Rob Rinder has shared the chilling testimonies he received from Israeli volunteers after visiting the war-torn country following the barbaric October 7 attacks.
The TV judge recently returned from Israel where he met with first responders from the country’s ambulance service, Magen David Adom. Accompanied by a cameraman, his mission was to capture the stories of those who helped save lives during the atrocious day.
On Rinder’s first stop to the city’s ambulance centre in Sderot, which is less than a mile away from Gaza, he met with Ophir Tor, a 61-year-old volunteer and former paratrooper commander.
Tor heroically fought terrorists on the dreaded day, swerving bullets and warning locals to hide amidst the attack. He saved the life of a mother and son by ushering them away from the carnage before helping others to safety – before even starting his shift – Rinder explained.
‘He saw bodies in the road – children’s bodies, headless bodies – and described it ‘like watching a horror film’. And he remembered hearing the terrorists laughing. ‘They were enjoying it. They came only for death,’ he told The Telegraph.
Rob Rinder has shared the chilling testimonies he received from Israeli volunteers after visiting the war-torn country following the barbaric October 7 attacks
The TV judge recently returned from Israel where he met with first responders from the country’s ambulance service, Magen David Adom
A blood-stained wall in a kibbutz in Israel following the barbaric attacks
A burned house at the Nir Oz kibbutz, one of the Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip attacked on October 7
‘Ophir immediately went into survival mode,’ said Rinder, adding that something about his ‘quiet understanding’ reminded him of his own grandfather.
His maternal grandfather, Morris Malenicky, was a Holocaust survivor who made it out of Treblinka concentration camp.
Back in Sderot, Ophir retraced his steps with Rinder, ‘as if deconstructing a crime scene… a head blown off here, a rocket attack there. We ended up in the ambulance centre car park, where he listed the bodies of that day, scores of them: Holocaust survivors, children, young IDF soldiers,’ added Rinder. He had what Rinder described as a ‘kindness of eyes… and was so stoic, so logical’.
Rinder also visited the site of Supernova music festival in the desert near Kibbutz Re’im, which was invaded by Hamas gunmen and hundreds of attendees were killed.
‘What we’re learning now is that many of those young people were engaged in activism for a peaceful two-state solution for Israel and Palestine’, he said.
Rinder, who alongside his mother, received an MBE for his work in Holocaust education stressed how this attack and rise in antisemitism is ‘different’.
He said: ‘There’s denial of this massacre happening in real time, and there’s an increasing and truly malignant metastasisation of anti-Semitism.’
Rinder has been particularly outspoken on the issue of anti-Semitism and shortly after the attacks revealed his Jewish mother no longer felt safe in Britain.
The TV judge also told Good Morning Britain that his young nephews go to school ‘under risk’ and may ‘not come home’ as he fears for the safety of all Jewish people across the country.
Rinder, who alongside his mother, received an MBE for his work in Holocaust education stressed how this attack and rise in antisemitism is ‘different’
Aerial view of abandoned and torched vehicles at the site of the October 7 attack on the Supernova desert music Festival
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Israeli soldiers with their armoured fighting vehicles gather at a position near the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, 2 December 2023
Rinder was born into a Jewish family and received an MBE in 2021 – along with his mother Angela Cohen – in recognition of their services to Holocaust education. He learned how seven of his relatives were slaughtered in Nazi concentration camps in the Second World War while delving into his family history on a 2018 episode of the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?
Speaking to GMB, he said: ‘My mum is sitting there saying she feels unsafe – there’s less than 270,000 Jews in this country, and my nephew, kids as young as seven, are going to school today and they do so under risk.
‘There’s a chance they’re going to not come home. Sending your kids to school shouldn’t be an act of courage – that’s the life-lived experience of Jewish kids just going to school.
‘And of shop owners in London and in other cities, we’ve got a lived memory of that – of what that means not to be safe because of your religion, because of being Jewish.’
He added: ‘It’s personal for me but it should be personal for every person, whoever you are, up and down the country.
‘It’s worth remembering when you think about how you’re going to respond today.
‘I was at a vigil outside Downing Street. What happened at that vigil was that there way no chanting, no happiness, there was prayer for peace, for every singe human life, every single human life that has value.
‘Whatever happens in the Middle East should have no impact on the safety of our communities – and its your job whoever you are to stand alongside us because we need you.’
He added: ‘Be mindful of that is what I’d say before you post.’
Rinder made an emotional plea to social media users to ‘think carefully’ before they post following the death of two of his friends in Israel.
Rinder said: ‘Sending your kids to school shouldn’t be an act of courage – that’s the life-lived experience of Jewish kids just going to school’
He said: ‘My mum is sitting there saying she feels unsafe – there’s less than 270,000 Jews in this country, and my nephew, kids as young as seven, are going to school today and they do so under risk’
Speaking to Sky News at the Attitude Awards in London, Rinder said: ‘Be kind, read and educate yourself and think carefully before you post (on social media).
‘Kindness requires thought, it requires hope, it requires you to try and be as mindful as possible, as you can have to learn a little bit and we invite that from other communities and that’s true of the Jewish community as well.
‘Right now, our Jewish community, many of my friends, my kids who I taught, I’ve got friends who were killed at that dance party, for example, a couple who planned to get married, two women in Israel, they spent their lives trying to work and campaign for peace and they’re gone tonight.’
Rinder took a pause during the interview as he appeared to break down and look tearful and upset before, saying: ‘Hamas doesn’t speak for the people of Palestine, it does not speak for the people of Gaza, it’s a tragedy and a horror for what might befall them, but be mindful of the Jewish community tonight.
‘Thousands of people have died, many of whom are working for justice, for freedom, for the people who celebrate this so joyously, remember them too and don’t ask them questions about whataboutery, they don’t deserve that.
‘Hamas is a terrorist organisation. It’s one that hates gay people… They do not speak of or by for the good people of the world, remember that when you post, be mindful.
‘Remember all human life is a value and we as a Jewish community, just like the LGBT+ community, need you, we need you more than ever and be an ally, and think, and be kind.’
