A man name Itai told of how he and his wife, Moran, woke to hearing air-raid sirens and the explosions of rockets hitting the iron dome. In their area right near Gaza, they often hear sirens and explosions, maybe 20-30.
Now they heard hundreds, all together and one after the other.
As they rushed with their 4-year-old boy-girl twins to the mamad, they also heard shooting outside.
They also started receiving messages from others on the kibbutz, announcing a terrorist invasion, accompanied by photos of the terrorist swooping down from paragliders and grinding in on jeeps.
Though the door to their home was locked, it didn't help because they had a door made more for decoration than security.
They quickly understood their kibbutz was in the middle of being overrun with terrorists, yet Itai looked at Moran and said, "What are we supposed to do? We can't even lock the mamad."
So Itai ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and ran back to the mamad.
But when he heard the terrorists shouting outside his home, he cast the knife aside due to his certainty the terrorists will break in and if they'd see him with a knife, they'd kill him for sure.
At that point, he still expected to reason with the barbarians.
The terrorists burst in and shot the family's barking dog, then rampaged through the home, breaking doors, windows, and glass.
When the terrorists reached the door of the mamad, Itai held the handle in closed position, literally wrestling with all his strength to hold it.
As he struggled against their force on the handle, he said Shema Yisrael in his heart while his wife sat on the bed, hugging their two children.
What else can I do, he thought, except say Shema Yisrael in my heart?
Then the terrorists started striking the handle with what sounded like iron pipes.
Then they lit a fire in the home.
Turning on his flashlight to see, the family watched as black smoke poured into the mamad room via the air-conditioner.
(The mamads have large removable iron discs with bolts covering a hole in the wall to install air-conditioning. Because all of us assumed we'd have plenty of warning before needing to use the mamad as a bomb shelter — because with the rest of the wars, we had advanced notice — many people remove the discs, so as to utilize the holes for air-conditioning.)
Despairing of any other option, Itai though he should just open the door and surrender.
Initially, Itai heard screams from outside and feared trying to escape through the window.
If they see us trying to escape, they'll kill us. Maybe if we approach them nicely, maybe if we come out with our hands up and they see us with two small children, they'll go easy on us, he thought to himself.
He expected them to either leave them alone once they saw the children, or take them as hostages.
At that point, he had no way of knowing what was happening to his fellow Jews in the kibbutz, who came to that same decision.
Yet when he went to pull down the door handle to open the door, he discovered his hand suddenly struck with weakness. He could not even grasp the handle of the door.
With the black smoke continuing to pour in, their only other option remained the window. With their mamad on the ground floor, he carefully opened the iron window cover and saw no one around.
He jumped out into their backyard, then helped his wife pass the children through the window, and helped her out too.
They ducked down, covering themselves with the leaves of a short palm tree when he looked back up at the window and realized the open window remained a dead giveaway to their escape.
He jumped up to close it, then crouched back down under the palms just as terrorists passed within a foot of where he and his family sheltered.
The little family remained there for 6 hours.
For 4 hours, the terrorists destroyed and looted the family's home.
Itai and Moran watched as dozens of terrorists went from home to home.
They heard their friends and neighbors being slaughtered.
Moran wanted to run to better cover in a neighbor's yard right near them, but Itai refused, saying that somehow, the palm tree prevented the terrorists from seeing the family, so he wanted to stay put.
Also, despite the twins being so young (and one being particularly energetic and vocal), the children never uttered a sound throughout the entire event.
Itai and Moran each hugged one child to them. Each time a terrorist approached, the family simply lowered their heads in the way children do when they don't want to be seen, and the terrorists passed them by.
In fact, several times, Itai felt positive the terrorists looked right at the family. He and Moran simply lowered their heads, and the terrorists kept right on going.
The entire time, Itai kept thinking, Where is the army?
The terrorists positioned themselves on the roofs of corner homes, and kept shooting at any soldiers who tried to come in.
At one point, the fire spread to outside the home and started consuming the family's pergola.
Once again, they faced the black smoke.
Fortunately, a bucket and an outside water faucet stood nearby. Itai managed to bring water without being seen and the family drank and removed their shirts to cover their noses and mouths to breathe more easily.
At one point, they no longer heard shouting in Arabic.
Furthermore, the could no longer tolerate the black smoke.
So they decided to make a beeline for a nearby orchard.
Yet the terrorists saw them from the rooftops and started shooting at this shirtless family, fleeing with two young children.
The family made it into the orchard, dove into a ditch and covered themselves with fresh strawberry cuttings that "happened" to be there.
Night fell and they started to feel cold.
Throughout these nightmarish hours, they continued to hear air-raid sirens, rockets slamming into the ground, the Israeli air force shooting from above, plus the shooting between Israeli soldiers and the terrorists.
At one point, they saw lights from a jeep and Itai suspected terrorists again.
Soon, however, they heard them speaking Hebrew and realized the jeep came from the army.
So they family slowly came out and called out to the soldiers, who turned out to be from an elite commando unit.
One approached the family and did everything he could to reassure them that now, they would be all right.
In order to extract the family, the soldiers needed to blow up the fence surrounding the orchard, which they did.
An Israeli tank came and nearly fired on the group, thinking them terrorists.
Once outside the kibbutz, a regular Israeli came by. He simply kept driving around to pick up the survivors — on his own, voluntarily.
When Rav Fenger asked Itai why he thought the palm tree provided so much protection, Itai answered, "This was the first year I ever built a sukkah in my life."
He did it for his children.
And he used the branches of that same palm tree for the schach.
"I thinned out that palm tree," said Itai. "And it still hid me."
Later, they discovered the great miracle of his hand weakening right at the moment he tried to open the handle of the door.
This scene repeated itself in dozens of other homes throughout the kibbutz, with the Jews hoping for mercy in surrender — and hardly anyone survived the attempt at conciliation.
Interestingly, when Itai needed to open the iron cover of the window (which takes a lot of strength, believe me) and hoist himself out, plus helping his wife and children, his hand functioned just fine.
Now the family is recovering in a hotel for survivors near the Dead Sea.
You can see the interview in Hebrew here, starting at 33:45:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M20QVSqOuA