
I could understand as an American exactly, I know it seems naive now, but thinking, wow,
there's something spectacular going on in the air and they really went above and beyond.
So you were there 20 minutes.
(15:56):
At that point, did you decide, okay, we need to leave now because this is getting bad or
just exactly as you felt 20 minutes before?
Come on guys, let's just go.
It's time to go.
Both.
It was all very chaotic.
Some people were laying on the floor covering their head and then Israelis being Israelis,
(16:19):
some were just sitting in their camp and talking and laughing like, okay, no big deal.
And we kept running, laying down, running and I'm telling you, there are like explosions
and you hear them really close to you.
Like you don't even know where it's going to land.
The skies had like 60 trails of, there was no sky.
(16:44):
Like in my last video, there was a video that I took and I was scared to take it because
I was scared that God forbid something would explode on me and that's the last video that
my family would have.
Like we're just running and you just see blue and missiles and blue and like it was, I don't,
(17:09):
it was like in the movies.
I keep, every time I share my testimony about October 7th or when I heard you speak, it's
like you're sharing my story.
I speak this story that I lived through and in, but no part of it is, sounds real to me.
It's like always, I, it's like always from the beginning, again and again, new.
(17:37):
And we ran to the car, we parked really close to the entrance.
I told my dad to let me drive.
He's like, no, no, no, sit in the back.
My dad is a good driver.
He's fast.
You can, you know, and I know something was just off that day.
(18:02):
He wouldn't listen to me and we're usually so in sync and like he's on the same flow
of our minds.
This are always like one, two, three, four.
It just goes together.
That day he just wasn't sharing his thoughts.
And yeah.
(18:25):
So you, your relationship with your father, can you, are you comfortable talking about
that briefly or as extensively as you feel comfortable?
Yeah.
So he's my best friend.
(18:55):
This always happens when I talk about him.
He's my, he was just my person my whole life.
Even as a little girl, I'd go to work with him on the weekends.
(19:16):
I would be with him if he ever went to travel or went to Israel and I was left home with
my mom and my sisters and they would yell at me or tell me what to do.
I would call my dad, mom's yelling at me or my sisters are being mean to me.
He always had my back.
Of course, didn't matter.
(19:41):
We were just always on the same flow.
If he was sad, I was sad.
If I was happy, he was happy.
I was worried.
He was worried.
I really did life with him from everything, school, schoolwork, math.
I got my general B license.
(20:03):
That's a contractor license.
He helped me through it for a whole year.
We traveled everywhere.
I would tell my girlfriends, like, you want me to go with you?
That's fine.
But my dad's coming with me because it's just way more fun with him than, than with anyone.
When I got married, he fell in love with my husband.
(20:27):
Well, when I started dating him, fell in love with him.
And a lot of my husband's arguments would be, you know, he would want to stay home and
I wanted to go out with my dad.
And he'd be like, why aren't you staying home?
I'm like, well, because he wants to go to sushi.
You want to come?
Like you can come if you want.
You don't have to if you don't.
(20:49):
And we just, we really did everything together.
It was like, it was really life, everything.
He wanted to be there when I gave birth and I was like, dad, you know, pushing it a bit,
stand right outside the door.
(21:11):
And we flew to Israel together last.
And the whole month we were, me, him, my husband and my son, going to the beach, going to restaurants,
going, just doing everything together.
Of course, my mom and my sisters were always included in all the fun, but it was like the
two of us against the world.
(21:35):
Just jokes and laughter, crack up on people.
And he would introduce me to so many people and I would remember their names and he'd
always say, you're just like me.
You're just like my mom.
And everyone would say, you're like Avi Sasi 2.0.
You're like the updated version of him.
Just life was just so much brighter, better with him in it.
(22:02):
He was absolutely looking out for you, not only throughout your whole life, but for every
minute and perhaps that feeling of disconnect was because he knew that if nothing else,
he needed to save you.
And he did.
(22:24):
Can we, so can we, let's talk about that.
So you get to the car and he wants to drive, he wants to take control.
And where did you go?
So when you leave the party ground, you either had a left or a right.
(22:46):
If you took a right, it's road 232.
So if you took a right, it would take you towards a city named Berseva, more towards
the north, the northeast part of Israel.
And if you took a left, you were driving towards Gaza and all the cities towards the beach
(23:08):
going north.
And he made a left and I'm screaming at him telling him, what are you doing?
That's the way we came into the party and you were telling me that this is Gaza.
Like on the way to the party, we were making so many jokes and laughing because like, oh
my God, it's Gaza.
Oh my God.
You know, just like scared, but what's going to happen kind of thing.
(23:32):
And so when we left and we made a left back that way, I'm screaming at him telling him
you're driving towards Gaza.
I think, you know, and he's trying to calm me down and he's telling me, don't worry.
The rockets are fired in a rainbow.
They don't just land on the closest street to where we are.
(23:53):
Made sense.
So we start driving for about, I know, eight minutes, 10 minutes, and he stops the car
on the side of the road and there's like a blue forfeited bus stop.
We get out of the car and I'm screaming.
(24:14):
I don't get out of the car.
They get out of the car and I'm like, what are you doing?
Get back in the car.
Let's go home.
I have to go home.
Mom's going to kill us.
Like I need to go home.
My dad and I had this thing where he can speak to me with his eyes and I knew what he was
saying and he wasn't speaking.
He was just looking at me, telling me, get out of the car.
(24:38):
And we get in the forfeited bus stop and I'm screaming to him that what are the possibilities
that a rocket's going to fall, a missile's going to fall on top of our car?
Like if that's, if that's, you know, what needs to be, then great.
Then we'll all die together.
But let's go.
Where are we here?
(25:00):
When we got to this forfeited bus stop, there was maybe like five people and it's tiny.
It's well, I'm five feet and from my middle finger to my middle finger, that's the width
of it.
Exactly.
So it's five feet in width and maybe eight feet in length.
And it's made of concrete and there's no door.
(25:24):
My dad was coming in and out.
Our friend Alex is with him too.
My husband and I was standing inside the bomb shelter in between.
It's like a, I call it a box because when you walk in, there's like concrete and then
an opening and you'd go in and it's a tiny little, tiny little room.
(25:46):
And this is on the side of the road, just, just so people understand, like people in
America can't always understand the reality of living in a country that's always under
attack.
You just happen to be driving down a road and there's this fortified bus stop, which
is another way of saying a bomb shelter, correct?
(26:06):
And just there.
Yeah.
Next to each bus stop, there has to be a fortified bus, a fortified bomb shelter.
These shelters are meant to protect you from rockets.
Therefore, there are no doors.
It just, you walk in and then you go in so that even if there's an explosion nearby,
(26:29):
it doesn't touch you because you're already inside the walls that are made of concrete
to protect you.
So there are about eight.
So on each side that there's a bus stop, there's a shelter.
So as you're driving from the party, drive, I don't know, four minutes.
(26:51):
There's a few, keep driving.
There's a few, a couple, I should say one on each side.
And he stopped at the second one.
We were there for a long time.
I was able to text my sisters.
I told my mom that we're going to be a bit late because of what's happening.
(27:18):
I was really scared.
I was scared to my gut, like that I knew something.
It wasn't, I mean, rockets are pretty scary, but I don't know.
I've never experienced that.
I've never been in a situation.
I've never been in any kind of situation like that.
I come from the valley, Los Angeles, it's sunny.
(27:44):
And my sisters kept asking for my live location.
So at this point, I'm speaking to my sister who lives in LA and it's seven in the morning,
my time, which means it's 9 PM Friday night in LA.
And she's texting me all this stuff in the news.
She's telling me Danielle, they're all over the streets.
There's steroids flooded the streets.
(28:06):
My dad, my dad didn't believe it.
He was like, no, it's probably just a few.
Like they're gonna, they're gonna catch them.
Don't worry.
Everyone, people were starting to come into our bomb shelter saying they're shooting our
cars or they're shooting at us.
My dad was like, these people are on drugs and alcohol.
We don't have to listen to them.
(28:28):
I don't know.
At about 740, I just couldn't handle the text messages anymore.
I brought my phone away.
People are coming in and out and leaving and coming in and out and then these three Bedwin
(28:51):
men, they come to our bomb shelter.
I remember seeing them and I got scared.
So I kind of like pushed myself inwards towards the box.
And in Arabic, they were telling us that a bunch of terrorists in white trucks are about
to come up.
I don't know Arabic, but my friend Alex, who is with us did and he was translating what
(29:14):
is being said.
Everyone started getting really nervous and really scared.
And basically my dad took me in into like, I call it a box into the bomb shelter.
He put me closest to the entrance and the corner.
And he said to me, and I'm looking at him just begging him, let's leave.
(29:36):
Let's go.
Let's go.
And then in my last memory of my dad is him telling me that if I want to go to Rafael
to stand here, he put his hands on my shoulders.
He told me they're going to walk in and they're going to shoot everyone in front of them and
(29:59):
not to the left.
So to stand in this corner and not move.
And again, with his eyes, I knew that I can't say a word anymore.
And then it all kind of started.
There was a lot of shootings outside and people are starting to scream.
(30:21):
And I'm like pushed out of the corner where my dad told me to stand.
And where was your dad?
So could you, was it, sorry, is it just a box?
Because when I went to the Nova Festival, it had sort of like a wall next to the entrance
(30:41):
that if someone came in, there would be a wall to the left.
Is that where you were behind that wall?
Behind the wall to the corner.
And your father was with you or he went somewhere else?
He was there.
I mean, I'm telling you, it's big enough for 11 people.
We were about 40.
(31:03):
So everyone just starts pushing back, obviously, because you're scared and you're hearing gun
shots outside and screaming.
And at some point I'm pushed in, in words, my husband's hovering over me.
I don't remember this, but I had the honor, I should say, or I met with everyone that
(31:29):
survived that day a few months ago.
And everyone remembers my dad asking for all the men to come to the front to try to protect
the women inside.
Everyone remembers his voice, the responsible adult.
(31:51):
And if he was alive and heard that, he'd be very upset.
But everyone did that.
Everyone listened to him.
I don't remember that.
I think the brain and the mind is stuffed to protect you later.
So now I'm inside, or my husband's on top of me.
(32:14):
I'm on top of people.
And then it starts.
They threw in a grenade.
We just heard people screaming, grenade, grenade, grenade, and it explodes and shootings.
And then again, grenade, grenade, and another explosion.
(32:36):
And there were so many people that it overflowed to the hallway, to the street, basically.
And they came in again and they started shooting more.
And I feel like a heat in my leg.
And I look down and I see that I'm bleeding from my leg.
And I'm telling my husband, everyone's screaming and there's terrorists outside.
(33:00):
So the more we scream, the more they're shooting.
I'm telling my husband that I'm shot.
He looked down.
He's like, you're fine.
You're fine.
I was trying to calm him down.
He wouldn't stop screaming.
And then I don't know if I fainted.
Nobody knows.
It's like there was silence.
(33:21):
It was absolute silence and smoke.
And we couldn't breathe.
They threw a tire.
I don't know if it was a tire or something that was leading in really dark smoke.
I remember suffocating.
(33:41):
And I'm pushing my husband off of me because I can't breathe.
And I just remember telling my husband, at this point, I don't know where my dad is.
I don't know anything.
I just said to him, we have to lay underneath bodies.
We have to lay underneath bodies.
