Survivor of Hamas Attack on Israeli Festival Tells His Story

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Sahar Ben-Sela barely survived. He’s shown here dancing with friends just hours before the massacre. And I spoke to him from hospital in Tel Aviv. And a warning too, his story is difficult to hear.

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SAHAR BEN-SELA, SURVIVOR OF MUSIC FESTIVAL MASSACRE: I want to make it clear first thing — first, it was a peace festival and we did nothing to provoke them. We just was dancing and having fun. I can’t forget the moment that when I got in the festival and I don’t know anyone there. It was something like 30 or 4,000 people. And just I got into the entrance and just a guy that I don’t even know came to me and started to hug me and bless me for coming for the festival. We had a small camp next to us of German people from Germany, just a tourist, who came all over the way from Berlin or wherever they came and we make drinks together, we had laughs, just so much happiness.

AMANPOUR: What happened to you? Tell me how you got wounded.

BEN-SELA: I have a good one. It’s a big story. The first moment that we realized that there is missiles, I was really calm at first because it’s not the first time that I’ve seen missiles. I was fighting in Natsuki (ph) town and I was doing — I’ve been serving the army. And then, I start to watch the missiles. And one of the producers of the festival just jumped on the fence and screamed that the terrorists are coming in legs — in leg, just they come in on land and not air for missile. And then, the panic began. It was a big panic. Everybody was jumping on the fence, everybody ran to their cars, and there was a lot of fire out there, just — even in the biggest worst scene that we’ve seen in movies, I can’t explain how much — how many bullets and missiles were flying around us. Not the big missile like RPG and everything, it was RPG all over. I was fighting in a war and I’ve never seen so many RPGs, seriously.

AMANPOUR: And how did you get shot, Sahar? How did you get shot?

BEN-SELA: Part of the story. We tried to go to another place and they turn us around again. And then, we saw a policeman standing next to a shelter and a lot of cars. And the policeman look at us and say, there is nowhere to run, they are all over the place. Get inside the shelter, it’s the only way. We got inside the shelters with something — I remember 30 or 40 people, but my friend says that it was 60 or even 50 or 60 people. And we got inside the shelter. It was something like two meters at all, like just two meters square. And we got inside and then the shooting started and the policemen tried to calm us down. It’s not the terrorists, it’s the IDF, but the shooting was on us. I could see the shots. I could feel on the stones of the shelter, I could feel the bullets.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

BEN-SELA: And the screams, it’s not IDF. It’s not IDF. And then, just look at us and say, stay inside. Pull out the gun. And then it was massive shots all over the place. We can see in the entrance of the shelter a lot of bullets flying inside, but they couldn’t hit us because they can’t turn left, because it was an entrance and then left to the shelter. A small, something like —

AMANPOUR: So —

BEN-SELA: — meter.

AMANPOUR: — Sahar, it sounds to me like you were directed to take shelter, but you were like a cornered animal in this shelter. because that’s where the —

BEN-SELA: We didn’t took shelter. It wasn’t a shelter. It was an animal slaughter. It’s like they take all the animals to one place and shoot them all. And then, the policeman got shot and ran away. And he killed one of the terrorists but got shot and ran away. I found him on Soraka (ph) Life and God, the policeman. Oh, one second, sorry. Then they drop the first grenade. Drop inside. It was exploding the entrance.

AMANPOUR: I’m sorry. if it’s too much, don’t talk.

BEN-SELA: No, it’s OK. No, no, it’s OK. I need to tell about this. Just a second, please. Thank you. After the first grenade, after something like 45 seconds, he dropped the second grenade and he hit the wall, hit my head and flow to the back of the row — of the people in the back row and explode on them. And there was something like a lot of smoke inside. And then my friend — girlfriend start to choke and she wanted to go out. And she start to run away from the shelter. We tried to catch her. I remember, I was in the second row of the people. I tried to catch her with my hand and it was slipping. And she tackled, I think she tackled the terrorist. And he shot her dead from the zero — from zero —

AMANPOUR: Point blank, point blank.

BEN-SELA: Point blank, yes. Thank you. From point blank. And after he shot her dead, he just got inside. I could never forget the face of it. It was smiling at us. It looks like the devil. He just looked at us, point the gun, the machine gun in front of the girl face and just start to spread everything around. All the people. I was in the second row. All the people in the first row and the second row shot dead. I just opened my eyes and opened my mouth and start to go down the wall because I got — I understood that I got hit, but didn’t understand where yet because it was blood all over and screaming. And from all the adrenaline, I got hit in my body, but I can’t really understand what happened. And I think his gun was broken, that’s why he stopped to shot. And there was a third grenade inside the building but it didn’t explode. We found him on the floor. We say that we don’t want to touch it, so it won’t explode.