Couple who each lost leg in Oct. 7 massacre begin long road to recovery
Ben Binyamin and Gali Segal both lost right legs after terrorists threw grenade into shelter they were hiding in; weeks after engagement, couple still aims to walk down aisle
A news report Friday shared the story of engaged couple Ben Binyamin and Gali Segal, who are both recovering after each losing their right leg in the devastating October 7 Hamas attack.
The two, who became engaged a week before, were attending the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im when Hamas terrorists stormed the Gaza border and began their brutal massacre, Channel 12 news reported.
When the rocket barrages started, the couple fled along with a friend and encountered a police officer who motioned for them to enter a roadside bomb shelter near the Alumim Junction, where other rave attendees had crammed inside.
After a short while, terrorists arrived and began firing at the entrance of the bomb shelter. Binyamin and Segal were toward the back and were not hit. But then the terrorists hurled a grenade inside, at which point they both lost consciousness.
When Segal woke up she realized that her right leg had been blown off and started screaming. Binyamin — in a similar state of shock after suffering from nearly the same injury — kissed her and urged her to save her energy.
“I remember that I really felt my body and I screamed ‘I have no leg, I have no leg!'” Segal recalled.
“It’s not normal that we both lost the same leg. We have more or less the same injury,” Binyamin said.
“And we both returned from there,” Segal added.
A police officer arrived at the scene shortly later and helped secure the area. He flagged down a car evacuating the wounded to take them to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.
Binyamin — who is a professional soccer player for the Maccabi Sha’arayim team — was briefly separated from Segal during the evacuation but reunited with her at the hospital later that day.
“The doctors didn’t believe we would survive,” Segal said. “We were there during long nights where we lay in beds next to each other.”
“I don’t know how I would have survived if she wasn’t with me during every moment of the crisis,” Binyamin said. “We also saw moments of joy and small victories. Out of the darkness of October 7, we found great love and a chilling shared destiny.”
The pair met at a bar six years ago along with friends, after they each went through a breakup. He took her phone number and after a few months they began dating.
The couple remains hospitalized while undergoing rehabilitation at Sheba Medical Center, as they embark on their long road to recovery together.
Binyamin has so far undergone three operations, while Segal has had seven, as her hand was also injured by shrapnel and her wounds were infected, according to the report.
Segal said that she is already imagining being able to walk down the aisle together: “We want to go to the wedding with prosthesis, walking.”
“She already knows what prosthesis she wants and everything,” Binyamin said.
“With white glitter, of course,” Segal said.
“This feeling that I have now, it’s the bright spot that I have,” she continued. “That I see something that I want to celebrate. This is our little story.”
War erupted after Hamas’s shock October 7 invasion of southern Israeli communities under cover of thousands of rockets, when thousands of terrorists killed about 1,200 people, mostly families at home and people at the Supernova festival.
The death toll at the massacre at the Supernova festival was recetnly updated to over 360, from about 260, according to a Channel 12 report Friday. The toll would make up nearly one-third of all those killed during the onslaught.
