Raz Mizrahi, 21: Wounded in 2021 attack, recovered and slain at party
Murdered while trying to flee the Supernova music festival on October 7
Raz Mizrahi, 21, from Gedera, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.
Her family said she called and told them she was fleeing the festival when the rocket fire began, and she and two friends sought safety in a roadside bomb shelter. There, she was murdered by Hamas who shot inside the structure.
She is survived by her parents, Gal and Nirit, and her siblings Noa and Dor. She was buried on October 10 in Gedera.
Her family and friends said she loved sports in general and in particular beach handball and surfing, and they held a soccer tournament in her honor in Gedera in December.
Two months after she was slain, her childhood friend, Sgt. First Class Liav Aloush, was killed fighting Hamas in Gaza.
In May 2021, during the flareup in violence with Gaza known as Guardian of the Walls, Raz was seriously wounded while serving as a Border Police officer in Jerusalem when a Palestinian attacker rammed his car into the checkpoint. She required four months of rehabilitation, and later toured the US telling her story.
“From a talented athlete who could run 10 miles without losing my breath, I needed to learn how to walk again. Ten steps with excruciating pain was an accomplishment,” she told a group in New York in late 2022 with the organization Belev Echad, according to Ynet, which noted that she also suffered from fear, anxiety and depression following the incident.
A year and a half after she was wounded, she completed an officer’s course, saying: “I didn’t allow the injury, the physical pain I suffer from until today, or the mental pain and anxieties, take control of my life and divert me from the path I dreamed of.”
On October 9, Raz was supposed to arrive in Los Angeles to speak about her experience with a group of other wounded veterans.
Her close friend, Sharon Peretz — who was with her during the 2021 attack — told Channel 14 that he got to know “an incredible girl, with the same type of humor, the same smile, I can’t explain in just a few words what her personality was.”
Raz’s friend Daniel Amno wrote on Instagram on October 30, what would have been her 22nd birthday, recalling how “you went through the hardest thing there is, and got up like a champion, and I looked at you as a role model, to get up and go back to fighting — and when you returned you didn’t want them to make things easy, you did everything like everyone else, and even more.”
“Raz you are the strongest there is,” he continued. “My Raz, you are always with me in every place, you are missed so much and I hope that this is all one long dream and we will wake up and everything will be fine. I love you to the sky and back.”
Her mother, Nirit, said that she was worried during the entirety of Raz’s mandatory service, and breathed a sigh of relief when she was released.
“When she completed her service I was happy, that I had quiet nights, I never imagined that she would go to a party… and not come back from it,” Nirit told Channel 12. “Raz was a very happy and positive girl, what people remember from her is her laugh, she had such a contagious laugh, and she was always doing nonsense, and Raz wouldn’t want us to sink into sadness. She would want us to be strong and to keep living.”