When Hamas terrorists came to murder a 22-year-old woman and her boyfriend in southern Israel Saturday, she turned to the only person she knew could save her — her estranged father, whom she had not seen or spoken to in six years.
Shimon Portal, an Israeli police officer, was responding to armed gunmen rampaging in the nearby city of Sderot when he got a text message from his daughter, Neta, telling him: “they are close.”
The father and daughter had not communicated since she was a teenager after her parents’ divorce.
Shimon texted back, instructing Neta Portal to “lock the doors.”
Neta and her boyfriend, Santiago, were at their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza when Hamas militants overran the small agricultural community, indiscriminately massacring men, women and children — including babies who were beheaded and burned, according to Israeli authorities.
Neta Portal, 22, survived being shot six times by Hamas gunmen who attacked her community in southern Israel Saturday. BBC
Shimon Portal, who had not spoken to his daughter in six years following his divorce from her mother, received a text from Neta begging for help. Israel PoliceNeta and Santiago, along with other residents, raced to a safe room, but the invaders forced their way inside and opened fire, with some of the bullets striking the 22-year-old in the legs.
“They were shooting people. They were shooting the kids,” Neta recalled, talking to BBC News through sobs from her hospital bed in Tel Aviv. “And the people were shouting, ‘Please no, please no.’ I tried to wake myself because I didn’t want to die.”
Santiago urged Neta to jump out a window to try to get away.
“I started to open the window and I saw 10 or 15 terrorists,” Neta recalled. “They were standing on a car with a big machine gun, smoking cigarettes and laughing like they were on vacation.”
Neta was shot five times in one leg and once in the other after the terrorists burst into her safe room in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. BBC
Portal’s boyfriend, Santiago, was also shot in the leg after the couple tried to escape by jumping out a window. BBC
Portal broke down in tears while describing the terrorists executing people inside the safe room in cold blood. BBCNeta said she was scared to jump, but when a terrorist hurled a grenade into the safe room, Santiago grabbed her hand and they leaped out the window together.
The gunmen positioned downstairs opened fire on the couple, striking them in the legs.
“Santiago screamed at me: ‘Please stand up, start to run. If you don’t stand up, we’re going to die. We’re going to die,'” Neta said.
Israel-Hamas war: How we got here
2005: Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza Strip more than three decades after winning the territory from Egypt in the Six-Day War.
2006: Terrorist group Hamas wins a Palestinian legislative election.
2007: Hamas seizes control of Gaza in a civil war.
2008: Israel launches military offensive against Gaza after Palestinian terrorists fired rockets into the town of Sderot.
2023: Hamas launches the biggest attack on Israel in 50 years, in an early-morning ambush Oct. 7, firing thousands of rockets and sending dozens of militants into Israeli towns.
Terrorists killed more than 1,200 Israelis, wounded more than 4,200, and took at least 200 hostage.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to announce, “We are at war,” and vowed Hamas would pay “a price it has never known.”
The Gaza Health Ministry — which is controlled by Hamas — reported at least 3,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,500 injured since the war began.
Despite being injured himself, the boyfriend carried the bullet-riddled Neta in his arms to safety, and the two found refuge under a pile of trash.
While Santiago was trying to stop his girlfriend from bleeding out from the six gunshot wounds to her legs, she frantically texted her father again, saying: “They shot me. Help.”
“I’m coming,” Shimon replied.
Shimon raced to the besieged kibbutz in his unmarked car and was met by terrorists who opened fire on him.
Kfar Aza has become synonymous with the Hamas terrorists’ atrocities, which included the beheading and burning of babies and toddlers. REUTERSWith bullets flying, the cop managed to put his car in reverse and speed away.
Later, when things in Kfar Aza quieted down, Shimon called out for Neta in Hebrew. Instead of his daughter, he said, three Israeli children came running toward his car.
As the girls were climbing into the officer’s car, terrorists spotted them and opened fire, but Shimon said he was able to escape with the children unharmed.
Shimon then continued looking for his daughter, and eventually tracked her to her hiding spot.
He loaded the wounded 22-year-old and her boyfriend into the back of his car and rushed them to the nearest hospital.
The once-idyllic farming community near the Gaza border was overrun by militants Saturday and turned into a slaughterhouse. Getty Images“My beautiful daughter. I have got her back,” said Shimon while looking at Neta in her hospital bed.
Others were less fortunate: Entire families living in the once-idyllic kibbutz, located just a couple of miles from the Gaza border, were wiped out by roving bands of terrorists. In all, at least 1,300 Israelis have been killed and a further 3,000 people have been wounded.
In Gaza, close to 1,800 people have been killed as a result of Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
