KIBBUTZ RE’IM, Israel — The 2 militants have been simply forward of him, spraying gunfire from their bike at passing automobiles. One militant was driving, the 50-year-old man mentioned, and the opposite sat behind, capturing at any goal he noticed. At the very least one wore physique armor.
“He didn’t see me,” Michael Silberberg mentioned. So Silberberg decided.
He and two associates had already managed to flee the slaughter on the Tribe of Nova music pageant, the place a whole lot of militants from the Palestinian group Hamas had swarmed by means of crowds, killing not less than 260 individuals and taking an unknown quantity hostage.
They survived one other assault a couple of minutes later, with two hiding in a roadside air-raid shelter whereas the opposite hid outdoors.
Quickly after that they have been driving away in Silberberg’s automobile, attempting to get removed from the bloodbath, once they noticed the bike.
“I knew it’s both I hit him or I do know I die, or different individuals die, or anyone will die,” Silberberg mentioned.
So he stepped on the accelerator and slammed into the bike along with his four-door sedan.
The shooter, he mentioned, died instantly. The driving force survived, however they left him crawling on the street badly injured.
“They have been neutralized,” Silberberg mentioned.
The lads rapidly drove away, with the automobile’s entrance finish badly dented, the automobile alarm blaring and smoke billowing from in all places. They drove like that for 20 minutes till they reached a pal’s home and located security.
Silberberg, an Israeli-born German, mentioned he had lengthy been politically liberal, hoping for a peace that gave Palestinians their very own homeland.
“You understand: ‘All good. Let’s dwell all collectively. Let’s give them the land.’”
However not anymore.
“My thoughts has modified. I’m sorry — I’m not sorry,” he mentioned, sitting in his seafront Tel Aviv residence the place he and his two associates hunkered down after the assault.
“You may’t make peace with these individuals,” he mentioned. “They don’t need to coexist with us. They need to kill us.”
Early Saturday morning, Hamas militants based mostly within the Gaza Strip blasted by means of the Israeli safety fence and streamed into Israel. The assault killed greater than 1,300 individuals in Israel, with subsequent Israeli airstrikes killing greater than 1,530 individuals in Gaza. Israel says roughly 1,500 Hamas militants have been killed inside Israel.
Within the days because the assault, Israel has hammered the Gaza Strip with airstrikes because it prepares for a potential floor assault. Israel has additionally lower off meals, gasoline and medication from Gaza’s 2.3 million individuals, main support teams to warn of an impending humanitarian disaster. Israel says the siege will stay in place till the hostages are freed.
The Tribe of Nova pageant, held within the semi-wooded fields outdoors Kibbutz Re’im, only a few miles from Gaza, was one of many first Hamas targets.
Movies present militants arriving on vehicles and bikes, with gunmen charging into crowds and firing on individuals as they tried to flee into the fields.
Israeli communities close to the pageant additionally got here beneath assault, with Hamas gunmen kidnapping individuals — troopers, civilians, the aged and younger youngsters — and killing scores of others.
The carnage shocked Israel, which had not seen bloodshed like this for many years.
On Thursday, a person who had been tending bar on the pageant got here again to the scene of the assault. He mentioned he had no alternative.
“I really feel I owe them, you already know, all of the folks that have been right here and murdered,” Peleg Horev advised an Related Press journalist allowed to go to the scene. “I’m alive, I stayed alive. I’ve to inform their story. Each one among them.”
The our bodies have been cleared away from the pageant grounds, however the wreckage of the assault is in all places.
Bullet-riddled automobiles, many with their home windows shot out, are scattered by means of the pageant space and close by roads. Clothes spills from damaged suitcases. A girl’s shirt stays in a tree the place it had been hung to dry. A pair of eyeglasses sit on a windowsill. Ticket cubicles are pocked with gunfire.
“Misplaced and Discovered” pronounces a pageant poster hanging from a fence. “Tenting Space,” says one other.
Leaves blow in a delicate breeze as troopers patrol the world, sometimes dropping to the bottom on the sound of distant gunfire. Safety forces fear that militants may assault once more, or that some may nonetheless be hiding within the fields and brush.
Peleg escaped by strolling for hours, deeper into Israel. He prevented the roads, the place many who tried to flee by automobile have been killed once they have been caught behind different automobiles that had come beneath assault.
“All of this time you’re listening to gunshots and screaming from afar,” he mentioned. “We simply go so far as we will as quick as we will.”
He’s deeply shaken by the fact that he survived and so many others didn’t.
“I owe them, actually.”
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McNeil reported from Tel Aviv.