Stop screaming.
We're getting out of here.
And that's what he did.
He started pushing bodies away for me to basically lay underneath.
(34:07):
And at this point, now I'm in the middle of this bomb shelter.
Everyone around me is dead, top of me.
And I don't know who's alive.
I just remember calling out for my dad quietly.
And at the fourth time, I call Abba, my cousin Lee.
(34:34):
I hear her voice and she's telling me, Donnie, I'm so sorry.
You didn't even have time to cry because you're so scared to die.
I remember two tears dropping from my left eye and I went into complete numbness.
(34:54):
I wasn't scared anymore.
I didn't feel my heart beating.
I didn't feel my leg in pain.
I just started counting seconds.
I don't know.
It's not really who I am.
But definitely my fight mode kicked in.
(35:14):
And I just started counting seconds to kind of understand what's happening outside.
I wanted...
There was silence.
There were a few people that were in agonizing pain and you hear them.
(35:35):
I asked Moir to go look at my dad.
Maybe he had a heart attack or maybe he's just unconscious.
And he went.
He's trying to touch him.
He's trying to see what's going on with him.
We tried to get the keys out of his pocket.
He did.
And I just started counting.
And then you hear the cars or the motorcycle coming up.
(36:00):
And then again, you just hear all of us, whoever is alive, kind of trying to get underneath
Moir bodies.
And then again, it's just another grenade and another...
And after each explosion, you feel like you're flying away and you open your eyes and you're
still in the same spot.
(36:21):
I would check my body each time just to know that everything is still intact because I
couldn't feel anything.
And I just started counting seconds through each explosion or shooting or anything that
happened.
See if there's a pattern, if they're outside, are they coming inside or are they leaving
(36:43):
and then coming?
Maybe we have time to escape.
At one point, I took off my jewelry.
I don't know why I did that.
And I talk about it often in therapy because it's like things that I don't care about my
jewelry.
(37:03):
Take my jewelry, just let me live.
And I came to a conclusion that I guess I was so scared that they would come in to see
who's alive and who's not.
And if they would try to take off something off my body, that they would see that I'm
alive or try to kill me.
So I did that, just really random things that happened in there.
(37:28):
We were there for eight hours.
Whatever was later with time, at one point I started counting and I got to 1,400 seconds
and I'm trying to do math and 60 goes into...
I was just trying to understand why haven't they come.
(37:49):
I've counted.
And I was like, maybe it's done.
Is it over with?
Maybe I am going to survive.
I remember something was choking me and I thought it was...
I don't know what I thought it was, but I was trying to take it off with my left hand.
It was like choking.
(38:10):
There was heavy weight.
And I realized it was like, as if I woke up, I started feeling heaviness, hot, thirsty.
All of my senses were starting to happen.
(38:32):
It took off like a limb from me.
I still was feeling that I was being choked.
And I remember that I had my phone and this is at about 1.15 in the afternoon.
I texted my family that I've been shot and I'm still alive.
(38:54):
To please send help.
And I put my phone away.
I didn't even wait for a response.
And then there was another huge explosion where I felt like my ears were going to burn
off of me.
It was from the outside.
(39:15):
It wasn't inside.
And I started seeing that the concrete was starting to crumble.
Like if any more grenade or anything else touches this, it's all falling down on top
of us.
And so I'm trying to tell everyone to my right on the wall, basically where my dad had me
standing in that corner, if you take that wall all the way to the back, that was a safe
(39:38):
zone.
Everyone there was alive.
And I'm looking at them and I'm telling them to look up and to start going under because
it's going to collapse.
From where I am, I'm right in the middle, the door, the entrance to the bomb shelters
to my left.
And I have access.
(39:58):
I see everything completely towards me and nobody else does.
We were all knotted into one another.
It was, we were starting to get in pain.
People started moving.
And I think the adrenaline went down and now we had to survive.
(40:21):
People were screaming that they're being suffocated.
And we kept trying to remind everyone to be quiet.
We don't know if they're outside.
They came again.
And this time a car alarm went off.
And I kid you not, I'm in between dead bodies.
(40:41):
I'm covering my ears.
And I start smiling because I'm a thousand percent certain that it's my dad driving them
crazy with the car alarm.
And they're shooting, shooting like a million bullets.
And the car doesn't stop.
And you hear them yelling in Arabic and all of this Arabic.
(41:08):
And then they drive off.
And then they turn and stay on the alarm.
And I smiled.
I smiled.
And then I started, I started singing in my head lullabies that I would sing to my son.
(41:32):
And then I prayed to my son, my four, well, five month son to come and save me and his
dad.
My or and I, my husband and I, we weren't next to each other for eight hours.
We would just look at each other and connect using finger signals.
I come, okay, you're okay.
(41:54):
I just wanted to get out of there.
I wanted to either die or to get out of there.
But I didn't want to stay there for any more time.
I started praying to God.
We all prayed to God, but I think I was praying for so long that towards the end I was already
(42:15):
even getting kind of mad with him.
And I was threatening him that if he touches my husband, that I will walk out of here and
wait to die.
Because he already took my dad.
If he took my husband, you don't go home like that.
(42:42):
And my husband just wouldn't stay still.
He tried going to fix, to try to fix, you know, he did turn kits on wounded.
And at one point he's telling us he's going to get water from the car.
And I was shaking at my head at him.
Like, it's really sad, but I wanted to kill him.
(43:05):
Everyone was playing dead and he was the only one going, coming.
He tried building a wall of bodies so that if they throw in more grenades, it would only
hit the bodies.
And many of the men had already died.
Nobody was able to help him.
And he was really just, he didn't stop moving for eight hours.
(43:27):
Every time you'd hear them come, he would take a body, fall backwards and hold that
body as a shield.
It's the only thing we had to protect ourselves.
And you had, you had a body on top of you, a specific man.
(43:53):
Can you tell me a little bit about this man who saved your life after giving his own?
Have you, what was going through your mind, lying underneath him, how he got there?
And have you had interaction with this family since then?
(44:19):
His name is, was Lutana Beer.
He was a really big guy.
I remember when he walked into the bomb shelter, he heard me speaking in English and he looked
at me and he goes, you're from, you're from the States.
Don't worry about it.
We're used to this.
(44:43):
It was nice to hear somebody speak in English.
And then he laid on top of me and I didn't know that it was the same guy, obviously at
the time that he was huge and he's laying on top of me.
(45:04):
He was facing me.
And at one point I was just so scared and not with more, not with anyone I know.
And I am literally surrounded by dead people all over me that I held his hand with my right
hand.
(45:28):
And I just started thanking him.
Towards the end, I started speaking to him and thanking him.
I was apologizing to him.
He ripped his shirt when we were trying to pull him over me.
(45:50):
And I turned his head away from me.
And when we got out of the Megwinit, there was a kid, a kid that inside the bomb shelter,
I told you guys there was like a safe zone, everything to the left of the wall.
(46:14):
Everyone was alive.
And towards like the seventh hour, I see a guy moving from the safe zone to the absolute
worst zone.
He's right in front of the door.
And I remember shaking my head at him and I'm telling him like I'm trying to communicate,
like go back, go back, go back.
(46:35):
And he wouldn't.
And fast forward when we were saved, I saw him and he came to hug me and I just started
punching him with all my might actually.
And it was yelling at him like, why did you move?
(46:56):
Why did you do that?
And we didn't, obviously we didn't get to speak.
It was a war zone, but later, maybe a few weeks later, he reached out to me and he told
me that the guy that I was laying underneath was his best friend, his childhood best friend.
And that his family really wants to meet me.
(47:20):
And who am I to say no to something like that?
I invited them over and I think we sat staring at each other for like 20 minutes without
saying a word.
And we hugged and we cried.
And to them, I'm the last person to touch, feel him, hug him, speak to him.
(47:45):
And that was also like a really big impact on me.
And they're telling me about this guy, about LaTown, about their son, about their brother,
who he was, how he was.
And I'm looking at them and I'm saying, this is my dad.
This is who my dad was.
I'm like, what are the chances?
(48:07):
And he spoke English and he lived in the States a little bit and guy with a huge heart and
generous and funny and everyone knows him.
And I'm still in touch with them, of course.
And Ben is one of my besties now.
Ben was his best friend, the one that you punched.
(48:30):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was really upset with him.
I was really upset with everyone who was moving, you know, just play dead.
That's all you had to do.
You had a friend who went out in the middle of everything.
Is that correct?
In the beginning of the middle of everything.
(48:53):
Yeah.
Alex, he, we believe that he died first.
He went to speak to the Arabic guys that were telling us that the terrorists were coming.
And what I remember was hearing shootings and then it stopped and I heard his voice.
(49:14):
He had like a loud voice.
I don't know what he was saying.
Just like, stop, stop.
And then shootings everywhere.
When we left the bomb shelter, he had a sleeve tattoo.
(49:41):
We knew that he was there and wasn't taken.
And people say that they saw my dad basically jumping on the second grenade, which is so
unlike him.
(50:01):
A little scaredy cat.
But for one thing, he had one mission in life and he wanted to save you.
I mean, that was his role since you were born and as you already sort of laid testament
(50:22):
to that special relationship.
And it sounds to me like God was giving him a lot of different messages that day to ensure
your survival.
(50:42):
A lot has happened.
To end what happened on October 7th was at around 2 15.
We knew earlier in the day that they were dressed up as our soldiers and Maor said out
loud to everyone, I mean not loudly but quietly, that even if the army comes here, do not make
(51:08):
a sound, play dead.
You don't know if it's really them or not.
Don't move.
And towards 2, they came.
They asked, is there anyone alive in here?
It's IDF.
Is there anyone alive?
And we didn't make a sound.
We were hoping to hear something else, you know, but they didn't know either.
(51:29):
So they leave and a few minutes later, I don't even know, I hear a different voice and he's
calling out for Nitsan.
Nitsan is a girl inside of our shelter.
And then he says it's Aba, it's dad, are you in here?
(51:52):
And then I thought we were like three people alive.
You just see everyone starting to move and cry and get up and nobody really can because
we're literally tied into one another.
It can barely stand.
They try to pull me up and I guess adrenaline starts to kick again because they're screaming
(52:13):
to us that we're not safe yet.
Get in the car, get in the car.
Everyone's stressing out.
The army finally arrives, comes back.
You just hear shooting like Fortnite, like in the movies.
When we came back outside, there was smoke everywhere, fires, cars flipped over, like
(52:40):
the black lot of Universal Studios, I kid you not.
I walk out and I was wearing a white shirt that day with like cream, black, like shawl.
And I remember looking down and I was filled with blood.
(53:00):
I took off my clothes and the dad is yelling at me, what are you doing?
And I said, I can't be in this.
He's like, we're not safe yet.
And I said, I'd rather die in my own blood.
I just took everything off.
Out of 40 plus people that we were in there, 12 of us came out.
(53:23):
Eight girls and only three men.
Boys, I could call them.
They're all in their early 20s.
We get in a Dodge pickup truck.
One civilian dad and his son woke up that morning, got in their truck and came to a
(53:49):
complete war zone to pick us up.
Was this Nitsan's father or was it a random?
Okay.
It was her father and her brother.
Okay.
So there was a lot of stories of civilians, heroes who risked their lives to save others
that day.
(54:10):
So you put 12 people plus the two of them, 14 people in this truck.
Yeah.
