I saw the video only once, during that terrible week of the massacre. It appeared in a Telegram group, and the images burned themselves into my soul. No matter how hard I tried to forget or repress them, they came back, again and again, reminding me of what happened here. What we lived through.
It’s a clip just over a minute long, about 90 seconds of helplessness, the kind that echoes the stories of Jews in the dark days of exile, when they were defenseless, executed in cold blood, their lives deemed worthless. But what exactly did I see in that haunting video? What really happened there? To whom? Where exactly?
Who were you, beloved girls, whose lives ended with such cruelty?
For a long time, I couldn’t bring myself to find out. Maybe I was afraid that if I learned your names and your faces, it would make it all too real and I could no longer pretend it didn’t happen.
Then, a few nights ago, I woke up in terror, reliving a single frame: a young Jewish woman on her knees, pleading for her life. The terrorist hesitates for a second or two, perhaps out of sadism, then shoots her dead.
I realized I could no longer run from these images. I needed to face them, to understand what I had seen, and to learn the story of the two young women whose final moments were captured by the security cameras of Kibbutz Alumim.
The cruelty of ISIS-style evil
It’s the morning of Simchat Torah, near Kibbutz Alumim. The time is 7:09 a.m. Surveillance cameras show people who escaped the Nova festival, arriving there after a long, desperate flight, hoping they had finally reached safety. They hadn’t.
They ran straight into an ambush of Nukhba terrorists lying in wait. At the start of the clip, several Israelis are seen near the yellow gate, exhausted from running, maybe crouching under rocket fire. Then, suddenly, three armed terrorists sprint toward them.
That’s when the part begins that has haunted me ever since. The group scatters. Two Israelis, a man and a woman, run first. About 40 meters behind them, two more young women, still in their festival clothes, try to flee. One terrorist closes in. He grabs the first by her hair and shoots her. She falls instantly. Her friend keeps running, reaches a fence, and stops. She turns toward him, sits on the ground, and pleads. You can’t hear the words, but you can feel the terror. The terrorist hesitates for a few seconds, fires elsewhere, then looks back at her. For 23 seconds, she waits for death, hands covering her head—until he executes her.
No mercy. No humanity. Two young women in this world, both shot in the head by a man whose heart was black with hatred.
“This will be my last party,” Karin told her mother
Sapir Bilmes and Karin Vernikov of Rishon Lezion were close friends, though they hadn’t known each other since childhood. They met on their post-army trip in South America and became inseparable.
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Karin Vernikov, may her memory be blessed. What a beautiful thing it is, to bring a chocolate cake wherever you go
(Photo:Courtesy of the family)
Karin was 22. Before leaving for the festival, she told her mother, Luba, that it would be her last party. After that, she would focus on building her future. She dreamed of becoming an event producer. She loved to bake—especially her famous chocolate cake, which she brought everywhere.
Karin’s chocolate cake: four eggs, one cup of cocoa mix, one cup of sugar, one cup of oil, one cup of flour, baking powder, and half a carton of heavy cream. Mix, bake for 40 minutes at 160°C, then pour a glaze made from melted chocolate and cream over the cooled cake.
Think of Karin when you taste it.
Sapir: the “hurricane of joy”
Sapir was 24, a die-hard Maccabi Tel Aviv fan and a radiant spirit her friends called “a hurricane of joy.” During her military service, she worked in the Military Advocate General’s office. During COVID, she joined a hotline for patients because she couldn’t bear to sit idle. Later, she worked at a bank and considered studying economics.
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Sapir Bilmes, may her memory be blessed. A hurricane of joy
(Photo: Courtesy of the family)
Her parents tracked her phone on October 7. They watched the signal move—and then stop. It took days before her fate was confirmed. Her father, Leon, tells me, “I used to have a son and a daughter. Now I have many children, their friends who still come to eat with us.”
Sapir’s life, like Karin’s, was full of music, laughter, and light. Now she is commemorated by a lifesaving Magen David Adom ambulance that bears her name.
Light and darkness, good and evil
Near the same spot where Karin and Sapir took their last breaths, brothers Noam and Yishai Slotky fought and died heroically battling dozens of terrorists who had infiltrated the area. The Golani fighters arrived from Beersheba as soon as the attack began, engaging the terrorists with pistols and stopping many from reaching the kibbutz itself. Their bodies were later found near those of Sapir and Karin.
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Noam and Yishai Slotky, may their memory be blessed, charged at terrorists armed with an RPG using only pistols
(Photo: Meir Lavi)
Four young Israelis—four lives full of promise—ended that morning at the Alumim junction.
Was the terrorist who murdered Sapir and Karin killed later that day? I tried to find out. I was told most of the attackers in that area were killed. Perhaps it was Noam and Yishai who ended his life.
The last song in their lives
Also seen in the video is Arbel Shauli, another survivor. She and a friend had gone to the festival with Sapir and Karin. They danced, laughed, filmed themselves at 6:30 a.m.—just before the rockets began. They ran to their car and drove toward Alumim.
On the way, a white jeep stopped them. A Jewish man warned there were terrorists everywhere. Moments later, they saw three armed men running toward them, shouting “Waqef! Waqef!”—“Stop!” Arbel thought they were soldiers. Then the shooting began.
The group scattered. Arbel was hit in the leg but survived thanks to a friend who tied a tourniquet. She recalls Sapir freezing in terror when she heard the gunshot that killed Karin. “It broke her heart,” she says.
Arbel, who had traveled with them for six months in South America, still carries the weight of that day. “Karin wasn’t even supposed to come,” she tells me. “A week earlier, she decided to join—just for me.”
She pauses. “They were the kindest souls. I’ll never forget them.”
To remember—and never forget
Kibbutz gate. Morning. A terrorist runs after two young women whose only crime was wanting to dance. Moments earlier, they were alive with joy; now they lie on the ground, executed.
Unlike so many Nova victims, their final moments were recorded. We must remember them, not out of morbid curiosity, but because this is what was done to us. This is what happens when evil is allowed to exist.
May your memories be blessed, Karin and Sapir.
Forgive me for not learning your names sooner. I thought that if I didn’t know, maybe I could forget. I was wrong. Some things can’t be forgotten—and mustn’t be.
“Remember what Amalek did to you. Remember, and do not forget.”