‘I’m angry’: Survivor recounts his family hiding while terrorists were in their home

“I feel anger and I feel revenge,” says Glen Eilon, a resident of the Netiv Ha’asara moshav and a survivor of Hamas’s murderous attack on southern Israel.

“I’m not terrified, I’m not scared, I’m not shaking in my boots, but if I had power I would exercise it with those two feelings,” he says, speaking from a hotel in Ma’ale Hahamisha near Jerusalem, where evacuees from the community are staying.

Eilon, 82, his wife, his youngest son, his daughter-in-law and their three young children mercifully escaped harm as Hamas terrorists stormed the community, located just several hundred meters from Gaza’s northern border, and set about murdering whoever they could.

“One of my neighbors lost his two sons in the attack. Our two elderly neighbors hid in their safe room and when they [the terrorists] couldn’t get in they piled up tires against the house and burned it down with them inside,” he tells The Times of Israel.

“A young mother was in the bathroom and when the terrorists saw her, they lobbed in a grenade and killed her.”

Eilon, originally from South Africa, and his family ran to their bomb shelter when Hamas began its massive rocket barrage, around 6 a.m. on Saturday, and for the first two hours did not know that terrorists had infiltrated into Israeli territory since there was no power or internet connection in the moshav for much of the time.

At one stage, Eilon’s wife even went to make breakfast for their grandchildren, aged 12, eight and five.

“Then we heard them shooting with the Kalashnikovs, we heard them firing in the street next to us,” says Eilon about the moment they realized that there were terrorists among them.

“My family was terrified… my son was shaking like a leaf, I couldn’t protect him, I couldn’t protect my grandchildren,” he continued.

After spending 12 hours in their shelter and after the sounds of gunfire had abated, Eilon and his family, together with his eldest son who lives nearby, eventually got in their cars at around 6 p.m. and fled the moshav.

“I’m angry because no one’s taking responsibility, angry because something like this could happen, angry because the government didn’t know what was going on.

“Where were our vaunted security forces, where were the soldiers, where was the army for the first seven hours?” he demands.

“People were screaming for help but there were no tanks, no jeeps, no soldiers.”

Eilon says that despite being right wing, he is deeply angry with the current government.

“We have no government. We’ve got people looking to blame others instead.

“If the prime minister were a man, he’d quit and say ‘I failed the country, I failed the people, I failed everyone, I’m going home,’ with his tail between his legs.”