We sat, I think maybe like six people in the back and the ones that were really injured.
There were two girls with us that were very, very injured.
(54:30):
They put them in the bed and the boys were in the bed of the truck.
When we drove, we started driving back towards the party.
The army is behind us.
And I didn't know, we didn't know what was happening outside.
(54:51):
Right?
We thought it was just our area maybe or didn't know what was going on and to drive back towards
on that same road that I left at seven in the morning.
I don't even know how to describe it.
There were just like fires and cars or as a pile of, the dad told us not to look outside.
(55:18):
Don't look outside, don't look outside.
And what does everyone do?
We look outside and there's a pile of bodies and flames and we're in a big truck.
At one point he breaks.
I don't know why.
Takes us into the field.
We're driving now, like flying in the fields until we get back on a main road.
(55:43):
Everyone's screaming.
I didn't even, I hadn't even called my mom yet.
I didn't even know how we were alive still.
Until we get to a gas station over there at the gas station, we are transported to an
ambulance.
Was it waiting there for you?
Yeah, there were ambulances and all the armies and soldiers and everyone was just ready to
(56:07):
go like that was a safe zone.
And when we get to, we then go from the ambulance to the hospital in Beresheva.
And only through, there were news reporters there.
(56:28):
They saw us on the news and that's how my family and my family knew that we were alive.
Because for nine hours we were missing.
And then I got on a call to tell them that my dad died and that my cousins died and that
(56:58):
Alex died.
And they kept asking, so who is alive?
I was just telling them it's just me, Ma'or and Lee.
I don't know where my other cousin who's a producer of the festival, I don't know where
he is.
I don't know if he's alive.
(57:25):
And that was a whole, it was complete chaos.
There were people, burnt bodies without legs, without arms.
There was so much chaos in the hospital.
They're telling me that I can live with a bullet in my leg, not to worry.
But there's no room for you here basically.
(57:50):
So our brother, my brother and Ma'or's brother came to pick us up the following day and took
us to a hospital in Netanya, where my family's from.
They brought me Rafael, my son.
(58:10):
And I couldn't touch him.
I didn't want to see him.
I didn't want him near me.
And for a long time, I felt that my dad died so that my son can have a mom.
(58:46):
It took them nine days to locate my dad's body.
We didn't know maybe he was alive in the end, maybe he didn't die.
Maybe he was able to escape after we were picked up.
We contacted the US embassy.
We contacted the FBI here.
We contacted everyone we can to try to understand where my dad is.
(59:10):
We didn't know if he was kidnapped.
And then only on October 16th did we bury him.
So it was like so many days of like this ongoing war and pain and misery.
(59:31):
And like that when we finally found him, it was like a relief, sickening as that sounds.
And then I flew back here to this bubble that we live in where everything is sunny and we
(59:53):
have beautiful sunsets.
And nobody knows what's happening there.
And if they do know, they say it's our fault.
And it was a smack to the face.
I felt very alone here.
Everyone wants to know, everybody has questions, but as much as I explain it and explain it
(01:00:17):
into details, nobody will really ever know.
It was really, really hard.
It's been hard for everybody, I think, with the conscience, obviously not on the level
(01:00:46):
you have to try to wrap our heads around the way that the world has more or less rallied
literally behind terrorists and blamed really the victims for their own attack.
And when you see these people who are denying, mitigating, or even justifying in a lot of
(01:01:13):
cases, what happened at Nova, what message do you have for these people?
If you could just talk to them right now, just as a person to a person, what goes through
your mind?
What would you tell them?
So for eight months, my Instagram, eight months since October 7th, my Instagram was public
(01:01:39):
so that my story could be shared to the world.
And I would get hate messages all the time.
Death threats and all this nonsense I never, ever, ever engaged.
It's not worth my 2% that I have per day.
Keep going.
(01:02:00):
And on a Friday, eight months later, exactly eight months of October 7th, I was hosting
my family.
It was my turn.
And in the midst of my cooking, I get a text, I get a message again.
Where's my humanity?
I should have died.
Should have died with your dad.
(01:02:25):
And I replied for the first time in my life.
And I said that God forbid you ever have to be in my shoes or in anyone's shoes, parents
of hostages.
(01:02:45):
You ever had to lay in a little bomb shelter in your dad's blood for eight hours.
Your sister was kidnapped.
Your brother exploded into pieces that they wouldn't speak this way.
And war never, nobody wins at war.
Everyone loses.
(01:03:06):
It's not, everyone knows that.
There's war all over the world.
Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Africa, Armenia.
And it's just when it's about Israel, it's like, oh no, because they're strong and they're
killing.
They have everything they need.
(01:03:26):
So we're not okay.
I explained to her, I told her my entire story.
I told her about my dad.
I told her about my cousin who was pregnant.
He was literally shot in the stomach.
I told her everything.
And at the very end, she said, I had no idea.
(01:03:49):
And she said she was sorry.
And that's one person out of millions.
I don't believe in war.
It's really so sad what is happening in the world.
I think it's more sad that it's 2024, almost 2025, that instead of having flying cars and
(01:04:12):
moving on, that we're all reliving history, like as if it's 1948 or the Holocaust.
But in every religion, I'm like a strong believer of live your life and let me live mine.
And if I choose to be religious, that shouldn't mind you, and if you choose to be transgender,
(01:04:36):
I shouldn't care about that.
And everyone should just do whatever is good for them and let the other live.
I never replied again to anybody else in their messages.
I know a girl named Kelsey, if you're out there and you're listening, thank you for
giving me a chance.
(01:04:58):
This shouldn't be happening.
People shouldn't be losing their children, their parents or grandparents.
Shouldn't be hostages.
Who keeps people?
That's so weird.
Like, why are you taking our people getting kidnapped and becoming hostages and not wanting
to release them to family members who are...
(01:05:24):
And then I say, you know what?
Well, thank you, God.
Thank you, God, for giving me the story that I have.
As bad as it is, it could have been way worse.
Thank you, God, for not taking my husband and my dad as kidnapped hostages over there.
(01:05:47):
And I think it's so important to bring them back.
And it doesn't matter what your race is or what your religion is or anything.
If you had a family member that was kept hostage, you would want them back, period.
It doesn't matter what kind of family you come from either.
That's really all I know.
(01:06:07):
I don't really go into politics.
I don't know politics.
I don't know right.
I don't know left.
I don't know anything.
All I know is that we should all live in peace and in love and with light and obviously with
our family members home.
And not kept away against their will.
(01:06:29):
That's my message.
Beautiful message.
And I always say, you don't even have to love your neighbor.
Just don't kill them.
I mean, peace is so much easier than war.
And the terror, though, is so beyond the comprehension, I think, of a normal moral mind that anyone
(01:06:54):
could do the things that were done.
But if I could ask, based on what you just said so beautifully and so eloquently, Danielle,
has your relationship to God changed at all from this experience in any direction?
(01:07:18):
No.
I'm always asked the same question.
Are you upset?
Are you mad?
God, at Israel, IDF, Abibi.
I actually just mean God.
I mean, I'm not.
I'm almost positive.
(01:07:41):
I think maybe this is what helps me keep going.
That whatever happens in life is meant to happen.
I have no idea what a girl from the valley who went to Jewish daycare and school had
anything to do with the terror attack of October 7th in Israel.
(01:08:01):
I don't know why I was there or what the purpose of that is.
But I can tell you that a year later...
So no, to answer your question, I'm not upset.
I'm not upset.
I'm not upset at anyone.
(01:08:22):
I think it was supposed to happen, honestly.
If it's to unite us, if it's to remind the world that Jewish life is better, if it's
to wake up.
A year later, when everyone's story started getting out there, I got a text message on
(01:08:48):
April 7th, so six months after October 7th, from a guy named Guy, who shares with me that
he was in the same bomb shelter as I.
He got there early in the morning and that my dad told him and his girlfriend to leave.
Said, if you want to stay alive, you have to leave.
(01:09:10):
Get out of here.
And that when Guy went back to the bomb shelter to kind of close his circle and understand
where he was, he saw photos of my dad.
And that he was so sorry to hear that my dad didn't survive.
(01:09:32):
And that he thanks him and he thanks us.
And it was really out of nowhere.
This person messages me on WhatsApp.
And then I fly to Israel for the 11th month memorial.
My husband goes to Burning Man.
(01:09:53):
And out of the whole week that he didn't have service to FaceTime me or anything, he FaceTimes
me.
And he says, baby, look who it is.
Looking at this person, I have no idea who he is.
And he says, Danielle, I'm Guy.
We're in each other at Burning Man.
Yeah.
Guy got lost in his camp.
(01:10:13):
Saw a Nova flag and Israel flag walks over.
Like, were you there?
Yeah.
And they start sharing their stories.
And he's telling Maor about my dad.
He said, for six months, I've been sharing a story about a guy with a ponytail who saved
my life.
And what are the odds of 80,000 people that he meets him there?
(01:10:40):
And he shares the same story.
Many people remember my dad from that day.
Another guy in his 40 with four of his friends.
My dad told him, if you want to stay alive, get out of here.
He came to my dad's memorial.
He found out where the address is, what it is.
And he came to share with us that my dad saved his life.
(01:11:02):
So apparently my dad saved everyone's lives besides himself.
And those are other questions I will never get answers to.
You knew.
He knew.
You know.
I don't know.
What was it like going back to Israel?
(01:11:28):
It was so hard.
And I prepared myself all year that I was going to go back there.
It's so terrifying how they live with sirens and terrorists on the streets and shootings,
(01:11:51):
stabbings.
I didn't really leave my house at all.
I was terrified to leave my house.
And then we did a trip down south.
I went with my mom and my sisters and their husbands and my cousin.
And I was really scared.
(01:12:11):
So I asked our soldiers to come be with us too.
We started at the festival, showed them more or less where we were all night.
And then we drove to my cousin and her husband.
They were in a separate bomb shelter down the road.
They made a right from the party.
(01:12:33):
We drove there to see where they were.
And then we made it to the blue bomb shelter outside of Kibbutz.
And of course, everyone walks right in and I'm standing outside and I was scared.
Then I realized that I was outside.
(01:12:54):
I was driving by myself and cars were driving by and this really loud truck comes by and
I was so scared I ran right inside to the same place where I was so terrified of it.
It's like all of a sudden I was outside by myself.
And the smell is still there that nobody else can smell except for those who've been there.
(01:13:21):
And it's so small.
It's so small that I don't know how I wasn't able to touch my husband.
He was so far.
But when we were all in there, there's not enough room for all of us to be in there.
Pictures of everyone who died.
(01:13:44):
People that we didn't know.
But I got out of there.
Well, not immediately, but this last time when I realized that 12 of us survived, that
there's a reason that 12 of us survived.
You know, they say you don't choose family and this is like literally surviving a miracle.
(01:14:08):
Like being reborn.
Everyone keeps saying you're reborn.
You're born again.
And I'm saying, well, if that's the case, and we're all family.
Whether we all click, whether we all connect, whether we all love each other or not.
And there's a reason that all 12 of us were there and we got out of there alive.
(01:14:32):
I call them all.
I call them my kids.
They're like in their 23, 24 years.
They're all 23 or 24 years old.
And they're my babies.
They, off topic, but they just did a Nova retreat for us.
(01:14:55):
A woman named Natalie asked me if I would be interested in doing a retreat in Hawaii.
