“Our greatest fear was being raped”: Survivors of October 7 speak out

Ester Borochov and Shira Zohar have been best friends since high school.

But their friendship was never tested more than on October 7 last year, when they narrowly escaped with their lives at the Nova Music Festival.

In a moving speech at an Ezer Mizion Women of Valour event in Toronto last week, Borochov and Zohar told the sold-out crowd – at times with tears in their eyes – that they wanted to tell their story to pay tribute to the hero Ori Arad, who saved their lives.

Arad, 22, who was working as a bartender at the event, came by in his gray Jeep and picked them up after they left their car to terrorists in IDF uniforms. (The car was stolen and taken to Gaza.)

Unfortunately, Arad fell victim to the terrorist attack. But miraculously, the two girls survived.

Ezer Mizion, Israel’s largest healthcare organization, is dedicated to providing a comprehensive range of medical, emotional and social services to patients and their families.

Its crown jewel is its bone marrow registry, the largest Jewish bone marrow registry in the world.

Borochov, 20, said they arrived at the Nova Music Festival around 4 a.m. on October 7 – and experienced so much “peace and love” from many different nationalities.

At around 6 a.m. they went back to their car to change, have a few cigarettes and take a photo of the sunrise “to remember this special moment.”

On the way back to the party, according to Borochov, they saw “tons of rockets in the sky.”

Her mother called and warned her to come home immediately.

But after ten minutes of driving, they saw five terrorists in Israeli uniforms with green headbands. She stepped on the accelerator and “ran right through them.”

“Many bullets hit the car but could not hurt us… that was one of our miracles,” Borochov said.

After another car hit them and they could no longer see through the windshield, they abandoned their car and walked along the highway.

When they saw Arad’s jeep, they asked if they could come with him.

Arad told them not to worry: “I will get you out of here, I promise.”

But when the terrorists started shooting at the jeep incessantly, Arad lost control of the car, which rolled over three times and ended up in a ditch on the side of the road.

Zohar said she saw her friend roll over and could only see her legs – the rest of her body was in the back seat of the Jeep.

“I immediately pulled Ester’s body to me,” she said. “I pinched Ester to see if she was awake because I saw that she was bleeding.”

At 8 a.m. the terrorists returned to make sure they had killed Arad.

Arad’s brother Shay said in an interview with NBC News on October 13 that the terrorists came back to “finish him off” by shooting him in the face with a full magazine to make sure they had killed him.

Borochov just prayed that no one would see them.

“Our biggest fear was being raped and kidnapped by Hamas terrorists,” said Zohar, who had heard on the radio that the terrorists had kidnapped people.

She said she couldn’t feel her legs after the rollover, but that she “talked to God… I just knew He would bring us home safely.”

At around 11 a.m. they heard voices and saw the field next to the ditch where the car had landed “catching fire.”

Zohar said she spent the next 20 minutes trying to persuade Borochov to get out of the car and get help. Zohar was stuck because she couldn’t feel her body at all.

“She (Ester) told me that if she didn’t come back within the next 20 minutes, she would be dead,” Zohar said.

Borochov said she ran until she saw soldiers who took her to a safe place.

She screamed until she managed to convince them that they had to turn back and get Zohar, who was still alive.

Zohar said the minutes her friend was gone “felt like hours,” and when she realized she couldn’t stay where she was, she had no choice but to roll out of the car toward the fire.

“I said if I’m not dead already, God is with me and I’m not going to burn in the fire,” she said. “I found a strength I never knew I had.”

When Borochov returned to the rescue, the soldiers told her that Arad was already dead.

At a hospital in Sderot, Zohar said she was told everything was fine and she could go home, but she was not feeling well.

Three days later, her mother insisted on taking her to the hospital, where an X-ray showed a broken vertebra in her tailbone. Doctors said it was a “miracle” that she could still walk.

“I had to have surgery immediately, otherwise I would be paralyzed from the waist down,” she said.

I asked the two young ladies about the increasing anti-Semitism on the streets and university campuses of Canada and the United States and the denial that rape had occurred.

Zohar said she just doesn’t think about it. She knows who she is and what the IDF and Israel are about.

She said being Jewish was the “greatest gift” her life could give.

“You have to do it and be proud of it… don’t be afraid of it,” she said. “You have to understand that it’s the best thing you can have in life.”

Borochov and Zohar said they are now trying to live their lives and are grateful that “every day is a gift” and that they were saved.

“In our struggle for survival, we have discovered strengths we didn’t know we had,” Zohar said.

“I thank God that I am still alive,” Borochov added. “We are grateful that we have each other.”