On October 11, 2003, Nahar Neta was interviewed by Maayan Hoffman, Deputy CEO - Strategy and Innovation of the Jerusalem Post Group, and Zvika Klein, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Jewish World analyst. At that time, Nahar thought that his mother had been kidnapped. Tragically, several days later, Adrienne Neta was confirmed dead.
Adrienne Neta was sitting on the porch of her home in Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel, drinking coffee on Saturday morning, October 7, when the shelling began. Her son Nahar, who grew up on the kibbutz and today lives in California, was speaking to her by phone and realized that it was not a “regular” missile attack, something to which she had been accustomed for some time. “Our mother told us that she was hearing shouting in Arabic outside her home and shooting,” Nahar said. “My other siblings were also trying to call, and we urged her to go into the safe room in her home.”
Nahar continued: “At 9:45 AM, when we were on the phone with her, we heard a terrorist barge into the house, and there was shooting and screaming. My mother had been a nurse at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba and had picked up some Arabic. She screamed back at the terrorist, and we think she wasn’t hurt physically. That’s when the call got disconnected, and that’s the last we heard from my mother.”
Describing his life growing up in Kibbutz Be’eri, Nahar said, “The place where I grew up was a beautiful place with peace-loving people who were constantly engaging in a dialog with the other side. It turned into a slaughterhouse.”
Tearfully, he continued, “My mother was born in California. She followed my father to Israel in the 1980s. They build a family on the kibbutz. I have three siblings, and my mother has seven grandchildren. She was a nurse in Soroka and took care of everyone.”
May her memory be for a blessing.