And I said, yeah, but can I request that the people that survived with me come if they
want to?
Like we weren't in touch all year.
Just here and there.
A like on a post.
And everyone came and we spent 10 days together just filling up puzzle pieces.
(01:15:22):
I just say completing sentences, just being with people that know what we've been with
through that we don't have to explain.
Stories of my dad, stories of Alex, stories that I had of other people that I didn't know
and helping others.
It was really nice.
(01:15:48):
I know that a lot of different organizations have come together to support and help heal
the survivors.
So I'm so glad that you have that opportunity to have that, that new community, that new
family.
I'm sure it helps a lot to ease a lot of complex emotions.
(01:16:13):
How are you now?
Well, I'm alive.
I say that laughing because I'm always asked how am I?
And I don't know how to reply.
It's like a roller coaster of crazy emotions.
(01:16:34):
Thank God I have my son because he is literally the only reason we wake up in the morning.
He's really cute.
He likes music.
So he makes me smile a lot.
It was really hard to go back to reality and I think we're slowly learning to just kind
(01:17:01):
of live with that side by side instead of just trying to push it away.
Are good days or bad days?
They're days that good and bad are together.
It was really important for me not to be Danielle Sassy of October 7.
(01:17:25):
I didn't want that title.
But it's like a constant, you know, fight.
We can, we all have a choice.
And I say this to my warriors, my baby warriors, that we have a choice to either, you know,
(01:17:47):
we are victims, or we can choose to be victim, depressed, stay in bed, or we can choose to
say, you know what, this happened to us and we're going to find out why later.
But like head up high, stay positive, keep going.
My dad died so that I can keep living.
(01:18:14):
It was really hard because I don't really know how to live without him, but I'm trying
and learning.
So I didn't really do the whole year of no music, no partying, no anything because it's
not what he would have wanted.
There's a butterfly.
(01:18:35):
Sorry, there's a butterfly flying above me now.
So I just stayed positive and happy and I look for the signs, usually.
(01:18:58):
Like a butterfly.
Yeah.
And how is your family?
(01:19:22):
I took in a lot of guilt that they're feeling the way they're feeling because of me.
But maybe if I wasn't at the party, he wouldn't have gone, but he totally would have.
Maybe if I wasn't there, he would have continued driving.
(01:19:45):
My dad was like the anchor where three girls and my moms were four women.
And the boat was sinking quite a few times.
And because I'm so much like my dad, I just continue to try to be there for everyone.
(01:20:07):
And I didn't really have the time to go through what I've been through.
I had to take in the initiative and just be strong for everybody else.
My older sister is pregnant with her fourth baby.
(01:20:33):
And God willing, it is due on my dad's birthday.
So I don't know, he's probably up there saying, like, why am I up here?
Bring me back down.
But there's happiness and there's a lot of sadness.
(01:21:01):
My other sister who lived in Israel moved back to the States.
It's worse too.
Like, sorry, you can't live in this war zone.
Come back home.
God bless America.
I don't know.
Things get any easier.
I mean, it's been 13 months and it seems like forever.
(01:21:30):
And I'm sure it also feels like the blink of an eye at the same time.
Yeah.
How is your day today?
Are these nights?
When I'm alone, which is very rare, my son's napping.
(01:21:56):
It's October 7th all over again.
He catches up in the shower when I'm cooking.
I don't think God, I don't have like nightmares, but it's always just the sounds that you hear.
(01:22:24):
A lot of therapy.
I don't know that it'll ever go away.
I think it's my husband and I, we were in the same place, but we have both experienced
complete different eight hours.
(01:22:47):
That's been really hard too, because sometimes I can't support him.
Sometimes he can't support me.
And it's like a lot of this, instead of saying like, thank God we're alive and we're in this
world together, it's a lot of anger that we're both holding, not against one another, but
(01:23:07):
it's been really hard.
And every time it gets a bit hard, I just gotta say, keep going.
It's gonna get easier.
But it feels like it was yesterday.
(01:23:36):
I do want to just take a moment, especially for anybody who's made it this far, to just
mention that the way that I became familiar with your story and Lee's story was your testimonials
that were featured at the Nova exhibition.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, and I think that it's so important that everybody experience
(01:24:02):
it because it's not just an exhibit.
It's like a multi-sensory immersion that goes into the beauty that the festival was and
also the horror that overcame it.
And I just want to reiterate because there's so much displaced anger, antisemitism, anti-Zionism,
(01:24:35):
give it the name that fits best.
But I think it's so important that I want to say to our listeners, never forget, never
forget 10-7, but so many already have, and so many don't want to talk about it anymore.
(01:25:00):
They just want to move on.
And I really want people to understand that there are literally thousands of families
right now that can't just move on from this experience.
A whole nation that can't move on, world Jewry that is forever changed because of what Danielle
(01:25:25):
and her family and thousands.
And if you want to talk about proximity, honestly, millions of people have experienced because
of it.
And I do want to take this moment to encourage everyone to visit and support this exhibition
(01:25:45):
because it's like being there as close as you can without being there.
And I think we owe it not just to the victims, not just to the survivors and not even just
to humanity, but we owe it to ourselves to try to understand, try to understand like
(01:26:08):
Kelsey did that what happened that day was a horror beyond comprehension.
And I think Danielle, when you say that it's like a universal studios back lot experience,
like it's true no matter how visceral it is to somebody say in Los Angeles who just really
(01:26:35):
cares, it's still so abstract and so impossible to put myself in your shoes and try to understand
a modicum like even the tiniest tiniest bit of what you've seen and what you've been through
and what you're going through and how it affects you and how it affects your family and how
(01:26:59):
it affects your relationships.
So first of all, I do want to say, Danielle, you've been so open and so vulnerable today.
I know this isn't easy at all.
And I want to ask, first of all, is there anything else that you would like to bring
(01:27:21):
up or address before we sign off the conversation?
No, just be kind to everyone.
Call your parents.
Take a lot of videos and pictures.
(01:27:48):
I always end the podcast with asking like where the hope is.
And I first of all have to say that you have already brought it to the table without being
asked.
I think it would be so easy to just be destroyed by this experience, but your soul is so uplifted,
(01:28:12):
Danielle.
It's been really inspiring to listen to you and your new nephew, of course, the reincarnation
of your father is part of that hope.
Your belief in peace, even in the face of these atrocities, that is the hope.
(01:28:40):
What is your message of hope?
That we can just, like you said, don't love your neighbor, just live next to your neighbor.
I hope that we just stop all the hate and stop wasting time on other people's lives,
(01:29:04):
talk badly about other people's.
Just live.
I hope that everyone just learns to live within themselves and let others within their circle
or surroundings or countries just let them live as well.
(01:29:25):
Really.
And that our hostages come home today, yesterday.
Amen.
Amen.
Danielle, thank you so much.
I honestly can't thank you enough for sharing this important testimony.
(01:29:50):
You are amazing.
Hi, I'm Shana Meyerson with the Yoga Award podcast here today with Nova Festival survivor
(00:09):
Danielle Sassi.
If you appreciate and find value in these important discussions, please consider supporting
the show so I can continue to bring you such amazing and esteemed guests.
Details are pinned in the comments below.
Danielle Sassi, a Los Angeles native, was in Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays
(00:33):
in 2023.
She and six of her family members went to the Nova Music Festival on Simchat Torah,
the most joyous day of the Jewish calendar.
Nova was a music and dance festival that attracted thousands of people from all over the world
(00:54):
in all walks of life to celebrate music, peace, the environment, and quite honestly, life
itself.
At the break of dawn, it was 629 a.m., Hamas terrorists overran the party via truck, motorcycle,
(01:14):
and the now infamous hang gliders to massacre as many people as possible.
The atrocities that occurred that day defy humanity, and many are too barbaric to even
think about.
Imagine going to Burning Man or Coachella or Lollapalooza and having it invaded and
(01:38):
overrun by hundreds of maniacal terrorists.
Or can you even imagine?
By the end of the Hamas terrorist rampage, almost 400 Nova attendees were left murdered.
Four of Danielle's family members were among them.
(01:59):
It is only by a miracle of God that Danielle is with us today to tell us her story.
How much of the world has lost sight of October 7th, and 101 hostages remain under brutal
Hamas captivity?
We are here today to remind you.
(02:23):
Jewish lives matter, just like yours.
Danielle Sasse was born and raised in Los Angeles to Israeli parents.
Growing up, she attended Jewish private schools and visited Israel at least once a year to
see family.
Danielle married her husband in 2022 and had their firstborn son in May of 2023.
(02:52):
In September 2023, they went to Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays.
They wanted to dance the night away at the Nova Festival.
That was the day before they were supposed to fly home.
Out of seven family members who attended the Nova Music Festival, only three made it home.
(03:16):
Danielle, thank you.
In light of the tremendous trauma you have endured, I know this isn't easy.
It's not going to be easy for you or for me or the listeners.
And I deeply appreciate your coming to share your story.
Thank you for having me.
(03:40):
So today is Friday.
How are you feeling?
Fridays are really hard for me and my family members.
Fridays are the end of the week when we all get together and sit around the table for
(04:06):
dinner and laugh and have fun and be together.
Well, it's been really quiet for a year and two months already on every Friday.
And it's really, it's just really hard.
I don't even put it in my, I don't think about it Thursday night.
(04:28):
I just wake up Friday morning.
I'll call my sisters and everyone has puffy eyes.
My mom's cooking without music.
So everything is just different now on Fridays.
(04:49):
I can only imagine and I think that when a trauma like this occurs and everybody talks
about post-traumatic stress and how it recurs, but I think that particularly because of significance
in Judaism that every single week, every Shabbat is its own renewal.
(05:11):
How that would just come back in many painful.
And I would assume, I hope that sometimes in joyful ways that every week, hopefully
is also a reminder of the beauty that your father and other family members brought into
(05:32):
this world.
Do you have as a family, these sort of bittersweet Shabbats where it's a combination of what
the emotions that are coming up, but also the memories?
Of course.
So someone painted this huge mural of a portrait of my dad and now it sits in my sister's house
(05:57):
right center of the dining table.
And many times we'll laugh and we'll talk.
And then one person out of the 20 that we're always, I have a large family, we'll look
up and look at him and it's like a portrait of him smiling with his eyes, knowing that
(06:18):
he's there.
And either we'll all start crying or we'll all start speaking to the portrait.
And I think it goes for almost every Jewish family here and in Israel.
I think that today where we all come together and there's always, every family knows of
(06:47):
a family or has a friend of family that lost someone or soldiers or hostages.
And it's kind of sad to say, but it's nice to know that we're all in this together.
So it's supporting everyone and being together with everyone, calling on Fridays more than
(07:08):
we used to before to our extended families or our friends.
But yeah, it's always bitter sweet.
Yeah.
Well, it's certainly everything.
And I know that as a family, as a piece of a broader community, the music festival community,
(07:32):
this is like a merging of so many different elements that came together at the NOVA festival.
If you're okay, I'd like to go back to October 7th, maybe a few hours before sunrise.
It's the middle of the night, the early morning.
(07:54):
There are some people who are not very familiar with NOVA and there are some people who are
honestly have zero familiarity and don't even seem to know what happens.
So before we talk about the events of the day, can you just tell us about the NOVA festival
(08:16):
itself?
Before anything happened, what is this festival about?
Who attends it?
What's the vibe?
