Asleep in her moshav just north of Gaza, Sabine Taasa was awakened on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, by her 15-year-old son Zohar. It was 6:25 a.m. when her son told her he was hearing strange noises inside their community of Netiv HaAsara, Taasa recalled at an event in Piedmont this week.
The two ran to their safe room, a reinforced room that protects against rocket attacks, unaware that Hamas terrorists had infiltrated the moshav. Within the next hour, Taasa’s 17-year-old son, Or, was one of 18 Israelis murdered on nearby Zikim Beach — shot six times in the head at close range.
Her husband, Gil, who was in a nearby home on the moshav, died instantly when he threw himself on a Hamas grenade to save the couple’s two youngest boys, 8-year-old Shay and 12-year-old Koren. The terrified boys were injured by shrapnel and covered in their father’s blood; the terrorists beat them, and Shay lost sight in one of his eyes.
The story of the Taasa family is one of seven featured in an upcoming series, “One Day in October,” which will debut Oct. 7 on HBO Max. Produced by Fox Entertainment Studios in partnership with Israel’s Yes TV and in association with Moriah Media, the four-part series is a scripted dramatization of actual events from that horror-filled day.
(Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff)
Taasa came to a private home in Piedmont on Wednesday night for an advance screening of the episode based on her family’s story. Oded Davidoff, a writer and director of the series, and Chaya Amor, a producer, were also present.
“I survived Oct. 7,” Taasa told some 75 people at the event. “I almost died. I lost my husband and eldest son. I want to go to the Palestinian people, to the universities, to the schools and say, ‘I have proof.’ I want to tell them exactly what happened. I have documentary footage of my two little boys after they saw their father killed in front of their eyes.”
(Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff)
In late August, the Israeli government released that footage publicly with Taasa’s permission.
Taasa has spent much of the last two years traveling around the world, telling her story and pleading for an end to antisemitism. She has addressed the United Nations and the European Parliament and has been interviewed numerous times in Europe and the United States.
“We need to change the narrative,” she told the audience in Piedmont.
Taasa often travels with her three remaining sons. They don’t like to be left alone – the entire family suffers from PTSD, she told J. Koren hasn’t returned to school since the attack. Classroom noises bring back memories of what he went through.
“I’m supposed to be in L.A. for Oct. 7 [for the series premiere]. The boys will be with me,” she said. “They don’t want to be in Israel on that day, with all the memorials. I myself can’t go to Oct. 7 memorials, or Yom HaZikaron,” Israel’s annual memorial day for soldiers and for civilians killed in terror attacks. “It’s important to have these days, but for me it’s very difficult.”
Davidoff, who directed the 2021 TV series “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem,” chose the seven stories portrayed in the new series very carefully, he said, to reflect Israel’s diversity.
One episode features two young women — friends since childhood — who survived the attack on the Nova music festival. Another tells the story of a Bedouin man who rescued a Jewish woman from Kibbutz Be’eri, where more than 100 residents were killed and 30 taken hostage. The two have since become good friends. The final episode features Omer Shem Tov, who was held hostage in Gaza for 505 days and now travels to tell his story, including to the Bay Area earlier this month.
The series is scripted but hews closely to the real-life experiences of the subjects, who are portrayed by some of Israel’s leading actors. Taasa, for example, is played by Yael Abecassis, who like Paris native Taasa, speaks French, Hebrew and English, all languages she uses in the film.
Bits of documentary footage are included in each episode, Davidoff told J. However, he used little of the footage of the Taasa family for a specific reason.
“I saw the material she had, and it was too hard to bear, too hard to watch,” Davidoff said. The point of the series is to reach as wide an audience as possible, he said. “I didn’t want people to see the real kids, naked, with blood on their faces. This is supposed to be a story about people and how Oct. 7 affected them, how each person used their talent and imagination to get out from under the horror.”
The Taasa episode is titled “My Light” in honor of her murdered son, Or, which is Hebrew for “light.” It focuses primarily on what Sabine Taasa herself experienced, including a post-Oct. 7 visit to Paris to meet with journalists. During that meeting, one journalist is seen falling asleep, and the moderator cuts her off before she can show the raw footage she brought with her.
During a TV interview on the same trip, the first question she is asked is whether she believes the Hamas attack “took place in a particular context.” Her astonishment and blazing-eyed fury at the question, powerfully portrayed by Abecassis, is just the way it actually happened, Taasa told J.
Amor gives props to HBO Max for picking up the series and choosing to air it on the two-year anniversary of the Hamas massacre.
“Hollywood is scared of this topic,” she told the Piedmont audience. “We decided to go forward, we wanted to make an Oct. 7 film that could reach out to people sitting at home on their couch. It’s also important that together the seven stories represent the whole of Oct. 7. It’s important to show that Oct. 7 touched the LGBT community, the Bedouin, the Ethiopians, everyone.”
“These films come from a real place, a pure place,” Davidoff added. “It’s not a commercial. This was made during a war. Everyone lost someone.”
For now, and as long as she can see into the future, Taasa plans to keep telling her family’s story to whoever will listen.
“It’s my mission,” she said. “It’s why I wake up in the morning.”