Israel
Hero British-Israeli soldier ‘threw back grenades at Hamas’
Aner Shapiro, 22, was killed after trying to save other party-goers at the Nova music festival near the Gaza border
October 26, 2023 16:39
Aner Shapiro, 22, was killed after trying to save other party-goers at the Nova music festival near the Gaza border
October 26, 2023 16:39A heroic British-Israeli soldier threw back seven Hamas grenades during the music festival massacre on October 7, before being killed when the eighth blew up in his hand.
Staff Sergeant Aner Shapiro, 22, was one of hundreds of party-goers at the rave near Kibbutz Re’im on Friday night and Saturday morning.
His grandmother, Yamima Ben-Menahem, told Sky News how he ran to a shelter with his friends and 30 others when they realised they were under attack.
“First he tried to calm them down and said the army was only half an hour away and was sure that everything was going to be OK,” she said.
She explained how Hamas terrorists then approached the shelter and started throwing hand grenades into it.
"When the terrorists came nearer, he stood at the entrance, and when they started throwing grenades into the shelter, he said 'I'm going to throw them back', and if I miss one, you do the rest of the work.
"He just stood there and threw back one grenade after the other.
"From what his friends told us he managed to throw back about seven grenades, and then the last one exploded in his hands," she said.
Ben-Menahem said that her family learned of her grandson’s heroism when survivors from group he had sheltered with called them and said, “he saved our lives”.
She added that after he was killed, Hamas went back in and took five or six hostages before opening fire on those who remained.
Meanwhile, Dor Kapah, a young Israeli who was also at the Nova festival, was lucky to escape with his life.
The massage therapist told Mail Online how he piloted a getaway vehicle filled with terrified civilians from terrorists who were chasing them down on motorbikes.
Kapah said: “Everything was amazing until 6am... then we saw the trails of missiles streaking into the air.
“The music stopped, everybody panicked. People started running, lying on the floor... it was complete chaos. We started hearing gunshots in the distance... then we saw them coming - 400 metres. 300 metres.”
Kapah and his friends began packing up their belongings and preparing their jeep to flee the festival ground. But then he received a call from a friend in a nearby kibbutz telling him not to move because there were terrorists everywhere.
They decided to leave the festival ground and headed towards nearby scrubs where they found an abandoned, damaged IDF armoured car. They spotted an IDF assault rifle lying on the ground, took it and took refuge in the bushes.
But seconds later a group of Hamas gunmen came running across the fields towards them, followed by terrorists in trucks.
Kapah set off again, heading for kibbutz Be'eri - where it was later revealed that more than 100 Israeli civilians had been massacred.
When they reached Be'eri, Kapah and his friend, who had been shot in the head, found a dilapidated toilet building and hid there.
There hid there for six hours as Hamas gunmen came and went, shooting at the doors and windows before going off to massacre more civilians throughout the kibbutz.
“There's nothing we could do. Pieces of the ceiling were crumbling on us. We barricaded ourselves inside for six hours,” he told Mail Online.
“You can hear screams, the missiles, the shots of the Kalashnikov.”
Eventually he said he could hear “the language of the IDF”. They had survived.