How is it the same or different from other musical festivals you've attended?
Yes, of course.
So being from Los Angeles, most of the nature gatherings that I go to are here locally in
(08:39):
the States.
I've been to one nature gathering in Israel when I was in my earlier 20s and the NOVA
festival, it's called the NOVA Peace Festival.
DJs from all over the world were to attend.
It's 24 hours.
(09:01):
The location of the party was only sent to us earlier that Friday.
And when you look in the maps, you say, okay, it's pretty close, but chances are nothing's
going to happen.
When we arrived, I haven't been to a party, nevertheless, a nature party in over two years
(09:25):
because I was pregnant and then I gave birth.
When I arrived, I just remember the most beautiful people, the energy, the vibe.
Everyone was walking up to us because we didn't bring chairs or coolers or anything.
We just kind of came towards.
And my dad was with me, with us, and 65, has a lot of energy and a ponytail and he's wearing
(09:52):
all these colors.
And so, of course, people, Israelis being Israelis, they walk up to us, come to us,
come sit in our camp, come have a drink and very welcoming and loving.
And the music was great.
There were two different stages.
(10:14):
One of the stages was still closed when we arrived.
We arrived at around 2 a.m.
One of the stages was still closed, so we went to sit with people we just met.
We were drinking, having a good time, and then they opened up the main stage.
And I swear to you, it was thousands of people just running towards the stage, everyone screaming,
(10:36):
jumping.
It was, I've never seen anything like that in any of the festivals I've ever been to.
And the energy was just, I remember telling my husband and my dad, I was like, what am
I doing here?
I have a four-month-old baby at home.
I'm partying here like I'm 20 years old.
(11:00):
I all of a sudden didn't even feel like I was supposed to be there.
Like a part of me has changed that I'm a mom now and I can't party all night because who's
going to be with my son when I get home?
But everyone was just so beautiful.
The music, it goes into your body.
(11:22):
It's like the energy of everyone there.
You just feel their energy and you just dance and dance.
And my dad was dancing.
I'm telling him, dad, you want to go sit?
You want to go, you know?
He's like, no, we're great.
And then we went towards, there's a chill out lounge where they do a lot of like instruments
(11:42):
and more live sounds.
They have benches and like little daybeds on the floor and everything.
So we got there at around 5.30.
I promised my mom that we would leave as soon as sunrise because she was taking care of
my son.
(12:02):
So at 5.30, we went to this chill lounge.
We rested there for about an hour, a little bit less.
I told them, guys, it's time to go.
I saw that my dad was tired.
I was tired.
My cousins were tired.
My cousin who was there, Nichan, she was pregnant five months.
So she also seemed like it was time to go.
(12:25):
We got our things together.
We started walking towards the exit.
And in the trance world, there's a time, it's like two minutes where the sun touches the
horizon, the BPM of the music changes.
And it's like the most special, incredible few minutes of the entire party.
(12:51):
It's literally like the climax of every festival.
All of a sudden you're able to see who you're dancing next to.
You see people, faces, happiness, smiles.
And my dad looked at me and he said to me in Hebrew, he said, come, come, come, let's
go dance one last time.
And I was like, dad, mom's going to kill us.
We got to go.
He's like, don't worry.
(13:11):
Don't worry.
We'll take care of her later.
And we did just that.
We went to dance one last time.
And this was at daybreak at 630.
It was like six.
Yeah.
So my last video of us dancing is like 624.
(13:37):
And then it all started.
Coming from LA, I always say this out loud and I always feel so dumb.
I've never seen a rocket in my life or a missile.
And because of the sun and the vibe and the music and the energy and everyone's so excited,
(13:59):
I'm like, wow, look, they're fireworks.
But they weren't fireworks.
As who has fireworks in the daytime.
Right away, my dad and my husband, everyone started getting nervous because there's no
(14:19):
shelter.
And we were so close to Gaza that there aren't even sirens.
Why?
I'm sorry.
Why aren't there sirens?
Because you're close to Gaza.
There's not time for sirens.
We were in the forest.
The sirens were in cities.
Kibbutz theme, cities.
The music is so loud, two different stages until they started telling us on the speakers,
(14:45):
they turned off the music and they said red sirens.
Basically they were telling us to lay on the floor, cover our heads.
And I just wanted to get home.
I think we were probably some of the first people to get in our cars and get out of there.
(15:09):
We left at like 6.50 from the grounds.
Okay.
So, so the timing of that, again, just being sort of a miracle of itself.
So what did you witness in those 20 minutes between 6.29 and 6.50?
(15:33):
For people who haven't seen the videos, what did you see in the sky?
I could understand as an American exactly, I know it seems naive now, but thinking, wow,
there's something spectacular going on in the air and they really went above and beyond.
So you were there 20 minutes.
(15:56):
At that point, did you decide, okay, we need to leave now because this is getting bad or
just exactly as you felt 20 minutes before?
Come on guys, let's just go.
It's time to go.
Both.
It was all very chaotic.
Some people were laying on the floor covering their head and then Israelis being Israelis,
(16:19):
some were just sitting in their camp and talking and laughing like, okay, no big deal.
And we kept running, laying down, running and I'm telling you, there are like explosions
and you hear them really close to you.
Like you don't even know where it's going to land.
The skies had like 60 trails of, there was no sky.
(16:44):
Like in my last video, there was a video that I took and I was scared to take it because
I was scared that God forbid something would explode on me and that's the last video that
my family would have.
Like we're just running and you just see blue and missiles and blue and like it was, I don't,
(17:09):
it was like in the movies.
I keep, every time I share my testimony about October 7th or when I heard you speak, it's
like you're sharing my story.
I speak this story that I lived through and in, but no part of it is, sounds real to me.
It's like always, I, it's like always from the beginning, again and again, new.
(17:37):
And we ran to the car, we parked really close to the entrance.
I told my dad to let me drive.
He's like, no, no, no, sit in the back.
My dad is a good driver.
He's fast.
You can, you know, and I know something was just off that day.
(18:02):
He wouldn't listen to me and we're usually so in sync and like he's on the same flow
of our minds.
This are always like one, two, three, four.
It just goes together.
That day he just wasn't sharing his thoughts.
And yeah.
(18:25):
So you, your relationship with your father, can you, are you comfortable talking about
that briefly or as extensively as you feel comfortable?
Yeah.
So he's my best friend.
(18:55):
This always happens when I talk about him.
He's my, he was just my person my whole life.
Even as a little girl, I'd go to work with him on the weekends.
(19:16):
I would be with him if he ever went to travel or went to Israel and I was left home with
my mom and my sisters and they would yell at me or tell me what to do.
I would call my dad, mom's yelling at me or my sisters are being mean to me.
He always had my back.
Of course, didn't matter.
(19:41):
We were just always on the same flow.
If he was sad, I was sad.
If I was happy, he was happy.
I was worried.
He was worried.
I really did life with him from everything, school, schoolwork, math.
I got my general B license.
(20:03):
That's a contractor license.
He helped me through it for a whole year.
We traveled everywhere.
I would tell my girlfriends, like, you want me to go with you?
That's fine.
But my dad's coming with me because it's just way more fun with him than, than with anyone.
When I got married, he fell in love with my husband.
(20:27):
Well, when I started dating him, fell in love with him.
And a lot of my husband's arguments would be, you know, he would want to stay home and
I wanted to go out with my dad.
And he'd be like, why aren't you staying home?
I'm like, well, because he wants to go to sushi.
You want to come?
Like you can come if you want.
You don't have to if you don't.
(20:49):
And we just, we really did everything together.
It was like, it was really life, everything.
He wanted to be there when I gave birth and I was like, dad, you know, pushing it a bit,
stand right outside the door.
(21:11):
And we flew to Israel together last.
And the whole month we were, me, him, my husband and my son, going to the beach, going to restaurants,
going, just doing everything together.
Of course, my mom and my sisters were always included in all the fun, but it was like the
two of us against the world.
(21:35):
Just jokes and laughter, crack up on people.
And he would introduce me to so many people and I would remember their names and he'd
always say, you're just like me.
You're just like my mom.
And everyone would say, you're like Avi Sasi 2.0.
You're like the updated version of him.
Just life was just so much brighter, better with him in it.
(22:02):
He was absolutely looking out for you, not only throughout your whole life, but for every
minute and perhaps that feeling of disconnect was because he knew that if nothing else,
he needed to save you.
And he did.
(22:24):
Can we, so can we, let's talk about that.
So you get to the car and he wants to drive, he wants to take control.
And where did you go?
So when you leave the party ground, you either had a left or a right.
(22:46):
If you took a right, it's road 232.
So if you took a right, it would take you towards a city named Berseva, more towards
the north, the northeast part of Israel.
And if you took a left, you were driving towards Gaza and all the cities towards the beach
(23:08):
going north.
And he made a left and I'm screaming at him telling him, what are you doing?
That's the way we came into the party and you were telling me that this is Gaza.
Like on the way to the party, we were making so many jokes and laughing because like, oh
my God, it's Gaza.
Oh my God.
You know, just like scared, but what's going to happen kind of thing.
(23:32):
And so when we left and we made a left back that way, I'm screaming at him telling him
you're driving towards Gaza.
I think, you know, and he's trying to calm me down and he's telling me, don't worry.
The rockets are fired in a rainbow.
They don't just land on the closest street to where we are.
(23:53):
Made sense.
So we start driving for about, I know, eight minutes, 10 minutes, and he stops the car
on the side of the road and there's like a blue forfeited bus stop.
We get out of the car and I'm screaming.
(24:14):
I don't get out of the car.
They get out of the car and I'm like, what are you doing?
Get back in the car.
Let's go home.
I have to go home.
Mom's going to kill us.
Like I need to go home.
My dad and I had this thing where he can speak to me with his eyes and I knew what he was
saying and he wasn't speaking.
He was just looking at me, telling me, get out of the car.
(24:38):
And we get in the forfeited bus stop and I'm screaming to him that what are the possibilities
that a rocket's going to fall, a missile's going to fall on top of our car?
Like if that's, if that's, you know, what needs to be, then great.
Then we'll all die together.
But let's go.
Where are we here?
(25:00):
When we got to this forfeited bus stop, there was maybe like five people and it's tiny.
It's well, I'm five feet and from my middle finger to my middle finger, that's the width
of it.
Exactly.
So it's five feet in width and maybe eight feet in length.
And it's made of concrete and there's no door.
(25:24):
My dad was coming in and out.
Our friend Alex is with him too.
My husband and I was standing inside the bomb shelter in between.
It's like a, I call it a box because when you walk in, there's like concrete and then
an opening and you'd go in and it's a tiny little, tiny little room.
(25:46):
And this is on the side of the road, just, just so people understand, like people in
America can't always understand the reality of living in a country that's always under
attack.
You just happen to be driving down a road and there's this fortified bus stop, which
is another way of saying a bomb shelter, correct?
(26:06):
And just there.
Yeah.
Next to each bus stop, there has to be a fortified bus, a fortified bomb shelter.
These shelters are meant to protect you from rockets.
Therefore, there are no doors.
It just, you walk in and then you go in so that even if there's an explosion nearby,
(26:29):
it doesn't touch you because you're already inside the walls that are made of concrete
to protect you.
So there are about eight.
So on each side that there's a bus stop, there's a shelter.
So as you're driving from the party, drive, I don't know, four minutes.
