For 34 minutes on the morning of October 7, 2023, Aner Shapira picked up live hand grenades hurled at him by Hamas gunmen.
Even when the fingers on one hand were blown off by an explosion, Shapira used his other hand to keep lobbing back grenades that were thrown into the bomb shelter he and others had sought shelter in at the Nova music festival.
Shapira, who was a 22-year-old off-duty soldier, died that day, along with a further 1,200 people at the festival and elsewhere. More than 250 hostages were taken to Gaza. Three years on, his family are calling for political change in Israel and a greater dialogue with the West.
“He believed in the goodness of people,” Shapira’s father Moshe told The i Paper over the phone from their family home in Jerusalem. “He played classical piano from the age of six and then as a teenager he started playing rap music and there you can hear his ideology against racism, against hatred, against abuse in society.”
Like most young Israelis, Shapira was expected to serve in the country’s armed forces, despite him being a dual British citizen through his mother. “He disliked our army as an organisation, but I was a paratrooper, his grandfather was a paratrooper,” said Moshe. “For him, he asked, ‘Where’s the best place that I can protect people?’”
Aner Shapira and friends at the Nova music festival in the desert in Israel, before the attack (Photo: Moshe and Shira Shapira)That instinct to protect kicked in as the horrors of the October 7 attack unfolded. As Shapira and around 25 others rushed to a bomb shelter to escape the shooting, he knew from his training that the gunmen were likely to start throwing grenades to try to take out the hiding place.
“He said to the people in the shelter, ‘I believe what they will do in a minute is they will try to throw grenades inside and I will try to pick them up and throw them back, but if I miss or something happens to me, you will have to continue.’”
Shapira’s parents know exactly what their eldest son did that day due to an audio recording from the shelter and videos pieced together by the Israeli military. For Moshe and Aner’s mother, Shira, the recordings provide them with something to hold on to despite the grief.
The bomb shelter Aner Shapira and others ran to when Hamas gunmen attacked the Nova music festival on 7 October, 2023 (Photo: Moshe and Shira Shapira)“Every second, we know what happened. To know how he fell won’t make up for the loss, but at least we know exactly what he did and how he stood for what he believed. It gives us a lot of comfort,” Moshe said.
The devastation of that day three years ago, and what came after, has shifted how many Israelis see both their own society and their relationship with other countries.
“The attacks changed Israeli society in many aspects,” said Moshe. “I think Israeli society is much more afraid than it was before, afraid for its own existence. Previously, many people thought there was a political solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – now they’re not so sure.”
Moshe said he has deep sadness about the innocent people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and elsewhere since October 2023, but says he feels let down by what he calls a “betrayal” of Western support for Israel.
Friends and family pay tribute to those killed at the Nova music festival, on the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks (Photo: Erik Marmor/Getty)“Israelis feel very isolated from the West, and for us it’s shocking that 80 years after the Holocaust, intellectuals from the left of politics in Western society are repeating the same phrases that are used by Hamas, and that these slogans not only are being legitimatised but are being shouted as if they were a moral thing to say.”
The horror of October 7 should stand apart from what followed, according to the couple, who see political change in Israel as key to shifting international attitudes to the country and the conflicts in the region.
“The attacks were a cruelty against humanity, not against Israelis. They killed Hindus, they killed people from the Philippines, Nepal, Thailand. The first guy that was murdered from Aner’s shelter was a Muslim Bedouin guy that came out whose name was Osama.”
Shira is now standing in Israel’s parliamentary elections, being held on 27 October, representing the Yashar party, led by former Israel Defence Forces chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. The party, whose name translates as “honest” or “straight”, wants to establish a state commission of inquiry to investigate the October 7 massacre, “the decade leading up to it and the conduct of the war”, according to its website.
Moshe and Shira Shapira, the parents of Aner Shapira, are calling for political change in Israel and a greater dialogue with the West (Photo: Omar Marques/Getty)The Shapiras hope that the elections will mark a positive change for the country and region, and believe it is time to replace prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
“This is not a good government,” said Moshe. “You have extremist people in our government that shouldn’t be there. They’re adding oil to the fire. We have to try to find a dialogue with our allies from the past because I think this will be better for all the world. Israel is not Sparta that can last by itself.”
Moshe and Shira have also tried to build something meaningful out of their son’s death, creating a foundation in his name with the hope of bringing people together through music, whether secular or religious, Jewish or Muslim.
For the third anniversary of his death, the family came together to honour their son’s life and his legacy of bravery. “We speak about him a lot because he became kind of a symbol in Israel of bravery – but more than that, the bravery of humanity of protecting others, even with your life.”
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