Postponed Murder
How a Survivor of the October 7 Pogrom Died After All
Column! With today: the unnecessary death of a young woman - and so many others like her.
On October 20, 2024, 22-year-old Shirel Golan died. On her birthday, of all days, by a self-chosen death. Although ‘self-chosen’ is always debatable, in this case it seems more appropriate to speak of a postponed murder.
The perpetrator(s)?
Hamas.
And the Israeli state, if you were to ask Shirel’s family.
“The state murdered my sister twice. First mentally on October 7, 2023, and now - on her 22nd birthday - also physically,” says her brother Eyal.
On October 7, 2023, Shirel was partying at the Nova festival when the large-scale terrorist attack by Hamas began. Together with her boyfriend, they managed to flee, but the car they were trying to escape in was blocked. They managed to get out of the car, after which they hid in the bushes for hours. The decision not to get into a passing car proved to be life-saving at that moment: all the occupants of that car were either murdered or abducted to Gaza.
In the weeks and months after October 7, Shirel showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and overwhelming feelings of survivor’s guilt.
“She stopped leaving the house. She stopped visiting us, she became more and more withdrawn.”
She ended up in hospital twice, but PTSD was never officially diagnosed. She did not receive appropriate treatment for it. Most of the care fell to the family. Her mother retired early to be able to support her daughter as much as possible. She was rarely left alone.
On October 20, the day of her 22nd birthday, a party was organized. Birthday wishes and congratulations poured in on her phone, family and friends had gathered. At one point, Shirel managed to escape attention. By the time her boyfriend found her in the back yard, she was dead.
Eyal blames the Israeli authorities for her death.
“No one ever contacted us. Even though they have a list of all the Nova visitors. They know who’s dead, they know who survived.”
For help, you have to contact them yourself and then you end up in a bureaucratic chaos. There was some help through the municipality (Tel Mond), but they only have limited resources. Many therapies are not reimbursed and the number of sessions is limited.
Eyal tried to convince Shirel to seek help anyway. He himself also struggles with PTSD, as a former reservist who was deployed during the fighting between Israel and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 2021.
“I take care of myself with medication and told her: take it too, please, use it for your own good. I told her to talk to everyone, from our father and mother to a stranger on the street, please talk to someone. You don’t like going to psychiatrists and psychologists, okay, then go and visit your friends who also went to the Nova festival and survived. You can talk about it. You can overcome it.”
It turned out to be a vain hope.
Never forget by whose actions every death, every injury, every victim, every survivor and all misery then, now and in the future, arose and continues.
In April 2024, it was reported that more than 50 of the direct survivors of the October 7 pogrom committed suicide. That number has only increased since then.
News sources: Instagram, I24 News, CNN, HLN, The Times of Israel