(26:51):
There's a few, keep driving.
There's a few, a couple, I should say one on each side.
And he stopped at the second one.
We were there for a long time.
I was able to text my sisters.
I told my mom that we're going to be a bit late because of what's happening.
(27:18):
I was really scared.
I was scared to my gut, like that I knew something.
It wasn't, I mean, rockets are pretty scary, but I don't know.
I've never experienced that.
I've never been in a situation.
I've never been in any kind of situation like that.
I come from the valley, Los Angeles, it's sunny.
(27:44):
And my sisters kept asking for my live location.
So at this point, I'm speaking to my sister who lives in LA and it's seven in the morning,
my time, which means it's 9 PM Friday night in LA.
And she's texting me all this stuff in the news.
She's telling me Danielle, they're all over the streets.
There's steroids flooded the streets.
(28:06):
My dad, my dad didn't believe it.
He was like, no, it's probably just a few.
Like they're gonna, they're gonna catch them.
Don't worry.
Everyone, people were starting to come into our bomb shelter saying they're shooting our
cars or they're shooting at us.
My dad was like, these people are on drugs and alcohol.
We don't have to listen to them.
(28:28):
I don't know.
At about 740, I just couldn't handle the text messages anymore.
I brought my phone away.
People are coming in and out and leaving and coming in and out and then these three Bedwin
(28:51):
men, they come to our bomb shelter.
I remember seeing them and I got scared.
So I kind of like pushed myself inwards towards the box.
And in Arabic, they were telling us that a bunch of terrorists in white trucks are about
to come up.
I don't know Arabic, but my friend Alex, who is with us did and he was translating what
(29:14):
is being said.
Everyone started getting really nervous and really scared.
And basically my dad took me in into like, I call it a box into the bomb shelter.
He put me closest to the entrance and the corner.
And he said to me, and I'm looking at him just begging him, let's leave.
(29:36):
Let's go.
Let's go.
And then in my last memory of my dad is him telling me that if I want to go to Rafael
to stand here, he put his hands on my shoulders.
He told me they're going to walk in and they're going to shoot everyone in front of them and
(29:59):
not to the left.
So to stand in this corner and not move.
And again, with his eyes, I knew that I can't say a word anymore.
And then it all kind of started.
There was a lot of shootings outside and people are starting to scream.
(30:21):
And I'm like pushed out of the corner where my dad told me to stand.
And where was your dad?
So could you, was it, sorry, is it just a box?
Because when I went to the Nova Festival, it had sort of like a wall next to the entrance
(30:41):
that if someone came in, there would be a wall to the left.
Is that where you were behind that wall?
Behind the wall to the corner.
And your father was with you or he went somewhere else?
He was there.
I mean, I'm telling you, it's big enough for 11 people.
We were about 40.
(31:03):
So everyone just starts pushing back, obviously, because you're scared and you're hearing gun
shots outside and screaming.
And at some point I'm pushed in, in words, my husband's hovering over me.
I don't remember this, but I had the honor, I should say, or I met with everyone that
(31:29):
survived that day a few months ago.
And everyone remembers my dad asking for all the men to come to the front to try to protect
the women inside.
Everyone remembers his voice, the responsible adult.
(31:51):
And if he was alive and heard that, he'd be very upset.
But everyone did that.
Everyone listened to him.
I don't remember that.
I think the brain and the mind is stuffed to protect you later.
So now I'm inside, or my husband's on top of me.
(32:14):
I'm on top of people.
And then it starts.
They threw in a grenade.
We just heard people screaming, grenade, grenade, grenade, and it explodes and shootings.
And then again, grenade, grenade, and another explosion.
(32:36):
And there were so many people that it overflowed to the hallway, to the street, basically.
And they came in again and they started shooting more.
And I feel like a heat in my leg.
And I look down and I see that I'm bleeding from my leg.
And I'm telling my husband, everyone's screaming and there's terrorists outside.
(33:00):
So the more we scream, the more they're shooting.
I'm telling my husband that I'm shot.
He looked down.
He's like, you're fine.
You're fine.
I was trying to calm him down.
He wouldn't stop screaming.
And then I don't know if I fainted.
Nobody knows.
It's like there was silence.
(33:21):
It was absolute silence and smoke.
And we couldn't breathe.
They threw a tire.
I don't know if it was a tire or something that was leading in really dark smoke.
I remember suffocating.
(33:41):
And I'm pushing my husband off of me because I can't breathe.
And I just remember telling my husband, at this point, I don't know where my dad is.
I don't know anything.
I just said to him, we have to lay underneath bodies.
We have to lay underneath bodies.
Stop screaming.
We're getting out of here.
And that's what he did.
He started pushing bodies away for me to basically lay underneath.
(34:07):
And at this point, now I'm in the middle of this bomb shelter.
Everyone around me is dead, top of me.
And I don't know who's alive.
I just remember calling out for my dad quietly.
And at the fourth time, I call Abba, my cousin Lee.
(34:34):
I hear her voice and she's telling me, Donnie, I'm so sorry.
You didn't even have time to cry because you're so scared to die.
I remember two tears dropping from my left eye and I went into complete numbness.
(34:54):
I wasn't scared anymore.
I didn't feel my heart beating.
I didn't feel my leg in pain.
I just started counting seconds.
I don't know.
It's not really who I am.
But definitely my fight mode kicked in.
(35:14):
And I just started counting seconds to kind of understand what's happening outside.
I wanted...
There was silence.
There were a few people that were in agonizing pain and you hear them.
(35:35):
I asked Moir to go look at my dad.
Maybe he had a heart attack or maybe he's just unconscious.
And he went.
He's trying to touch him.
He's trying to see what's going on with him.
We tried to get the keys out of his pocket.
He did.
And I just started counting.
And then you hear the cars or the motorcycle coming up.
(36:00):
And then again, you just hear all of us, whoever is alive, kind of trying to get underneath
Moir bodies.
And then again, it's just another grenade and another...
And after each explosion, you feel like you're flying away and you open your eyes and you're
still in the same spot.
(36:21):
I would check my body each time just to know that everything is still intact because I
couldn't feel anything.
And I just started counting seconds through each explosion or shooting or anything that
happened.
See if there's a pattern, if they're outside, are they coming inside or are they leaving
(36:43):
and then coming?
Maybe we have time to escape.
At one point, I took off my jewelry.
I don't know why I did that.
And I talk about it often in therapy because it's like things that I don't care about my
jewelry.
(37:03):
Take my jewelry, just let me live.
And I came to a conclusion that I guess I was so scared that they would come in to see
who's alive and who's not.
And if they would try to take off something off my body, that they would see that I'm
alive or try to kill me.
So I did that, just really random things that happened in there.
(37:28):
We were there for eight hours.
Whatever was later with time, at one point I started counting and I got to 1,400 seconds
and I'm trying to do math and 60 goes into...
I was just trying to understand why haven't they come.
(37:49):
I've counted.
And I was like, maybe it's done.
Is it over with?
Maybe I am going to survive.
I remember something was choking me and I thought it was...
I don't know what I thought it was, but I was trying to take it off with my left hand.
It was like choking.
(38:10):
There was heavy weight.
And I realized it was like, as if I woke up, I started feeling heaviness, hot, thirsty.
All of my senses were starting to happen.
(38:32):
It took off like a limb from me.
I still was feeling that I was being choked.
And I remember that I had my phone and this is at about 1.15 in the afternoon.
I texted my family that I've been shot and I'm still alive.
(38:54):
To please send help.
And I put my phone away.
I didn't even wait for a response.
And then there was another huge explosion where I felt like my ears were going to burn
off of me.
It was from the outside.
(39:15):
It wasn't inside.
And I started seeing that the concrete was starting to crumble.
Like if any more grenade or anything else touches this, it's all falling down on top
of us.
And so I'm trying to tell everyone to my right on the wall, basically where my dad had me
standing in that corner, if you take that wall all the way to the back, that was a safe
(39:38):
zone.
Everyone there was alive.
And I'm looking at them and I'm telling them to look up and to start going under because
it's going to collapse.
From where I am, I'm right in the middle, the door, the entrance to the bomb shelters
to my left.
And I have access.
(39:58):
I see everything completely towards me and nobody else does.
We were all knotted into one another.
It was, we were starting to get in pain.
People started moving.
And I think the adrenaline went down and now we had to survive.
(40:21):
People were screaming that they're being suffocated.
And we kept trying to remind everyone to be quiet.
We don't know if they're outside.
They came again.
And this time a car alarm went off.
And I kid you not, I'm in between dead bodies.
(40:41):
I'm covering my ears.
And I start smiling because I'm a thousand percent certain that it's my dad driving them
crazy with the car alarm.
And they're shooting, shooting like a million bullets.
And the car doesn't stop.
And you hear them yelling in Arabic and all of this Arabic.
(41:08):
And then they drive off.
And then they turn and stay on the alarm.
And I smiled.
I smiled.
And then I started, I started singing in my head lullabies that I would sing to my son.
(41:32):
And then I prayed to my son, my four, well, five month son to come and save me and his
dad.
My or and I, my husband and I, we weren't next to each other for eight hours.
We would just look at each other and connect using finger signals.
I come, okay, you're okay.
(41:54):
I just wanted to get out of there.
I wanted to either die or to get out of there.
But I didn't want to stay there for any more time.
I started praying to God.
We all prayed to God, but I think I was praying for so long that towards the end I was already
(42:15):
even getting kind of mad with him.
And I was threatening him that if he touches my husband, that I will walk out of here and
wait to die.
Because he already took my dad.
If he took my husband, you don't go home like that.
(42:42):
And my husband just wouldn't stay still.
He tried going to fix, to try to fix, you know, he did turn kits on wounded.
And at one point he's telling us he's going to get water from the car.
And I was shaking at my head at him.
Like, it's really sad, but I wanted to kill him.
(43:05):
Everyone was playing dead and he was the only one going, coming.
He tried building a wall of bodies so that if they throw in more grenades, it would only
hit the bodies.
And many of the men had already died.
Nobody was able to help him.
And he was really just, he didn't stop moving for eight hours.
(43:27):
Every time you'd hear them come, he would take a body, fall backwards and hold that
body as a shield.
It's the only thing we had to protect ourselves.
And you had, you had a body on top of you, a specific man.
(43:53):
Can you tell me a little bit about this man who saved your life after giving his own?
Have you, what was going through your mind, lying underneath him, how he got there?
And have you had interaction with this family since then?
(44:19):
His name is, was Lutana Beer.
He was a really big guy.
I remember when he walked into the bomb shelter, he heard me speaking in English and he looked
at me and he goes, you're from, you're from the States.
Don't worry about it.
We're used to this.
(44:43):
It was nice to hear somebody speak in English.
And then he laid on top of me and I didn't know that it was the same guy, obviously at
the time that he was huge and he's laying on top of me.
(45:04):
He was facing me.
And at one point I was just so scared and not with more, not with anyone I know.
And I am literally surrounded by dead people all over me that I held his hand with my right
hand.
(45:28):
And I just started thanking him.
Towards the end, I started speaking to him and thanking him.
I was apologizing to him.
He ripped his shirt when we were trying to pull him over me.
(45:50):
And I turned his head away from me.
And when we got out of the Megwinit, there was a kid, a kid that inside the bomb shelter,
I told you guys there was like a safe zone, everything to the left of the wall.
