Survivor Describes Hamas Attack on Israeli Music Festival

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Joining me now was somebody who was at the music festival when it was attacked and who managed to escape. Amit Ganish, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, you must still be in a state of trauma. How are you today?

AMIT GANISH, SURVIVED ATTACK AT ISRAELI FESTIVAL: Yes. Today I’m good, but I am sad for my friends that no one knows where they are.

AMANPOUR: Amit, walk us through what happened. When did you first understand that the festival was being stormed and you were under attack?

GANISH: OK. At six and a half in the morning, we heard rockets and we saw them in the sky. And after 30 minutes, approximately, we hear the terrorists. They shout Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar and yallah, yallah. And they were running to us with their guns, with a lot of shooting, like — and me and my best friends, we’re all together. And they start to run to the other side. And fortunately, there was a car that took us. The driver said to us, get into the car right now. And my best friend’s boyfriend didn’t get into the car and I don’t know either what about him, until now. The driver took to the right side and we saw a big unit of terrorist shoot at us with their guns. And he turned to the other side. And on the other side was another big unit of terrorist, they shoot to us. So, the driver was the biggest fighter that I’ve ever seen in my life. He stopped the car, and everybody in the car, we were nine people in little car. We started to run, to hide. Ran into the forest. And my friend who was with me ran after me.

AMANPOUR: Wow. Amit, when you got to the forest, and we’re looking now at this — I mean, the carcasses of the cars that have been blown out and destroyed, so you couldn’t even escape many people in vehicles. When you got to the forest, were you safe there or did they chase you into the forest?

GANISH: OK. When we got to the forest, first, we ran from the terrorist because they were shooting after us. They — we understood that we want — they want to kill me, to kill my friends, to kill everyone they see. So, we hid in a little tree. We didn’t make any sound for nine hours. We stayed in the tree, and that’s how we saved our lives.

AMANPOUR: Wow. You had to be completely quiet as a mouse to survive. And my very last question, how long did it take? Was there any official help that came, the military, police, I don’t know?

GANISH: OK. I think you know what happened, what happened there. I called to everyone I know, to my mother, to my father, to everyone in my family. I don’t — I didn’t have a lot of battery but with little left battery that I have, I called the police a lot of times, but there were a lot of terrorists so they didn’t succeed to get us. About — just about nine hours, the news and a biggest man, biggest angel, Ramy (ph), found us in the forest. He rescued us.

AMANPOUR: Wow. Amit, thank you. Thank god you had a guardian angel.

GANISH: Thank you.