Stories of courage from October 7, to read to children.
In the south of Israel, not far from the city of Ofakim, there is a small farming village called Moshav Patish. The people there grow vegetables and raise animals, and everyone knows everyone, as usually happens in small places. One of them is a farmer named Rami Davidian. On October 7 he was 58 years old. He has a wife, grown daughters, and sons-in-law. He is not a soldier. He is not a policeman. He works the land and sells what he harvests.
A few minutes from Patish, near Kibbutz Re’im, there is a huge open field. On the night of October 6, thousands of young people from all over Israel had gathered there for a music festival. They danced all night under the stars. Many were still dancing when the sun came up on the morning of Simchat Torah.
At six thirty the rockets began. Minutes later, trucks and motorcycles full of terrorists who had crossed the fence from Gaza arrived and headed straight for where the young people were. The young people ran in every direction. Into the fields. Into the orchards. Into the ditches along the road. Anywhere they could hide.
At a quarter to seven in the morning, Rami’s phone rang. It was a friend from the north of Israel. His son was at the festival. He was hiding. He could not get out. Could Rami go and get him?
Rami did not stop to think. He did not look for a weapon, because he did not have one. He did not look for a helmet or a vest. He was in slippers. He kept the slippers on, got in his car, and drove toward the sound of the shooting.
He found his friend’s son hiding near the road. Next to him were fourteen other young people, terrified, crouching in the dirt. Rami opened the doors of the car and said: “Get in. All of you.” Fifteen people in a car built for five. They piled on top of each other, and Rami drove them back to Moshav Patish.
Then one of them asked him a question: “Can we give your phone number to our friends? They are still out there.”
Rami said yes.
Within minutes, his phone began to ring. And it did not stop. The young people hiding in the fields passed his number to each other by text message. Parents in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem, who had not heard from their children in hours, called the farmer from Patish and begged him to find them. Each call gave him a location. A cluster of trees. A drainage pipe. A corner of an orchard. Rami drove there, found the people, loaded them into the car, took them to Patish, and went out again.
He called his relatives. He called the neighbors. “Bring your cars. There is a lot of work.” Soon several cars from the moshav were driving in and out of the danger zone, and Rami was the one directing them, phone in one hand and steering wheel in the other.
Sometimes the people hiding were too frightened to come out, even when they heard a car. So Rami invented a game. He asked them to stay on the phone and listen. And he honked the horn in a special way. “Do you hear it? Am I getting closer or farther?” Closer, closer, closer, until they saw his car and ran to it.
One of the calls was about a girl named Amit. Two of her friends, whom Rami had already rescued, begged him to go back for her. She sent him her location. Rami drove there and found something that made his blood run cold. Amit was surrounded by a group of armed men who had come from Gaza. Rami had no weapon. He had a car and he had his voice.
Rami speaks Arabic. He worked his whole life with Arab farmers and merchants. He got out of the car, walked up to the men, passed himself off as one of them, and spoke to them in their language. He told them the Israeli army was right behind him and that they had better leave while they still could. They believed him. They let the girl go. Rami put her in the car and drove off.
He went back. And back again. All day Saturday. All Saturday night. All day Sunday. He did not sleep. He did not eat. His family begged him to stop. He did not stop until there was no one left to find.
When it was all over, Rami Davidian, with his car, his phone, and his slippers, had rescued about seven hundred people.
Today Rami travels the world and tells his story. People call him a hero. He always says the same thing: he is a farmer, he had a car, and his phone rang. What else was he supposed to do?
But everyone who hears him understands. Courage is not only for soldiers. Sometimes courage is a farmer in slippers who decides, seven hundred times in a row, to go back one more time.