This is an abridged version of the story. The full version of this article will be available in The Jerusalem Post magazine on October 3.
On the morning of October 7, 2023, Raz Peri was driving south to the Nova Festival to join his friends. The then 23-year-old Holon native was six months into his battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma, and taking a rare break from keeping Shabbat in order to dance with his friends.
But Peri never arrived at the party. At around 6:30 am, rocket sirens above forced residents and travellers - Peri included - into shelters. Peri entered a shelter at Kibbutz Mefalsim with four people: Shlomi Davidovitz, Shiraz and Adir Tamam, and Celine Nagar.
At the exact same time as Peri entered Kibbutz Mefalsim, so did about 30 terrorists from Hamas's elite Nukhba unit.
"Suddenly, we heard gunshots," he recalled in conversation with The Jerusalem Post last week. "I knew it was close. A minute or two later, we heard screams and cries in Arabic: “Kill the Jews, Allahu Akbar”. Panic struck everyone. Someone said, “I have kids, what do we do?”
"I told myself, 'Raz, you’re 25, have cancer, served in the army: try to save them.”
When a terrorist burst in, Peri saw the Kalashnikov barrel enter the shelter and punched him below the belt. The terrorist dropped his weapon, and the two engaged in a struggle.
"He dragged me outside, shouting, “Jew!”—I turned and saw dozens of attackers surrounding a van, shooting everywhere. The barrel hit my ribs; I fell backward. I heard bullets whistling."
Another terrorist tried to shoot Peri, but missed his mark and shot the first terrorist dead.
Peri then crawled back inside the shelter, but the terrorists threw grenades in after him. The grenade’s shrapnel went through Peri's legs and arms and into his side, but he remained conscious. The older man in the shelter had lost a leg to the blast, and Peri recalled his military training to make a tourniquet. One man tried to leave, and the terrorists noticed and sprayed bullets at him and his wife, killing both.
"We became human shields for each other"
"The smoke, fear, and pain, we became human shields for each other," he told the Post. "I lost consciousness for about 15 minutes. When I came to, everything around me was black, smoky, bloody, and filled with bodies.
He told the two surviving people, the woman and the older man, “If I don’t return in the next few minutes, you’ll know something happened to me.”
Peri then ran through fields, climbed a building, and knocked on the door of a house in Mefalsim, all while gushing blood. He noted that the decision to run saved his life, as ten minutes after he left, another group entered and killed the others.
Nobody answered the first two doors that Peri knocked on in the kibbutz, but the third door opened. He entered the house, lay on a couch, and tried to call his friend Yaniv, who was at the Nova, but there was no signal.
"The only option seemed to be to prepare for death," he said.
Suddenly, a man came out from one of the rooms with a drawn knife and asked Peri in Arabic: “What’s your name?”
"I said: 'Raz, a Jew.'"
The man was the owner of the house. He took Peri to his safe room and tried to keep him conscious for hours. At around 12:30 p.m., IDF soldiers arrived and asked Peri if he could run.
"I fell from blood loss and adrenaline. They put me on a chair outside; the strong sun weighed me down; I cried out to God. They evacuated me in an armored ambulance. On the way, we were shot at, but we managed to evade."
Peri arrived at Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot, where he began his "grueling" six months of physical and emotional healing.
"In the first month at Kaplan, they treated external injuries and burns," he recalled. Fourth-degree burns from the event, gunshot wounds to my abdomen, and shrapnel throughout my body, not just legs, but lungs, muscles, skin, everywhere."
In between Kaplan and Hadassah, Peri was transferred to Ichilov, which he calls his "breaking point" because here he also began chemotherapy for the first time.
Finally, he was transferred to Hadassah, where he arrived in critical condition. "I was in a wheelchair, 32–35 kg, blood tests dire.
"Dr David Lavie didn’t just check chemotherapy; he examined all the injuries from October 7. He found what four hospitals hadn’t: a hole in my lung caused by a bullet, which explained the repeated respiratory failure that hadn’t been treated before. He looked me in the eyes and said: 'You will live. I believe in you.' That belief gave me strength."
At Hadassah, Peri underwent two major thoracic surgeries to repair the hole in his lung and remove damage from bullets and the shrapnel. He remained connected to two chest drains for six weeks, in enormous pain. After this, he began rehabilitation, including intensive breathing therapy, daily physiotherapy, strengthening exercises, dressing changes for burns, and shrapnel removal.
"Every step, every sit, every stand was a victory," he told the Post.
After six chemotherapy treatments at Hadassah, the PET-CT scan came out completely clean, and Peri was in remission.
He told the Post he emerged from those six months with scars, but also with a mission: "My dream is to write a book about it: 'You Chose Life: From Darkness to Light.'"
But the book would only be the start, he continued, adding that he wants to establish an awareness and support center to give patients and families what he didn’t get: true knowledge about proper nutrition, mind-body connection, lymphatic system work, and controlled use of cannabinoids (CBD, CBN, and CBG), alongside conventional medicine.
He also wants it to be a place that supports families as they watch their loved ones go through horrendous suffering.
Peri has also been telling his story. In the last six months, he has given over 60–70 lectures to "anyone willing to listen."
It's both painful and empowering, he told the Post. "On one hand, it takes me back to the hard moments, but on the other hand, it gives me a lot of strength, because I see how much it touches other people, gives them hope and meaning."
But Peri has yet another battle to fight.
The lymphoma returned two and a half months ago, and far more aggressively than before.
Peri traveled to the US for advanced treatment but had to return on an emergency flight. He began chemotherapy again last week at Hadassah, but explained that the treatments are "more aggressive," and his body "far more exhausted."
Additionally, the cost, both mental and financial, was "overwhelming."
He now has several more months of chemotherapy ahead of him, with the possibility of advanced treatments later on.
Peri is not just fighting the physical effects of cancer, or the physical toll of his injuries from October 7, but also the psychological aftermath and trauma.
"Flashbacks, guilt for those who didn’t survive, anxiety, difficulty sleeping: these all drain my strength. The body can heal slowly, but the mind requires constant support, therapy, and mental treatments that are hard to access."
His treatments are expensive: he needs many medications, advanced treatments abroad, complementary therapies, and rehabilitation.
A crowdfunding campaign [link below] was opened to raise funds for him in order to cover treatment costs as well as to advance his vision to build something that will help many others.
"Every donation, every share, every kind word, saves lives," he told the Post.
"I share this not for attention, but because it is my truth. I want this story to work for others: to teach, to inspire, to help establish something that changes lives and provides information no one gave me when I needed it most."
In Hebrew: https://giveback.co.il/project/85727
In English: https://giveback.co.il/project/85727?lang=en