Arnold Schwarzenegger Reacts to Teen’s Harrowing Escape from Hamas: ‘Never Dealt with Anything Like This’

Content Warning: This story contains graphic and disturbing details.

Arnold Schwarzenegger says it is “extremely important” to shed light on the civilian accounts of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

On Friday, FUBAR The Star opened its Los Angeles office to survivors and family members of Israeli hostages taken during the October attack, in an event organized by the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance.

“It’s extremely important that the world hears these stories,” Schwarzenegger tells PEOPLE. “We hope that this will make this hatred slowly disappear. Because so much damage is done through hate, so much life is lost.”

“I’ve never dealt with anything like this before,” Schwarzenegger also admitted during the event. “I always want to be with the Jewish people and Israel.”

Jon Kean courtesy of the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem

Noting that he’s “been in this anti-hate campaign for a long time,” the former governor adds, “when something like this happens, I personally feel we have to speak up.”

During the event, Israeli teenager Ella Shani, 14, bravely spoke about waking up in her home in Kibbutz Be’eri and running away from terrorists while still wearing her pajamas, then learning days later that her father had been killed. Her 16-year-old cousin, Amit Shani, was held hostage in Gaza until November 29.

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“On October 7, I woke up to the sounds of ‘Allahu Akbar’, the sounds of gunshots and explosions,” says the teenager at Schwarzenegger’s crowded conference table. Hiding in the bomb shelter of her home with her mother and younger brother, Shani explains that she signed up for a WhatsApp group shared by a hundred local teenagers.

“We usually use this group chat to talk about stupid things, like when the food is coming or when the bus is leaving and ‘I’m late’. But that day was different,” she says.

“On October 7th, the messages we received in that group chat were just children begging for help, begging for their lives.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ella Shani.

Jon Kean courtesy of the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem

Shani says Hamas cut off the electricity in her home and she recalled sitting in the dark reading her uncle’s messages saying his house was on fire.

After hours of hiding, at 17:30 the Israel Defense Forces knocked on their door and then placed them in a safe room of a nearby house with seven children and three adults. Thirty minutes later, the IDF told the group to prepare the children for what they were about to see.

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In the living room, the floor “was covered in blood and body parts were scattered around,” Shani said. “I remember having a hard time understanding what I was looking at, but as soon as I did, my first instinct was to cover my little brother’s eyes.”

Then Hamas attacked again, she says.

“And it’s like in the movies when you see the bullets hitting the wall right behind you and you hear them whistling past your ear.”

Surrounded by an IDF unit, the group “started running towards the exit of the kibbutz. We run only in our pajamas. I was very lucky that I had my phone. The children with us ran with only blankets,” explained Shani.

While they were running away, “everything was on fire,” she says. “My friends’ houses. Remembering the lyrics from earlier, saying, ‘I’m in a room with my parents’ bodies and the house is on fire. Somebody help me.’ And I see the house, knowing they’re still in there.”

Exploded cars lay along the roads, and Shani says bodies lay there, “killed in unimaginable horrible ways. Every Israeli I saw had limbs or other body parts mangled or missing, cut off. Some of them were burned.”

Finally reaching the bus that would take them to Tel Aviv, the windows shattered by bullets, Shani let herself cry.

“An eight-year-old boy, a friend of my younger brother, came to us wearing nothing but boxers and a T-shirt, blood on his face and his glasses were missing. And he said to my brother, ‘They killed my dad and (10-month-old) sister and shot my mom.’ Then we meet an 8-year-old boy and a 3-year-old boy who enter the bus with the blood of their parents. And that’s what honestly broke me, realizing that this really happened and that the children were actually orphaned.”

An Israeli man holds a photo of his cousin Elkana Bohbot in a square in Tel Aviv on November 24, 2023.

Kyodo via AP Images

Both of Shana’s grandparents were killed in the kibbutz, but survived. Her cousin Amit had been taken hostage, she would later learn, and another devastating update was yet to follow.

“Five days after everything happened, I remember hearing my mother crying in the bathroom. I remember just asking, who is it now? And she looked at me without saying a word, and I realized that it was my dad.”

A day later, Shani buried her father, Itzik Kozin, too shocked to speak. “That’s also why I couldn’t give him any final words or goodbyes because I couldn’t process anything yet.”

The teenager explains how she hopes the world will recognize her truth. “A lot of people say these things didn’t happen. I’m here and I’m telling you loud and clear: People’s heads were cut off, people were burned alive. People’s body parts were cut off, women were raped, children were kidnapped. All that happened. I have the names of my friends who had to go through those terrible things.”

Also at the Friday roundtable were Yaakov Bohbot, 36, whose brother Elkan, 34, was abducted by Hamas from the Nova music festival on October 7, and Bar Rudaeff, 27, whose father, Lior Rudaeff, was also held hostage. According to the Israeli government, Hamas is still holding 137 hostages.

Yaakov Bohbot, 36, calls his brother Elkan a “happy, kind family man” and said he was abducted after helping evacuate the wounded at a desert festival.

The married father of a three-year-old son was presumed missing until his family saw him in a video released by Hamas showing him tied up on the floor with his face covered in blood.

“We are going through hell,” says Yaakov. “Every day is more and more painful. The only thing we can do is raise awareness to bring him and all the hostages back home.”

Lior, 61, is a volunteer ambulance driver, his son Bar said, and on the morning of Oct. 7, he and his wife heard gunshots from a neighboring kibbutz.

“So without thinking he just told my mum ‘Go to the safe room’ and ran out to see where he could help because that’s who he is. That’s his mentality,” says Bar.

Lior’s family soon lost contact with him, and later found his bloody glasses in a nearby forest. “My father is still considered missing,” Bar adds, noting that Lior is dependent on daily mediation after suffering a severe heart attack two years ago. “We have no information.”

During the round table, Schwarzenegger received a symbolic silver necklace in honor of the Israeli hostages, which read “our hearts are in Gaza”. In return, the actor presented bronze eagle statues to those present.

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Source: HIS Education