Rafaela Triestman, a Brazilian citizen who immigrated to Israel three years ago, appealed to Brazilian President Lula da Silva following his comparison between Israel's war in Gaza and Hitler's attrocities. In a meeting with Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, she recounted how she was saved from the massacre at the Nova party in Kibbutz Re'im, while her partner Hanani Glazer was murdered by Hamas terrorists.
"On October 6, I decided to go to a party with my boyfriend, in order to celebrate and have fun. At 6:30 in the morning we started seeing missiles in the sky, we were a little worried when we realized that there was no safe place for anyone," said Triestman in a video released by Foreign Minister Israel Katz. "We left the area of the party, drove in the direction of Re'im, and thought we were safe. We stayed there for a while, until many more people from the party started entering the pool, and it was very crowded," she related.
"Suddenly we started hearing gunshots outside the shelter, which came from the Hamas terrorist organization that attacked Israel that day. We had no idea about the proportions of what happened, we were just living the moment. Hamas came right up to our shelter, threw gas grenades, and shot anyone who moved. They threw Molotov cocktails, lit a fire at the entrance and burned people alive. They kidnapped a guy who was next to me, took a girl who was next to me, raped her and burned her alive."
"October 7 was the most traumatic day in my life, the blackest day in my life," she pointed out. "I lost Hanani, who was the person I loved the most in the whole world. I will never forget what happened there, I will never forget the hatred I felt that day. I just waited and prayed to God to take me as soon as possible. Luckily I came out alive because I hid under dead bodies for five hours."
According to her, "Hamas is not a resistance organization. It is a terrorist group. Israel has helped me throughout the rehabilitation process with medication and post-trauma treatment. It saddens me greatly to know that the country where I was born, that I called home, is in this situation where the government in Brazil compares what Israel is doing to the Holocaust."
"Here, people live together, with each other, so you can't call it 'genocide.' Genocide would be if we boycotted Palestinian businesses, did something against the Palestinians, and if the population decreased significantly - when in truth, it has increased five times in recent years. Israel is doing everything to protect the residents of Gaza, even if it means losing many soldiers to prevent the killing of civilians."
"It makes me very sad to be a Jew from Brazil who moved to Israel, when my whole family perished in the Holocaust. My family fled from Poland to Brazil, which was considered a safe place at the time, and they turned it into a home because they knew that there they would not be persecuted and murdered just because they were Jews."
"Therefore, it is very difficult to know that I cannot return to my country, because of the danger of being Jewish in a place that has so much anti-Semitism, whose leaders express themselves in an anti-Semitic way, and whose government compares Israel's actions to Hitler. They not only spread anti-Semitism, but also hurt the memory of the six million Jews who were brutally slaughtered in the Holocaust because of one person."
"The Brazilian government did not contact me or the families of those who were brutally murdered in the October 7th attack. To be honest, the Brazilian government did nothing and we simply felt that they had forgotten us. That is why I am sitting next to (Minister Katz). I want to show the other side of the story, to show the importance of spreading reliable information and to say that Israel tries to protect civilians in Gaza."
