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TEL AVIV. Roni Mendelson, 22, lay beneath bloody, dead bodies in the frying heat.
Of the twenty or so festival participants who sought shelter in the concrete building in the desert near the Gaza Strip, she was one of two or three survivors.
– “Is this really dad” she asked, says Schachar Mendelson, 53.
Schachar Mendelson, 53, completely misunderstood the situation when he was reached by the first phone call Saturday morning.
– Roni said she was in one of the temporary bomb shelters we call migunit. Then she said “dad I love you”, says Schachar Mendelson.
The father, who lives in a quiet residential suburb just north of Tel Aviv, thought at first that it was a good thing. Like many Israelis, he is used to occasional rocket attacks that force the population to seek shelter.
And once protected, everything should be fine, right?
– I didn’t understand that terrorists were walking around the bomb shelter and that my daughter was lying under a pile of lifeless bodies, he says.
The Hamas commandos who attacked the music festival in the desert near Re’im were still in place.
First they had thrown in what the daughter perceived as one, a couple of three grenades. The small building is made for about ten people, but now about twice that number had sought shelter from what they first understood to be a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip.
– After that they went around and shot at the people inside, says the father.
Roni’s comrade was hit in the shoulder. Together they now lay under bodies, but could understand with small movements, leg to leg, that the other was still alive.
Today, a day later, the father is sitting on the sofa in the home outside Tel Aviv and still does not have a very good answer to the question that the daughter asked on the phone a little later on Saturday morning:
– Is this for real, father, she asked.
He is dressed in black, as is his wife. The family is in traditional mourning, since Schachar’s father passed away. On the frame around a photograph in the living room it says “Home is where dad is”. The estate agent has a passion for dogs and has trained two of his own to become search dogs.
It was mother Karen who gave the order:
– Go and get my daughter home!
During the long hours that the Israeli military had still not come to his rescue, he got into a car with the dog Bat and a friend who has a revolver. When they arrived at the festival site, they were greeted by a sight of doom they had never expected:
– People were covered in fresh blood. Some were apathetic others were walking around looking or waiting for someone to take them away, he remembers. The road there was lined with blown-up or burnt-out vehicles.
Schachar Mendelson himself ended up in what he likens to a state of shock. The dog Bat took command and almost immediately found the daughter.
– She was completely dull. I don’t know how to say, at the same time she didn’t want to go home right away. She said there were more to help and look for. She’s like my daughter, says the father.
Then Roni Mendelson had been lying in the frying heat under dead bodies, with pain in her skull, but not knowing that she had several pieces of shrapnel from the shells in her head and leg. When she was lying under the bodies, she had painstakingly thrown her 17 rings one by one against the plate to make a sound and alert someone that there was still life in the shelter.
Today she lies in a hospital in Kfar Saba, in the same room as the comrade whose legs she had felt moving against hers.
One of her closest friends is still missing. Now the father intends to defy the security calls and return to the site to search for the dead and survivors with several friends who also have search dogs.
– I want to find her friend. Not just for her sake, but because I want Roni to be as whole as possible one day. If we don’t find her, she will in a way be an amputee, says the father.
– If we can save even more others, that would also be wonderful. That would be magnificent.