(46:14):
Everyone was alive.
And towards like the seventh hour, I see a guy moving from the safe zone to the absolute
worst zone.
He's right in front of the door.
And I remember shaking my head at him and I'm telling him like I'm trying to communicate,
like go back, go back, go back.
(46:35):
And he wouldn't.
And fast forward when we were saved, I saw him and he came to hug me and I just started
punching him with all my might actually.
And it was yelling at him like, why did you move?
(46:56):
Why did you do that?
And we didn't, obviously we didn't get to speak.
It was a war zone, but later, maybe a few weeks later, he reached out to me and he told
me that the guy that I was laying underneath was his best friend, his childhood best friend.
And that his family really wants to meet me.
(47:20):
And who am I to say no to something like that?
I invited them over and I think we sat staring at each other for like 20 minutes without
saying a word.
And we hugged and we cried.
And to them, I'm the last person to touch, feel him, hug him, speak to him.
(47:45):
And that was also like a really big impact on me.
And they're telling me about this guy, about LaTown, about their son, about their brother,
who he was, how he was.
And I'm looking at them and I'm saying, this is my dad.
This is who my dad was.
I'm like, what are the chances?
(48:07):
And he spoke English and he lived in the States a little bit and guy with a huge heart and
generous and funny and everyone knows him.
And I'm still in touch with them, of course.
And Ben is one of my besties now.
Ben was his best friend, the one that you punched.
(48:30):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was really upset with him.
I was really upset with everyone who was moving, you know, just play dead.
That's all you had to do.
You had a friend who went out in the middle of everything.
Is that correct?
In the beginning of the middle of everything.
(48:53):
Yeah.
Alex, he, we believe that he died first.
He went to speak to the Arabic guys that were telling us that the terrorists were coming.
And what I remember was hearing shootings and then it stopped and I heard his voice.
(49:14):
He had like a loud voice.
I don't know what he was saying.
Just like, stop, stop.
And then shootings everywhere.
When we left the bomb shelter, he had a sleeve tattoo.
(49:41):
We knew that he was there and wasn't taken.
And people say that they saw my dad basically jumping on the second grenade, which is so
unlike him.
(50:01):
A little scaredy cat.
But for one thing, he had one mission in life and he wanted to save you.
I mean, that was his role since you were born and as you already sort of laid testament
(50:22):
to that special relationship.
And it sounds to me like God was giving him a lot of different messages that day to ensure
your survival.
(50:42):
A lot has happened.
To end what happened on October 7th was at around 2 15.
We knew earlier in the day that they were dressed up as our soldiers and Maor said out
loud to everyone, I mean not loudly but quietly, that even if the army comes here, do not make
(51:08):
a sound, play dead.
You don't know if it's really them or not.
Don't move.
And towards 2, they came.
They asked, is there anyone alive in here?
It's IDF.
Is there anyone alive?
And we didn't make a sound.
We were hoping to hear something else, you know, but they didn't know either.
(51:29):
So they leave and a few minutes later, I don't even know, I hear a different voice and he's
calling out for Nitsan.
Nitsan is a girl inside of our shelter.
And then he says it's Aba, it's dad, are you in here?
(51:52):
And then I thought we were like three people alive.
You just see everyone starting to move and cry and get up and nobody really can because
we're literally tied into one another.
It can barely stand.
They try to pull me up and I guess adrenaline starts to kick again because they're screaming
(52:13):
to us that we're not safe yet.
Get in the car, get in the car.
Everyone's stressing out.
The army finally arrives, comes back.
You just hear shooting like Fortnite, like in the movies.
When we came back outside, there was smoke everywhere, fires, cars flipped over, like
(52:40):
the black lot of Universal Studios, I kid you not.
I walk out and I was wearing a white shirt that day with like cream, black, like shawl.
And I remember looking down and I was filled with blood.
(53:00):
I took off my clothes and the dad is yelling at me, what are you doing?
And I said, I can't be in this.
He's like, we're not safe yet.
And I said, I'd rather die in my own blood.
I just took everything off.
Out of 40 plus people that we were in there, 12 of us came out.
(53:23):
Eight girls and only three men.
Boys, I could call them.
They're all in their early 20s.
We get in a Dodge pickup truck.
One civilian dad and his son woke up that morning, got in their truck and came to a
(53:49):
complete war zone to pick us up.
Was this Nitsan's father or was it a random?
Okay.
It was her father and her brother.
Okay.
So there was a lot of stories of civilians, heroes who risked their lives to save others
that day.
(54:10):
So you put 12 people plus the two of them, 14 people in this truck.
Yeah.
We sat, I think maybe like six people in the back and the ones that were really injured.
There were two girls with us that were very, very injured.
(54:30):
They put them in the bed and the boys were in the bed of the truck.
When we drove, we started driving back towards the party.
The army is behind us.
And I didn't know, we didn't know what was happening outside.
(54:51):
Right?
We thought it was just our area maybe or didn't know what was going on and to drive back towards
on that same road that I left at seven in the morning.
I don't even know how to describe it.
There were just like fires and cars or as a pile of, the dad told us not to look outside.
(55:18):
Don't look outside, don't look outside.
And what does everyone do?
We look outside and there's a pile of bodies and flames and we're in a big truck.
At one point he breaks.
I don't know why.
Takes us into the field.
We're driving now, like flying in the fields until we get back on a main road.
(55:43):
Everyone's screaming.
I didn't even, I hadn't even called my mom yet.
I didn't even know how we were alive still.
Until we get to a gas station over there at the gas station, we are transported to an
ambulance.
Was it waiting there for you?
Yeah, there were ambulances and all the armies and soldiers and everyone was just ready to
(56:07):
go like that was a safe zone.
And when we get to, we then go from the ambulance to the hospital in Beresheva.
And only through, there were news reporters there.
(56:28):
They saw us on the news and that's how my family and my family knew that we were alive.
Because for nine hours we were missing.
And then I got on a call to tell them that my dad died and that my cousins died and that
(56:58):
Alex died.
And they kept asking, so who is alive?
I was just telling them it's just me, Ma'or and Lee.
I don't know where my other cousin who's a producer of the festival, I don't know where
he is.
I don't know if he's alive.
(57:25):
And that was a whole, it was complete chaos.
There were people, burnt bodies without legs, without arms.
There was so much chaos in the hospital.
They're telling me that I can live with a bullet in my leg, not to worry.
But there's no room for you here basically.
(57:50):
So our brother, my brother and Ma'or's brother came to pick us up the following day and took
us to a hospital in Netanya, where my family's from.
They brought me Rafael, my son.
(58:10):
And I couldn't touch him.
I didn't want to see him.
I didn't want him near me.
And for a long time, I felt that my dad died so that my son can have a mom.
(58:46):
It took them nine days to locate my dad's body.
We didn't know maybe he was alive in the end, maybe he didn't die.
Maybe he was able to escape after we were picked up.
We contacted the US embassy.
We contacted the FBI here.
We contacted everyone we can to try to understand where my dad is.
(59:10):
We didn't know if he was kidnapped.
And then only on October 16th did we bury him.
So it was like so many days of like this ongoing war and pain and misery.
(59:31):
And like that when we finally found him, it was like a relief, sickening as that sounds.
And then I flew back here to this bubble that we live in where everything is sunny and we
(59:53):
have beautiful sunsets.
And nobody knows what's happening there.
And if they do know, they say it's our fault.
And it was a smack to the face.
I felt very alone here.
Everyone wants to know, everybody has questions, but as much as I explain it and explain it
(01:00:17):
into details, nobody will really ever know.
It was really, really hard.
It's been hard for everybody, I think, with the conscience, obviously not on the level
(01:00:46):
you have to try to wrap our heads around the way that the world has more or less rallied
literally behind terrorists and blamed really the victims for their own attack.
And when you see these people who are denying, mitigating, or even justifying in a lot of
(01:01:13):
cases, what happened at Nova, what message do you have for these people?
If you could just talk to them right now, just as a person to a person, what goes through
your mind?
What would you tell them?
So for eight months, my Instagram, eight months since October 7th, my Instagram was public
(01:01:39):
so that my story could be shared to the world.
And I would get hate messages all the time.
Death threats and all this nonsense I never, ever, ever engaged.
It's not worth my 2% that I have per day.
Keep going.
(01:02:00):
And on a Friday, eight months later, exactly eight months of October 7th, I was hosting
my family.
It was my turn.
And in the midst of my cooking, I get a text, I get a message again.
Where's my humanity?
I should have died.
Should have died with your dad.
(01:02:25):
And I replied for the first time in my life.
And I said that God forbid you ever have to be in my shoes or in anyone's shoes, parents
of hostages.
(01:02:45):
You ever had to lay in a little bomb shelter in your dad's blood for eight hours.
Your sister was kidnapped.
Your brother exploded into pieces that they wouldn't speak this way.
And war never, nobody wins at war.
Everyone loses.
(01:03:06):
It's not, everyone knows that.
There's war all over the world.
Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Africa, Armenia.
And it's just when it's about Israel, it's like, oh no, because they're strong and they're
killing.
They have everything they need.
(01:03:26):
So we're not okay.
I explained to her, I told her my entire story.
I told her about my dad.
I told her about my cousin who was pregnant.
He was literally shot in the stomach.
I told her everything.
And at the very end, she said, I had no idea.
(01:03:49):
And she said she was sorry.
And that's one person out of millions.
I don't believe in war.
It's really so sad what is happening in the world.
I think it's more sad that it's 2024, almost 2025, that instead of having flying cars and
(01:04:12):
moving on, that we're all reliving history, like as if it's 1948 or the Holocaust.
But in every religion, I'm like a strong believer of live your life and let me live mine.
And if I choose to be religious, that shouldn't mind you, and if you choose to be transgender,
(01:04:36):
I shouldn't care about that.
And everyone should just do whatever is good for them and let the other live.
I never replied again to anybody else in their messages.
I know a girl named Kelsey, if you're out there and you're listening, thank you for
giving me a chance.
(01:04:58):
This shouldn't be happening.
People shouldn't be losing their children, their parents or grandparents.
Shouldn't be hostages.
Who keeps people?
That's so weird.
Like, why are you taking our people getting kidnapped and becoming hostages and not wanting
to release them to family members who are...
(01:05:24):
And then I say, you know what?
Well, thank you, God.
Thank you, God, for giving me the story that I have.
As bad as it is, it could have been way worse.
Thank you, God, for not taking my husband and my dad as kidnapped hostages over there.
(01:05:47):
And I think it's so important to bring them back.
And it doesn't matter what your race is or what your religion is or anything.
If you had a family member that was kept hostage, you would want them back, period.
It doesn't matter what kind of family you come from either.
That's really all I know.
(01:06:07):
I don't really go into politics.
I don't know politics.
I don't know right.
I don't know left.
I don't know anything.
All I know is that we should all live in peace and in love and with light and obviously with
our family members home.
And not kept away against their will.
(01:06:29):
That's my message.
Beautiful message.
And I always say, you don't even have to love your neighbor.
Just don't kill them.
I mean, peace is so much easier than war.
And the terror, though, is so beyond the comprehension, I think, of a normal moral mind that anyone
(01:06:54):
could do the things that were done.
But if I could ask, based on what you just said so beautifully and so eloquently, Danielle,
has your relationship to God changed at all from this experience in any direction?
(01:07:18):
No.
