‘All kinds of nightmares’: Survivor of Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel speaks in Folsom

Ilya Tarshansky readily admits he’s not a great public speaker.

So, he sat Thursday evening in front of an audience of about 100 people at the Folsom Community Center and answered their questions as best as he could.

He’s a survivor of the Oct. 7 surprise Hamas militant attacks on Israel. Tarshansky, his 15-year-old son, Lior, and his 13-year-old daughter, Gali, hid in a safe room of their home in Kibbutz Be’eri. They desperately held the safe room door closed as invaders tried to knock the door open, before their home was set on fire.

Disoriented by the intense black smoke, Tarshansky and his daughter escaped the burning home. He was rescued hours later but his daughter was taken by Hamas militants and held hostage for 54 days. His son never made it out — they found his body in the safe room.

Tarshansky was asked how he copes with the memories of what happened to him and his children that day.

“When I’m busy with something, I don’t think about it. When I’m in solitude at home? Yeah, of course,” Tarshansky said at Thursday’s event in Folsom. “To me, I’m still on the 7th of October. I don’t believe seven months has passed.”

Jewish center hosted event

The Jewish Community Center of Folsom and El Dorado Hills invited Tarshansky to provide a first-hand account of what he and his children went through, along with the devastation of his community of Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel a few miles from the border with Gaza. He has been on a speaking tour in the United States talking to groups about what he went through and seeking donations to help survivors of the Hamas attacks.

Rabbi Yossi Grossbaum of Chabad Jewish Community Center, who introduced Tarshansky, said the discussion was not a pleasant topic but extremely important in the context of the circumstances. He reminded the audience that over 100 hostages taken from Israel remain in captivity.

“We have to make sure that when we face adversity, it shouldn’t take us down,” Grossbaum said. “It should strengthen us.”

The Folsom event was held amid numerous pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses throughout the United States, including Sacramento State and UC Davis, seeking an end to the ongoing war in Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians living in Gaza have been killed since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 Israelis.

Before Tarshansky sat down for the Q&A session, he showed the audience a 25-minute video that included text messages of panic from his daughter to her mother as Hamas militants were trying to break into the safe room, which had been installed by the Israeli government to protect them from rocket attacks.

Tarshansky said it seemed like the Israeli government never imagined how Hamas could launch an overwhelming attack, and “terrorists” would be in his home trying to break down the safe room door. He said it took hours for the Israeli military to respond to Be’eri; six of 11 members of a local first-response security force were killed trying to defend the community without military reinforcements as many residents were “butchered and massacred.”

“I felt secure in my homeland,” Tarshansky said about the Israel military presence he always saw around Be’eri. “I feel betrayed, cheated, lied to by my own state.”

Daughter held hostage

He said the weeks that followed his rescue were filled with “all kinds of nightmares” for himself and his ex-wife, the mother of his two children. While their eldest child’s body had been found, it took two weeks for authorities to identify him. Three weeks went by after the attacks before authorities could confirm their daughter was being held as a hostage in Gaza.

She was released, and authorities returned Gali to her parents on Nov. 30, one of over 100 other hostages who were freed.

Tarshansky said his daughter was held in a few different places throughout her captivity, spending most of it with other hostages in the home of a Muslim family who had no connection with the Hamas attacks and seemed to be held captive by the militants, too. The home had no running water, and they had little food.

Even after the parents were informed Gali would be released, Tarshansky said they were unable to feel a sense of relief until she ran to them and hugged them.

“We worried until we got her in our own hands,” Tarshansky said. “Once I grabbed her, I couldn’t stop crying like a baby for the whole night.”

They now live in Tel Aviv, Tarshansky in a home within walking distance from where his daughter and her mother live.

“We worried about her condition. Luckily, she wasn’t abused,” Tarshansky said.

The video he showed to the audience included clips from a memorial service held for his son, with Gali there to grieve for her brother.

Tarshansky said his daughter isn’t afraid to go out alone, but she has refused to see a therapist for now. Tarshansky and his ex-wife have chosen to continue seeing that therapist to help them cope with the trauma. But some days are hard on their daughter.

“She’s a fighter,” Tarshansky said about his teenage daughter. “It’s going to take time to process these things.”

There was a woman who was held hostage and rode on a vehicle as she and Tarshansky’s daughter released. He said the woman’s husband also was taken hostage and remains held in captivity seven months later.

“For those people left behind, I don’t know how (their families) deal with it,” Tarshansky told the audience. “It’s hard for me to imagine what they’re going through right now.”