Members of Sydney’s Jewish community are holding a memorial event at an undisclosed location near Sydney Harbour on Sunday evening to remember victims of the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas.
People began gathering at around 4.30pm, and the event is set to conclude around 7pm after the lighting of a symbolic candle. A strong security presence was established at the harbourside site an hour before the event began.
Israeli Michal Ohana was shot during the October 7 attack by Hamas.
Visitors were handed metal tags with the phrase “bring them home – now”, a reference to the 101 hostages taken by Hamas and other militant groups a year ago who remain unaccounted for.
One of those who will address the crowd at the memorial is Michal Ohana, an Israeli who travelled to Sydney with her country’s embassy to tell her story.
Ohana was dancing at the Nova music festival near Re’im in southern Israel when the attacks began, and endured a nightmare eleven hours of being pursued by gunmen through the scrub and fields around the festival site.
While hiding under an abandoned Israeli armoured vehicle, she was shot in the leg and injured in the stomach by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade.
“I didn’t feel anything, because of the adrenaline. But I saw that I’m bleeding. I remember calling my mum. I said ‘Mum, I love you. I’m bleeding and I think I’m going to die.’ She started to cry because she can’t help me. I prayed to God. Please God, I don’t want to die, not today, not like this.”
For seven agonising hours, the group of young friends hid beneath and behind the tank as the killing continued around them and the militants hunted for more victims. While the hunt went on, Ohana and others looked at social media feeds on their phones and saw posts from Hamas militants on Telegram boasting about the slaughter.
Ohana was eventually evacuated and taken to the same Israeli hospital where her sister was nursing a newborn baby.
“I feel like I was born again on October 7,” Ohana said. “I am living to tell my story.”
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