'They are shooting Adi in the head, I am dying': They heard the massacre in real time — and are launching a struggle

Adi Gindi Grishpon (39) called her sister Shahar Gindi (of blessed memory), who was at the Nova party, dozens of times with concern on October 7. At 7:41 AM, while Adi was trembling with fear in the safe room of her home in Yavne alongside her husband and two children, Shahar answered the phone.

"Do I have a hand?!" Shahar asked Almog Sarusi (of blessed memory), her partner who was by her side. He replied, "You have a hand and you have legs. They will save you." Adi realized that the couple had not noticed they had answered the call, and their breathing became heavy. At 10:00 AM, Grishpon tried again and called Almog Sarusi, her sister's partner. "Suddenly he answers me, and I call out 'Almog? Almog?', but it wasn't him," she recalls, tearing up. "A terrorist answered me, shouting 'Jahannam.' I understood he was saying 'Hell' in Arabic."

From that moment on, contact with Almog and Shahar was cut off, and for a week Shahar was considered missing. Until Thursday afternoon, a cursed knock on the door of the parents' home in Holon brought the terrible news. "We cried and were angry. I identified her body by the line," she shares, and hastens to add, "Even in that state, she was very beautiful."

This phone call changed Adi's life. "Since that day, I am there, returning again and again to the scene of the massacre, to the shots that whistled over Shahar's head, to the sounds of her pain." She was diagnosed with PTSD, experienced frequent dissociations, and returned with great difficulty to her job as a teacher at school. "It is very difficult for those with PTSD in crowded settings," she says.

The struggle for recognition

Now Adi is struggling to receive recognition from the state as a victim of hostilities, but is encountering a dead end and a rather outdated law, which determines that in order to be recognized as a "victim of hostilities" under the Compensation Law, physical presence at the scene of the hostile event at the time of its occurrence is required. "To tell me that they don't recognize me because the law says I must be physically at the place is callous. I was there. Who can tell me I wasn't? I am the one who doesn't sleep at nights, is treated with pills, accompanied by a psychiatrist and a psychologist, and nothing helps — my children don't see a healthy mother."

Adi continued to try, but her request was rejected on the grounds "that it is impossible to recognize so many people. So they don't recognize anyone," she says, and in the same breath answers: "True. What will we do? We didn't choose this. I would prefer Shahar to be here, but the state was in a state of sleep, and that is what happened — is it our fault?"

Grishpon describes life before the family disaster as "the previous life." In that life, she used to set ambitions, plan trips and events ahead, be a present mother. "Today I cannot see a future," she says. "Even my child, who started first grade, is affected by what he sees, by life alongside a mother who doesn't receive what she needs to recover. During the period when Almog was murdered in captivity, he suggested that we take a knife, he and I — and he would hurt me and I him," she says with pain. "He said, 'You are sad and I am sad, let's take a knife and that way the sadness will end.'"

Farewell via phone, and a burst of gunfire

At 8:11 AM on the morning of October 7, 22-year-old Libi Maguri called her family to say goodbye, also after having been at the Nova party. "They are shooting Adi in the head, she is lying on me dead. They shot me in the stomach and hand. I am going to die," she told them from Route 232, which in those hours became a death trap.

On the other side of the line, her parents tried to send instructions from afar — they asked her to throw away the phone, apply a tourniquet, lie on the road, and pretend to be dead. But Libi already understood. Through the phone, she said goodbye to her father, her mother, her twin brother, and her little sister. Moments later, her family members heard the terrorists approaching — and then a burst of gunfire. This call was indeed cut off, but for the family, it never truly ended.

The family carries this event every day. "None of us lives as we lived before," says her mother, Shelly Meshal Yogev. And alongside this, the family members did not submit a request for recognition as victims of hostilities. Not because, according to them, they do not need assistance, but because in order to receive recognition for the mental injury, they are required to prove it. From their perspective, this is exactly where the absurdity lies: after hearing in real time their daughter and sister saying goodbye to them and the shots that killed her, they find it difficult to accept the demand to undergo a professional assessment that will testify to the injury that the call left in them. "A mother who hears her child saying goodbye to her and her siblings, who hears her daughter saying 'Here it ends, I have no way to save myself' — and then hears a burst of gunfire, needs a psychiatrist to determine that she was injured? It should be self-evident," Shelly asserts.

Tomer, Libi's twin brother, who was a participant in the last farewell call from her, has since been trying to get used to a reality he did not know. "I need to learn to walk in the world alone. I don't know how to live without Libi," he told his mother. Shortly after the disaster, Tomer began his studies at the university. Naturally, the memories of that cursed day continued to accompany him. When he asked for accommodations in his studies, his mother says, he was asked to present a certificate regarding his condition, and therefore decided to give up. "He told me: 'I want to find a job as an engineer in well-known companies. Why does it need to be written that I have a mental and functional injury? I am not ready for this.'" Thus, precisely the fear of the need to prove the injury leaves him without the response he needs.

"The law must change"

Liat Elam, CEO of the 121 organization, which leads the 'Light on the Horizon' partnership — the headquarters for expanding recognition and improving responses for victims of hostilities, says: "The Attorney General determines that 'the existing law does not allow for the recognition of victims who were exposed to murder, kidnapping, and atrocities through the phone and screens.' If so, the conclusion is clear: the law must change! The law that regulates the rights of victims of hostilities was written in 1970, long before the era of smartphones and social networks.

Since then, reality has changed, but the law has remained behind. There are people who heard their loved ones being murdered on the phone or were exposed to atrocities through the screen, and the injury to them is real, deep, and requires recognition and treatment. As part of the proposal we developed together with organizations from civil society that represent victims, we believe that first-degree relatives who were exposed to the injury of their loved ones through a phone call, messages, or other digital means should be recognized and receive appropriate assistance. Now the ball is in the hands of the government and the Knesset."

The Ministry of Defense stated: "We share the grief of the families and feel their pain. According to existing law and Supreme Court rulings, physical presence at the event is required to recognize a victim. The events of October 7 caused severe mental distress also for those who were exposed to them from afar, but existing law does not allow for recognition in these cases at this stage."