7 October hero finds solace in South Africa

At 06:45 on 7 October, when Rami Davidian left his Moshav Patish home, about 15 minutes from the site of the now infamous Nova festival, he did so wearing Ugg slippers. He was asked to rescue his friend’s child – just one person – but had no idea what he was about to walk into.

“I knew I would be back home in a few minutes,” he says, smiling ruefully. Yet as he neared the site of the festival, he knew that this was no ordinary situation. “I started realising it was a lot bigger than I understood. I heard screams, people shouting, ‘help me, help me’, and I heard explosions.” Davidian saw bikes in the middle of the road, and then shockingly, dismembered fingers and dead bodies.

An ordinary man in his late 50s, Davidian worked in the diesel industry. “During my army service, I was a maintenance guy, and I dealt with the transportation of tanks and big trucks from place to place,” he recalls. He had never been involved in a rescue operation, on any scale.

Yet that morning, his knowledge of the terrain and instinct to help youngsters in distress kicked into gear. He essentially set up a rescue team, calling his sons-in-law, family members, and friends from the moshav to help. “I told them to bring bakkies to come and help save them,” he says. “I directed the people I saw to escape eastwards and said that I’d make sure that somebody would be there to pick them up and rescue them.”

After Davidian had rescued his first 15 teenagers, one asked if they could share his number and he readily agreed. “I started getting flooded by requests from parents.” What he felt that day wasn’t fear, he says. “It was just emotion, I just kept going back and forth for more people, I couldn’t stop. I was carried by the emotion of parents saying, ‘We’ve only got one child, please save my child.’”

At one stage he rescued two young women, one of whom asked him to help her friend Amit. “They gave me her GPS location and I played hot and cold with my car horn, so she would understand that I was getting closer to her, and we could find each other.”

He had no idea though that Amit was surrounded by Palestinian looters who had entered Israel in the wake of the Hamas terrorists. “I spoke to them in Arabic and convinced them that I was one of them,” Davidian recounts. “I lied to them and that’s how I saved her.”

Eventually he helped rescue about 700 people.

When she visited South Africa in March 2024, Nova festival survivor Millet Ben Haim told the SA Jewish Report how Davidian helped save her life, too. Frantically trying to get help as she and others hid from terrorists, Ben Haim texted friends and posted on Instagram. Through the resulting network of messages, she received Davidian’s contact information from a girl she didn’t know.

“He’s a hero, a civilian who decided voluntarily to go into that fire zone and rescue people. He didn’t even have a gun, he just came with his car, searched for people and got them out.” Ben Haim spoke with Davidian for a long time, as they tried to locate one another. “I was so helpless and the service wasn’t good, and the shooting kept happening, so I had to whisper not to be heard. Eventually I had 3% of phone battery left, so I told him that I was going to turn off my phone and to please not give up on us. He said he would honk his horn until he found us, which is so brave and selfless, I don’t even have the words to describe it, to risk himself like that.”

Finally, they heard his hooting some distance away and Ben Haim crawled toward the road, terrified. Miraculously, she was in fact spotted and rescued by another 7 October hero, retired senior Israel Defense Forces officer Lion Bar. Bar also rescued many partygoers but was ultimately murdered by Hamas terrorists when he returned to help on 8 October.

Davidian spent two days doing all he could to find and assist survivors and to honour dead bodies as he witnessed unspeakable horrors. He collected and matched body parts, covered corpses in indecent positions, and moved bodies away from the path of tanks. He recited the Shema prayer as he went.

Davidian says he’s forever changed by all he experienced. “It’s not easy to see bodies and body parts, to see young people crying, to see missing fingers and heads cut open. It’s had a big effect on me from A to Z.”

For one thing, he developed fibromyalgia – a chronic health condition that causes pain and tenderness throughout the body as well as sometimes severe fatigue. Davidian was hospitalised with the condition and continues to see therapists as part of his treatment. He has been unable to return to work, which is located on the Gaza Envelope, where much commercial activity has ceased.

“I’ve had a lot of support from the state and a lot of good people that have helped me,” he says. “Talking to people has also really helped, travelling all over and recounting my ordeal.”

Davidian is happy to be in South Africa, which he calls a beautiful country with a beautiful community. He was particularly thrilled to see elephants in the Pilanesberg. “Being here is helping to cleanse my soul, it came at the right time.” He refers to some media upheaval in Israel where some of his testimony, particularly around seeing evidence of sexual violence, has recently been questioned. Thousands have rushed to his defence.

“I wasn’t looking to be a hero, I just went in to help and restore some pride and dignity to the families,” Davidian says. Having met one of the former female hostages, he was particularly struck when she recalled overhearing terrorists saying how powerful Israel is when its people are unified. “That’s my message of unity; unconditional love is the most important thing,” he says. “Together we will win.”

Rami Davidian was brought to South Africa by the JNF and the Base as part of their October 7th Respite and Healing Project.