‘They’re shooting at me’: Eden Yerushalmi’s emergency call before Oct. 7 abduction
Family of 24-year-old bartender, still in captivity, tells story and shares chilling recordings from the hours after Supernova music festival in push for hostage release deal
The family of Eden Yerushalmi, held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since October 7, released recordings on Thursday of the desperate calls she made while hiding in shrubs near Kibbutz Re’im prior to her abduction.
“I’m here amid all of the shooting in the south. I need you to help me! I’m alone, and I’m hiding in the bushes,” Yerushalmi is heard telling the emergency police hotline operator, who tried to send an SMS message to ascertain the caller’s location.
Throughout the call, which was aired Thursday by Channel 12, Eden tells the operator to be quiet as gunmen approach her hiding spot. Gunfire and voices can be heard in the background of the call.
At one point the operator asks her if she’s alone, and Eden replies, “Yes. But that’s it. They’re going to kill me. I’m dead.”
Along with the recording, Channel 12 aired footage of an interview with Yerushalmi’s mother and two sisters, who spoke of their own calls with their daughter and sister during the four hours she was on the run from the terrorists who rampaged the Supernova festival.
“Mom, they’re shooting at me, they’re shooting at me!” her mother, Sarit Yerushalmi, recalls her daughter telling her over the phone at 7:30 a.m. on October 7. “They’re shooting at me. I love you.”
Channel 12 also aired a recording of the call Sarit made to the emergency hotline that morning.
“My daughter just called me. She’s at the party in the south, and they’re shooting at them,” she tells the operator. “Please, save them. There are a lot of kids there. Dear God!”
Some 360 partygoers were murdered and over 40 were kidnapped into Gaza on October 7 when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 252 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Yerushalmi was working at the party as a bartender. When the attack began, she called her older sister, Shani, who stayed on the phone with her for hours, along with their younger sister, May.
“At first Eden hid in a car. She told us that she pretended to be dead,” Shani said in the interview. After some time, she worked up the courage to run for cover and hid from the terrorists behind a shrub.
“Stay with me, please, I beg you,” she tells the operator during her separate call to police. “Find me, okay?”
Eden was on the phone with her sister Shani when she was eventually taken hostage.
“She said that they were getting closer to her, and at that point we could hear them approaching, and then she whispered, ‘Shani, they caught me,'” she recalled. “And that’s how it ended, after almost four hours on the line.”
"הם הורגים אותי, זהו אני מתה": הקלטת השיחה בין עדן ירושלמי למוקדנית המשטרה – רגע לפני שנחטפהhttps://t.co/Lwkdgh4975 | @yollancohen pic.twitter.com/KrNvPIkSuR
— החדשות – N12 (@N12News) May 30, 2024
Eden’s mother spoke of the family’s fears for her condition after almost nine months in captivity.
“We’re very concerned. It’s no secret… We’ve heard that women there have been subjected to sexual harassment, and women can get pregnant,” Sarit told Channel 12.
A United Nations report published in March found “clear and convincing” evidence that hostages were raped while being held in Gaza, and that those currently held captive are still facing such abuse. Hostages released from captivity in a November hostage deal have also testified that Israeli women held captive in Gaza are being subjected to regular sexual abuse.
Yerushalmi’s family said that they decided to air the recordings to pressure decision-makers to work for the release of the hostages still held in Gaza.
It is believed that 121 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released prior to that. Three hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 19 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military.
The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 37 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.
One more person is listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown.
Hamas is also holding the bodies of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin since 2014, as well as two Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who are both thought to be alive after entering the Strip of their own accord in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