I'm always asked the same question.
Are you upset?
Are you mad?
God, at Israel, IDF, Abibi.
I actually just mean God.
I mean, I'm not.
I'm almost positive.
(01:07:41):
I think maybe this is what helps me keep going.
That whatever happens in life is meant to happen.
I have no idea what a girl from the valley who went to Jewish daycare and school had
anything to do with the terror attack of October 7th in Israel.
(01:08:01):
I don't know why I was there or what the purpose of that is.
But I can tell you that a year later...
So no, to answer your question, I'm not upset.
I'm not upset.
I'm not upset at anyone.
(01:08:22):
I think it was supposed to happen, honestly.
If it's to unite us, if it's to remind the world that Jewish life is better, if it's
to wake up.
A year later, when everyone's story started getting out there, I got a text message on
(01:08:48):
April 7th, so six months after October 7th, from a guy named Guy, who shares with me that
he was in the same bomb shelter as I.
He got there early in the morning and that my dad told him and his girlfriend to leave.
Said, if you want to stay alive, you have to leave.
(01:09:10):
Get out of here.
And that when Guy went back to the bomb shelter to kind of close his circle and understand
where he was, he saw photos of my dad.
And that he was so sorry to hear that my dad didn't survive.
(01:09:32):
And that he thanks him and he thanks us.
And it was really out of nowhere.
This person messages me on WhatsApp.
And then I fly to Israel for the 11th month memorial.
My husband goes to Burning Man.
(01:09:53):
And out of the whole week that he didn't have service to FaceTime me or anything, he FaceTimes
me.
And he says, baby, look who it is.
Looking at this person, I have no idea who he is.
And he says, Danielle, I'm Guy.
We're in each other at Burning Man.
Yeah.
Guy got lost in his camp.
(01:10:13):
Saw a Nova flag and Israel flag walks over.
Like, were you there?
Yeah.
And they start sharing their stories.
And he's telling Maor about my dad.
He said, for six months, I've been sharing a story about a guy with a ponytail who saved
my life.
And what are the odds of 80,000 people that he meets him there?
(01:10:40):
And he shares the same story.
Many people remember my dad from that day.
Another guy in his 40 with four of his friends.
My dad told him, if you want to stay alive, get out of here.
He came to my dad's memorial.
He found out where the address is, what it is.
And he came to share with us that my dad saved his life.
(01:11:02):
So apparently my dad saved everyone's lives besides himself.
And those are other questions I will never get answers to.
You knew.
He knew.
You know.
I don't know.
What was it like going back to Israel?
(01:11:28):
It was so hard.
And I prepared myself all year that I was going to go back there.
It's so terrifying how they live with sirens and terrorists on the streets and shootings,
(01:11:51):
stabbings.
I didn't really leave my house at all.
I was terrified to leave my house.
And then we did a trip down south.
I went with my mom and my sisters and their husbands and my cousin.
And I was really scared.
(01:12:11):
So I asked our soldiers to come be with us too.
We started at the festival, showed them more or less where we were all night.
And then we drove to my cousin and her husband.
They were in a separate bomb shelter down the road.
They made a right from the party.
(01:12:33):
We drove there to see where they were.
And then we made it to the blue bomb shelter outside of Kibbutz.
And of course, everyone walks right in and I'm standing outside and I was scared.
Then I realized that I was outside.
(01:12:54):
I was driving by myself and cars were driving by and this really loud truck comes by and
I was so scared I ran right inside to the same place where I was so terrified of it.
It's like all of a sudden I was outside by myself.
And the smell is still there that nobody else can smell except for those who've been there.
(01:13:21):
And it's so small.
It's so small that I don't know how I wasn't able to touch my husband.
He was so far.
But when we were all in there, there's not enough room for all of us to be in there.
Pictures of everyone who died.
(01:13:44):
People that we didn't know.
But I got out of there.
Well, not immediately, but this last time when I realized that 12 of us survived, that
there's a reason that 12 of us survived.
You know, they say you don't choose family and this is like literally surviving a miracle.
(01:14:08):
Like being reborn.
Everyone keeps saying you're reborn.
You're born again.
And I'm saying, well, if that's the case, and we're all family.
Whether we all click, whether we all connect, whether we all love each other or not.
And there's a reason that all 12 of us were there and we got out of there alive.
(01:14:32):
I call them all.
I call them my kids.
They're like in their 23, 24 years.
They're all 23 or 24 years old.
And they're my babies.
They, off topic, but they just did a Nova retreat for us.
(01:14:55):
A woman named Natalie asked me if I would be interested in doing a retreat in Hawaii.
And I said, yeah, but can I request that the people that survived with me come if they
want to?
Like we weren't in touch all year.
Just here and there.
A like on a post.
And everyone came and we spent 10 days together just filling up puzzle pieces.
(01:15:22):
I just say completing sentences, just being with people that know what we've been with
through that we don't have to explain.
Stories of my dad, stories of Alex, stories that I had of other people that I didn't know
and helping others.
It was really nice.
(01:15:48):
I know that a lot of different organizations have come together to support and help heal
the survivors.
So I'm so glad that you have that opportunity to have that, that new community, that new
family.
I'm sure it helps a lot to ease a lot of complex emotions.
(01:16:13):
How are you now?
Well, I'm alive.
I say that laughing because I'm always asked how am I?
And I don't know how to reply.
It's like a roller coaster of crazy emotions.
(01:16:34):
Thank God I have my son because he is literally the only reason we wake up in the morning.
He's really cute.
He likes music.
So he makes me smile a lot.
It was really hard to go back to reality and I think we're slowly learning to just kind
(01:17:01):
of live with that side by side instead of just trying to push it away.
Are good days or bad days?
They're days that good and bad are together.
It was really important for me not to be Danielle Sassy of October 7.
(01:17:25):
I didn't want that title.
But it's like a constant, you know, fight.
We can, we all have a choice.
And I say this to my warriors, my baby warriors, that we have a choice to either, you know,
(01:17:47):
we are victims, or we can choose to be victim, depressed, stay in bed, or we can choose to
say, you know what, this happened to us and we're going to find out why later.
But like head up high, stay positive, keep going.
My dad died so that I can keep living.
(01:18:14):
It was really hard because I don't really know how to live without him, but I'm trying
and learning.
So I didn't really do the whole year of no music, no partying, no anything because it's
not what he would have wanted.
There's a butterfly.
(01:18:35):
Sorry, there's a butterfly flying above me now.
So I just stayed positive and happy and I look for the signs, usually.
(01:18:58):
Like a butterfly.
Yeah.
And how is your family?
(01:19:22):
I took in a lot of guilt that they're feeling the way they're feeling because of me.
But maybe if I wasn't at the party, he wouldn't have gone, but he totally would have.
Maybe if I wasn't there, he would have continued driving.
(01:19:45):
My dad was like the anchor where three girls and my moms were four women.
And the boat was sinking quite a few times.
And because I'm so much like my dad, I just continue to try to be there for everyone.
(01:20:07):
And I didn't really have the time to go through what I've been through.
I had to take in the initiative and just be strong for everybody else.
My older sister is pregnant with her fourth baby.
(01:20:33):
And God willing, it is due on my dad's birthday.
So I don't know, he's probably up there saying, like, why am I up here?
Bring me back down.
But there's happiness and there's a lot of sadness.
(01:21:01):
My other sister who lived in Israel moved back to the States.
It's worse too.
Like, sorry, you can't live in this war zone.
Come back home.
God bless America.
I don't know.
Things get any easier.
I mean, it's been 13 months and it seems like forever.
(01:21:30):
And I'm sure it also feels like the blink of an eye at the same time.
Yeah.
How is your day today?
Are these nights?
When I'm alone, which is very rare, my son's napping.
(01:21:56):
It's October 7th all over again.
He catches up in the shower when I'm cooking.
I don't think God, I don't have like nightmares, but it's always just the sounds that you hear.
(01:22:24):
A lot of therapy.
I don't know that it'll ever go away.
I think it's my husband and I, we were in the same place, but we have both experienced
complete different eight hours.
(01:22:47):
That's been really hard too, because sometimes I can't support him.
Sometimes he can't support me.
And it's like a lot of this, instead of saying like, thank God we're alive and we're in this
world together, it's a lot of anger that we're both holding, not against one another, but
(01:23:07):
it's been really hard.
And every time it gets a bit hard, I just gotta say, keep going.
It's gonna get easier.
But it feels like it was yesterday.
(01:23:36):
I do want to just take a moment, especially for anybody who's made it this far, to just
mention that the way that I became familiar with your story and Lee's story was your testimonials
that were featured at the Nova exhibition.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, and I think that it's so important that everybody experience
(01:24:02):
it because it's not just an exhibit.
It's like a multi-sensory immersion that goes into the beauty that the festival was and
also the horror that overcame it.
And I just want to reiterate because there's so much displaced anger, antisemitism, anti-Zionism,
(01:24:35):
give it the name that fits best.
But I think it's so important that I want to say to our listeners, never forget, never
forget 10-7, but so many already have, and so many don't want to talk about it anymore.
(01:25:00):
They just want to move on.
And I really want people to understand that there are literally thousands of families
right now that can't just move on from this experience.
A whole nation that can't move on, world Jewry that is forever changed because of what Danielle
(01:25:25):
and her family and thousands.
And if you want to talk about proximity, honestly, millions of people have experienced because
of it.
And I do want to take this moment to encourage everyone to visit and support this exhibition
(01:25:45):
because it's like being there as close as you can without being there.
And I think we owe it not just to the victims, not just to the survivors and not even just
to humanity, but we owe it to ourselves to try to understand, try to understand like
(01:26:08):
Kelsey did that what happened that day was a horror beyond comprehension.
And I think Danielle, when you say that it's like a universal studios back lot experience,
like it's true no matter how visceral it is to somebody say in Los Angeles who just really
(01:26:35):
cares, it's still so abstract and so impossible to put myself in your shoes and try to understand
a modicum like even the tiniest tiniest bit of what you've seen and what you've been through
and what you're going through and how it affects you and how it affects your family and how
(01:26:59):
it affects your relationships.
So first of all, I do want to say, Danielle, you've been so open and so vulnerable today.
I know this isn't easy at all.
And I want to ask, first of all, is there anything else that you would like to bring
(01:27:21):
up or address before we sign off the conversation?
No, just be kind to everyone.
Call your parents.
Take a lot of videos and pictures.
(01:27:48):
I always end the podcast with asking like where the hope is.
And I first of all have to say that you have already brought it to the table without being
asked.
I think it would be so easy to just be destroyed by this experience, but your soul is so uplifted,
(01:28:12):
Danielle.
It's been really inspiring to listen to you and your new nephew, of course, the reincarnation
of your father is part of that hope.
Your belief in peace, even in the face of these atrocities, that is the hope.
(01:28:40):
What is your message of hope?
That we can just, like you said, don't love your neighbor, just live next to your neighbor.
I hope that we just stop all the hate and stop wasting time on other people's lives,
(01:29:04):
talk badly about other people's.
Just live.
I hope that everyone just learns to live within themselves and let others within their circle
or surroundings or countries just let them live as well.
(01:29:25):
Really.
And that our hostages come home today, yesterday.
Amen.
Amen.
Danielle, thank you so much.
I honestly can't thank you enough for sharing this important testimony.
(01:29:50):
You are amazing.
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