Warning: The following depicts scenes of graphic violence and death.
(NewsNation) — An American woman who survived an attack on an Israeli music festival says she wouldn’t be alive had it not been for the heroism of her uncle who put himself between his family and a grenade.
Lee Sasi was huddled inside a bomb shelter near the festival grounds where the attack occurred. Gunmen approached and began firing inside, and then, one of them tossed a grenade into the shelter. Sasi says her uncle acted to save his family.
“He protected me from the grenade, and I truly think that God made him get hit so that we — me, my cousin and her husband — (could) survive,” Sasi said in an interview aired Wednesday on “CUOMO.” “He’s a legend. He helped everybody. He had the biggest heart. He was scared to death and … even though he was scared to death, he protected me. He wasn’t being selfish. He didn’t put himself first. He put me first because I was next to him.”
Sasi is among those who survived Saturday’s attack on the Supernova festival, carried out by Hamas militants who stormed Israel. At least 260 bodies were recovered from the festival grounds, and many more are feared captured, including Sasi’s cousin, who is three months pregnant.
“They kidnapped so many people,” Sasi said. “They kidnapped my cousin. We don’t know where our cousin is.”
In total, more than 1,200 Israelis have died from the large-scale assault on Israel that saw thousands of rockets fired from Gaza, the Palestinian territory controlled and governed by Hamas. Gunmen tore through kibbutzim and villages close to the border with Gaza, massacring civilians.
“They killed so many people. There were hundreds and hundreds of bodies,” Sasi said of the carnage at the music festival. “Slaughtered to death, shot to death, burned to death.”
As she hid under dead bodies in the bomb shelter, Sasi says saw her life flash before her eyes.
“I started seeing my life when I was a kid. I started seeing when I grew up, when I had my bat mitzvah,” she said. “Just how I grew up, and how I never thought that this would happen to me.”
Israel is now launching retaliatory strikes on Gaza, leveling large swaths of neighborhoods.
“I have removed every restriction — we will eliminate anyone who fights us, and use every measure at our disposal,” Defense Minister Gallant told soldiers near the southern border Tuesday.
In Gaza, authorities say 1,100 people have been killed.
Sasi is dismayed by the continued violence in the region, which has been ongoing since the late 1940s.
“The reason why Jews are are defending themselves is because they don’t stop killing us. They don’t care. They want to kill Jews,” she said. “I’ve been scared a little bit to talk about what’s going on in Israel because I’ve gotten death threats my entire life, and then this happened to me; now, I don’t care. I don’t care if people send me death threats. I almost died, and I don’t care now. I’m not scared of anything.”
It’s been difficult to fully process what she endured, and she says her road to recovery will be long.
“I need a lot of work done,” Sasi said. “I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. I don’t know when it’s gonna take, but I need help.”
