She survived October 7, then my traumatised sister took her life

Standing above the open grave of his little sister, Eyal Golan made her a final promise.

“You will not remain silent. I will be your voice,” he said at her funeral in their home town of Tel Mond as his parents collapsed to the ground in tears. “No one needs to be at the place you have been. No one needs to be alone.”

Eyal’s sister, Shirel, killed herself last weekend on her 22nd birthday. But her soul was already dead, her brother said, killed at the Nova music festival where she hid for hours listening as Hamas gunmen murdered and raped her friends. Eleven of her friends joined her to dance in the desert but never returned home.

“Before October 7, my sister was full of happiness. She had an essence. She had a presence. Everyone who knew her loved her,” Golan, 36, told The Sunday Times. “But after, it was like someone played with the dimmer on her soul, slowly turning it down until the light died.”

That day last October, as thousands of partygoers danced at the trance party in Re’im, near the border with Gaza, hundreds of Hamas terrorists arrived under the cover of rocket fire. They killed 364 people and took 40 hostages.

Many survivors are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and trauma-induced psychosis, Golan said. Suffering what he calls “invisible wounds”, some survivors have been hospitalised; many have taken their own lives.

But Golan is the first relative to speak publicly about survivor suicides. The exact number of fatalities is unknown: the Israeli government has refused to publish a figure.

“They don’t publish the number of the suicide cases because they say we don’t want to encourage other people. But I say, no, we need to talk about it,” Golan said.

“I want to break the taboo, or the system will not heal itself. No one wakes up one sunny morning and decides to kill themselves. There is a chain of events that leads to that person committing suicide.”

‘A year after I saved her, I buried her’

A year ago Shirel attended the Nova festival with her boyfriend, Adi. When the attack began, they hid in a dried creek for three hours. She couldn’t see much from the bushes, but what she heard never left her.

“She heard gunshots, the shouts of people being killed, the shouts of people being raped. She heard every single thing you can imagine,” Golan said.

Shirel survived, thanks to the bravery of a local police officer, Remo Salman El-Hozayel. Outnumbered 100:1 by Hamas, he and other officers on site fought to defend civilians. Half the officers were killed.

El-Hozayel, a Swiss Arab-Israeli from the country’s Muslim Bedouins, tried to take as many people away from the festival site as he could, using an abandoned car he found after his own vehicle was hit by an RPG.

He drove to and from a nearby farm more than 30 times, taking festivalgoers to safety. With each trip, he risked his life to save others.

Shirel was one of more than 200 people he rescued. Her brother found the officer weeks later on Facebook: he thought talking to him might help her after she had become withdrawn and depressed.

El-Hozayel and Shirel became close, and he still wears the necklace she made for him. “A year after I saved her, I buried her,” El-Hozayel said. “I tried to help her as much as I could.”

That day in Israel, 1,200 people were killed and 255 hostages were taken; in the subsequent war in Gaza, about 42,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Gazans have little to no access to medical support for PTSD.

Shirel became withdrawn and depressed in the months after the October 7 attack and was treated in hospital for the first time in June. After being discharged, she went on a solo trip to India in an effort to lift her spirits, but her memories cast a shadow she could not run from.

One night, Shirel called her brother from Goa asking for help. She was being held by local people who were demanding that she paid thousands of dollars for a car she had wrecked in an accident.

Their father, Meir, immediately got on a plane to rescue her, tracking her down and paying the men off. Back in Israel, her parents took her directly from the airport to hospital.

There, in the throes of manic depression, Shirel lost her temper and lashed out. Her brother alleges that the hospital staff responded with violence, eviscerating her trust in medical professionals. “Instead of taking care of her, they beat her. That’s why my sister had a regression,” he said.

Four months later, as the family planned to celebrate her 22nd birthday, she took her own life. “My parents watched her constantly. They left her for one hour that day and she wandered off into our garden,” Golan said. “That’s where her boyfriend found her.”

Golan described how Shirel’s boyfriend, Adi, screamed, “Why did you do this?” when he found her body. Her uncle ran outside to try to resuscitate her but it was too late.

Israel’s health ministry has offered 36 sessions of mental health treatment to survivors of October 7. Almost 2,000 people have taken up the offer, becoming eligible for 12 further sessions.

But Golan stressed that only those who sought help would receive it: his sister was reticent. He knows she was on a list of Nova survivors and believes that if the government had contacted her directly, rather than placing bureaucratic hurdles in her way, she would still be here.

“The government needs to provide survivors with continuous therapeutic support, free from bureaucratic delays or concerns about ongoing care. For many patients, therapy is a lifeline,” said Ayellet Cohen-Weider, a volunteer psychologist for SafeHeart, a network that has provided therapy to 3,000 survivors.

Shirel was born ten days before Eyal’s 14th birthday, “the best gift his parents ever gave him”.

He cherished his little sister, changing her nappies, protecting her and watching her grow into a young woman who had dreams of travelling the world and running her own jewellery design business.

Holding her belly button ring — a piece of jewellery she had made herself — Golan recounted childhood memories, his eyes lighting up as he spoke, before his sadness returned, swallowing him in grief.

‘We failed her’

Golan’s anger at the lack of support his sister received is informed by his own experience. After a missile hit a bus near his home three years ago, as his then pregnant wife lay next to him, Golan lost consciousness, triggering severe PTSD.

He is due to appear in court next month after petitioning the authorities to recognise his trauma and reimburse him for the thousands he has spent on therapy.

After being refused support because he hadn’t registered his needs within one week of the incident, Golan, who works as a project manager in a software company, was forced to spend $400 a month to receive therapy privately. “I just want this burden to be taken away from me, as I’ve now had to stop my therapy as I don’t have the money. If you had to make a choice between buying dinner for your daughter or getting therapy, what would be your choice?”

It should have been easier for his sister to get help, he said, after surviving the attack, the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust.

The Golan family are observing shiva, a week of mourning following the funeral. But her brother will not rest until the government makes changes to support survivors. “We failed her. We failed her as a society, we failed her as a family, we failed her as a country,” Golan said.

His elder brother suffered PTSD after surviving a terrorist attack two decades ago. He never talked about his suffering until 2021, when Itzik Saidyan, an Israel Defence Forces veteran, set himself on fire outside the defence ministry.

Saidyan survived, and his story prompted a national reckoning in Israel, galvanising the military to reassess how they support people struggling with trauma.

Golan wants his sister’s death to prompt the government to contact those who are struggling, rather than wait for them to ask for help. “If you notice a change in someone, if you know someone who was once funny and loud who suddenly becomes quiet and introverted, something is going on with them. Talk to them, don’t leave them to feel alone for even one second.”

“If someone spots a red flag and saves a life thanks to our family’s story, I have done my job,” he said. “My sister is not coming back, but no one else needs to be alone.”

If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, call the Samaritans on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org