fbpx

Parents of Nova survivor meet their son’s savior, a Bedouin Israeli, for first time

Tamar and Avner Biton met with Yunis Alkarnawi at his home in Rahat, where, together with their son, Shalev Biton, he spoke with a group of representatives from The Israel Educational Travel Alliance about how he saved 32 people on Oct. 7

RAHAT, Israel —- When Tamar Biton met Yunis Alkarnawi for the first time, at the Bedouin Israeli’s home in Rahat, in southern Israel, last week, she cried. “I don’t know how to thank this man,” she told Jewish Insider. “He saved my son’s life. It’s a gift.”

Yunis saved the life of Shalev Biton, 25, along with seven other young adults who had escaped from the Nova music festival, as well as 24 Thai workers who were working on the farm he manages when the Hamas massacres began on Oct. 7, 2023. 

Yunis’ family hosted a group of some 140 representatives from the Israel Educational Travel Alliance at his family’s home on Wednesday, as part of a leadership summit aimed at discussing how to adapt educational trips to the country in the new post-Oct. 7 reality.

On Oct. 7, the Nova festivalgoers had run the five miles from the party in Reim — where 364 people were murdered and 40 kidnapped — before seeking refuge on the farm, one arriving with bleeding feet from having run without shoes.  

When Shalev first ran onto the farm, both he and Yunis were wary of one another, each wondering if the other might be a terrorist. “What are you doing here?” Shalev asked Yunis, who repeated the same question back to him. But when he spotted Shalev’s earrings, he understood from the jewelry that “he was one of ours [Israeli].”

Yunis invited Shalev and his friends into the dining room and gave them food and water and charged their phones. “I felt absolutely safe. I messaged my family that we are in a safe place and they don’t have to worry at all,” Shalev said.

Yunis assured his guests that they were safe with him, far enough away from the Gaza border that the terrorists wouldn’t get to them. But around midday, one of the Thai workers came to tell him that a motorcycle was approaching the farm. 

Yunis went out on his own to see who it was. “I saw that the terrorists were coming around the side of the house and that they were definitely terrorists. They stopped at the gate, right next to us.”

“At first I didn’t go out to him, but I saw that he was determined to get through the gate and I realized that if he got through the gate, he was going to kill us all — we were 33 people.”

“It took me a couple of seconds to think of what to do. I walked to him at the gate to talk to him. And I spoke to him in Arabic, and he understood I was an Arab,” Yunis told the audience.

The terrorist asked him what he was doing there and he said he was guarding the farm. The terrorist demanded that Yunis open the gate for him and he responded that he didn’t have a key. Yunis spotted an additional gunman waiting outside the gate.

Yunis estimated that he spoke to the terrorist for about seven minutes, trying to convince him to leave him be, explaining to him that he was a Muslim like him and trying to appeal to his humanity by telling him that he has six children.

The terrorist demanded that Yunis “take out the naked Jews that you’re hiding here,” Yunis recalled, relating that in that moment he started shaking because he thought the terrorist had seen that there were Jews in the building — some of the Nova survivors had shed some of their clothes as they were running away from the festival site in the heat.

Yunis Alkarnawi (left) and Shalev Biton share their story from Oct. 7 with representatives from the Israel Educational Travel Alliance at Yunis’ home in Rahat, Israel (Tamara Zieve)

Yunis insisted that there were no Jews on the farm, eventually convincing the terrorist, who discussed the situation with three accomplices who had been hiding behind the building, to move on. Some other Arab Israelis who attempted dialogue with Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 were not so lucky — they were killed all the same. Asked about this, Yunis simply pointed to the sky, implying divine intervention.

During the time that Yunis was talking to the terrorist, his Jewish guests were hiding underneath the building. “I’m not religious but during those moments I took my right hand, covered my eyes and said the shema, because in those moments I thought that was my only hope,” Shalev said. He had heard someone shouting close to them and he understood that the person was demanding, in Arabic, to know where “the Jews” were hiding.”   

“It was a couple of minutes of shouting, what Yunis told you, and then it was quiet for another couple of minutes. Then Yunis started to look for us and calling us and nobody wanted to answer because we didn’t want to risk our lives or his life, we thought maybe they caught him and were forcing him to find us. So we thought to ourselves the best thing to do was not to do anything,” Shalev explained. Eventually Yunis spotted the red cap of a water bottle he had given them under the building and told them it was safe to come out. 

When Shalev understood they were safe, he told Yunis he was their “guardian angel.”

Since that day, Shalev and Yunis have shared their story to audiences both in Israel and abroad. Shalev sees in their story, told together by a Muslim and a Jew, an important element to share with the world. “I hope that we can keep doing it, it is very important both for me and for him, because in some way, we can lose it — I lost my hope in the days after Oct. 7 and I had so much anger inside me when I saw the first videos after Oct. 7. It took me like a month to understand that the people who I was afraid of, a guy from the same religion, saved my life,” Shalev emphasized.

“In every place there is good and bad — in every place,” Yunis said. He mentioned that three members of his family were currently serving in the IDF. “We live here, we were born here, this is our land. We don’t have another country to go to. This is our home. We must live together. We need to figure out how to be kind and good to each other.”

“You can see the goodness in his face,” Avner Biton, Shalev’s father, told JI of Yunis. The two men have spoken many times — and the Bitons had invited Yunis to visit their home in northern Israel, which he has yet to do — but had not met face-to-face.

“I got very emotional because — to see him — it took me back to that time and I just don’t know how to thank him,” Tamar told JI. 

In the backyard of Yunis’ home, after he and Shalev had shared their story with the delegation, over Arabic sweets, coffee and tea, the participants together spray painted a mural of bright and blooming fields in southern Israel.

Anna Langer, IETA acting executive director and vice president for North America-Israel strategies at the Jewish Federations of North America, told JI the story of “heroism and love” highlighted Israel’s complexity. In hearing the story, Langer said, “we received a gift and gave one back in return by painting for Yunis and his family a picture of the fields of Israel that he chose to save lives on.” 

The art project was signed off with the words “thank you,” in Arabic, Hebrew and English.

Subscribe now to
the Daily Kickoff

The politics and business news you need to stay up to date, delivered each morning in a must-read newsletter.