Zina Beylin, 60, had been living in Sderot for nearly 30 years. She emigrated to Israel with her family in the early 1990s from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and worked as an accountant. 

On the morning of October 7, she was one of 13 senior citizens who were about to set out in their minibus for a day trip to the Dead Sea. Gunmen from Hamas found them and slaughtered the whole group.

The story of Zina and her friends is but one of hundreds that are emerging in the weeks after October 7, and as the weeks go on, Israelis are discovering these stories sometimes days and weeks after the events and sometimes on social media.

“My mom was just a very loving person,” her son, Ilan Beylin, 23, tells The New York Sun. “She was happy with her life, with her family. She was the glue that held us all together.” And, her son adds, she loved world history and travel. Jewish traditions were very important to her.”

One of Beylin’s close friends, Rebbetzin Sima Pizem of the Chabad community in Sderot, tells the Sun that Zina was a special lady.  “Zina was my best friend, like a soul sister. She was always so happy and optimistic and ready to help at a moment’s notice.” 

“My mom loved going on day trips to the Dead Sea and other places in Israel,” added Mr. Beylin.

“She spoke to my grandmother, who also lives in Sderot, right before they were supposed to leave the city and told her everything was okay. My dad was supposed to join my mom on this trip but at the last minute, decided not to.”  

Zina’s family could not even imagine what was awaiting her and the other passengers. The driver of the mini-bus, Sarif Abu Taha from the Bedouin town of Tel Sheva in the south, described the bloody massacre in an interview with the Israeli radio station, Reshet Bet.

Abu Taha had picked up Zina and the other senior citizens from Ofakim, Netviot, and Sderot, when the bus’s tire had a puncture and he pulled over next to a bomb shelter near the entrance of Sderot. A barrage of rockets had been fired, so Abu Taha and the other passengers got off the bus and tried to enter the bomb shelter but it didn’t open. 

Then a white truck with Hamas terrorists pulled over. “I yelled at the other passengers to run away, to escape. But they are elderly people. How can they run?” the mini-bus driver recalled. 

“I heard the truck stop and then bullets being fired non-stop,” continued Abu Taha. “The terrorists were shooting and then checking the bodies to see that the victims were really dead. I hid behind the bomb shelter with another woman.”

“We were both lying on the floor. Then the terrorist opened fire on us,” he said. “The bullets whizzed by my neck and ear and I played dead, didn’t move. The lady next to me was hit by scores of bullets. I could feel her blood on me.”

Abu Taha said in a broken voice that he cannot sleep at night. “These were such good people. How can anyone do something like this to them?”

Ilan Beylin said that his family initially had no idea what had happened to his mother. They were unable to identify her from photos of the bloody attack on social media.

“We thought maybe she had been kidnapped or taken to the hospital. Only later, after we saw different photos of the minibus attack on social media, were we able to identify her body because of the clothes she wore,” said Mr. Beylin.