Nati Gonen, owner of a hair salon from Bat Yam, has been hospitalized in Ichilov Hospital for more than 100 days. On October 7, Nati lost his wife Sheeran, who was murdered at the Nova Barai festival, and survived by himself by pretending to be dead. “I talked to the Creator of the world, I asked him to give me the strength to survive, because I have three children waiting at home,” he said. “At the moment I am a widower with three children: Ilai is 15 years old, Uri is 11.5 years old and May the little one is 8.5 years old.”
“We left around 3:30 from the center towards the party.” Nati, the late Sheeran and a member of the Nova Festival | Photo: Courtesy of the family
“I realized something else was going on here”
“We left around 3:30 from the center in the direction of the party, Sheeran, myself and two other friends,” Nati recalls the day when his life changed. “Around 4:00 we set up outside the party, drank a little, everything was fine, laughing, good atmosphere, entered the party, started dancing, moving a little, checking out the party. At 6:30 in the morning, when we started hearing the interceptions, we were confused, we didn’t know What are we doing? I managed to call my father and brother and asked them to go be with the children, because I understood that something else was happening here.”
Nati and Shiran ran to their car and tried to leave the place. “There was a huge traffic jam, we realized that we couldn’t wait for the whole thing, so we made a U-turn with the vehicle, and it got stuck in a bath of sand. We couldn’t move it, two wheels in the air. At this point, we still didn’t hear shots. A little more time passed, they entered some wadi, another So we ran towards the security guards and stood there next to them.”
The late Nati and Shiran | Photo: Courtesy of the family
“We approach some car and see someone shot in the head,” Nati continued to tell. “This is the first time we understand what is happening.” According to him, it was only at that moment, following a conversation with one of the police officers who was standing in the area, that he discovered that terrorists had entered the area in vans. “We saw a group of Israelis and we started running with them, we don’t know where, but we are running. Shiran all this time hand in hand with me.”
“I see the terrorists with my eyes”
During the ordeal, they boarded a commercial vehicle belonging to one of the groups of partygoers who arrived at the party and began their escape journey. “There were three women in the car, all three under great pressure, ‘drive here, don’t drive there,'” Nati recalls. “When they approached the end of the traffic jam of hundreds of vehicles trying to flee the scene, a shot was heard. Sheeran was wounded in the thigh by a bullet that entered the car. “She said to me, ‘Nati, what is this?’ She couldn’t believe she had been shot. I took the hoodie and put it on her so she wouldn’t see the injury, I opened the car, I told her ‘let’s run away from here’. We got out, we started running, I took a few steps while running, and then the terrorists shot me in the leg.”
“I see with my eyes the terrorists, three people in civilian clothes, jeans, a blandstone and a cap that surrounds the neck,” he said about the moments of horror. “There was a senior terrorist there and two young men, boys who ran after him. They shot my leg and crushed it. I fell on the floor, and later I realized that bullets also hit my back.” At that moment, when he was lying on the ground, Nati shouted to Shiran to run away. He didn’t know that would be the last time he would see her.
“I kept thinking about her.” The late Sheeran | Photo: Courtesy of the family
“I made myself dead,” he recalled, and told of the chilling moment when the terrorists approached him: “They shout Allah Akbar, exchange cartridges and filter words in Arabic. All the time you hear gunfire, the gunfire never stopped.” While he was lying on the ground, he heard the terrorists blow up Israeli vehicles one by one.
According to him, while he pretended to be dead, Nati insisted on surviving for his children: “I told myself, ‘You can survive this, you can continue.’ About Shiran, where is she, how is she surviving this. When I saw the condition of the leg after the shooting, I told myself that I must survive. Even if I lose my leg, I have three children waiting for me at home.”
The scene of the massacre at the party in Ra’i
“I shouted to him ‘help me'”
Nati recalled the moment when two soldiers arrived at the party scene and treated his leg: “I shouted to them, ‘I’m wounded, you have to help me, they shot me, I’m the father of three children.’ to look for signs of life from the scene of the massacre.” After some more time lying on the ground bruised and injured, the person he will never forget stopped next to him – Ofek.
“He got out of the Mazda vehicle, I shouted to him that I had to drink water,” he said. “After a few minutes he arrived, brought me a bottle of cold water. He put me in his car and we flew to Soroka Hospital. When we arrived, as soon as they transferred me to the stretcher I started to get fuzzy. I felt in a black maze, people were working above me, I remember a female medical staff trying to wake me up , stroking my cheek with the aim of waking me up, just like in the movies.”
“I have been hospitalized for two months and am in daily contact with the children”
“Don’t know how she was murdered”
38-year-old Sheeran, Nati’s wife, was declared missing at first, but five days after the massacre, the family was informed that her body had been identified. “I was hazy, but I remember being told that she was murdered. To this day I don’t know how it happened and where her body was found. To this day we have not received any answers about her death. I imagine that her death was determined not far from the place of my injury and fall. I imagine her running , measured with the leg injury, and that’s where they hit her.”
“She was an amazing person, a crowd favorite, a kind-hearted person, a wonderful mother and wife,” he said. “She worked at Israel Post and would also help me at the hair salon.” Shiran was laid to rest in the Bat Yam cemetery and Nati was brought by ambulance from Ichilov so that he could attend the funeral. When he recovered in the hospital, he heard from his friends who survived the massacre that they tried to contact Sheeran, and one of the terrorists answered their phone. “No, dead, dead,” the terrorist told them. “I murdered her, we are the Kasem unit” and hung up.
Nati Gonen and Dr. Anna Sezhin, director of youth rehabilitation at the Ichilov Hospital
Restart life
“Since the massacre, I have been hospitalized and am in daily contact with the children, mainly through video calls,” said Nati. “On the weekends, I go home. When I leave the hospital, everything is vague and awkward. It’s pure love, wanting to feel and be with the children. In the end, I hope to get out of here as soon as possible and restart my life.”
Dr. Anna Sezhin, the director of the Rehabilitation Hospital for War Wounded, Bezalem, Ichilov, referred to the rehabilitation process Nati is undergoing at the hospital. “I accompanied Nati almost from the day he arrived at the hospital,” she said. “He came here with a multi-system injury, and underwent several surgeries on his back and leg. The leg was the most severely injured, so he has been in rehabilitation for over two months. He was bedridden for a long time, but Nati has a smile and a strong character, he overcame this difficult period, too In terms of the pain and also in terms of the family tragedy. Little by little he got back to standing and walking and today he moves on crutches. He still has a way to go, but it’s a very big achievement.”
Are you taking stock after the massacre?
“Last Saturday, when I was watching TV, there was a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I changed the channel,” he said. “I got very angry, he is talking about security, what kind of security is he talking about? All our lives we are fed that the money goes to security, and in the end in real time there is no security, so it is very infuriating. Something like this should not happen in the State of Israel, in a country like ours that is surrounded by enemies, They enter a military base as if it were a supermarket, there is a serious omission here.”
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