AMER ABU SABILA Z"L
Amer Abu Sabila, 25, from Abu Taloul in the Bedouin communities, is an example of Israeli bravery and coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Israel.
Hearing the sirens on that Shabbat morning of October 7, Dolev and Odaya Suissa decided to leave Sderot with their daughters. They always had a suitcase ready for any emergency that might develop around Gaza, and preferred that their girls, aged three and six, would not experience sirens. This time, however, they never imagined that at the city’s exit point they would encounter the cruel attacks by Hamas terrorists. With an eye on escaping, the family split up: Dolev, the father, took the three-year-old but was shot not long afterwards. Before collapsing, he managed to tell his daughter to run quickly back to her mother.
Stunned, Odaya raced back to the car with her daughters but froze, unable to function further. Amer abu Sabila came to the rescue, having come to visit Sderot that morning. Getting behind the steering wheel, his goal being to bring the family to a safe location, he turned the car toward the Sderot Police Station, never realizing that terrorists already had it surrounded. Hamas terrorists murdered Amer, Odaya and a police officer who came over to help them. The girls, hiding in the back seat, were saved.
Ali Abu Sabila, a relative, in his interview with the Maariv media outlet, said: "Amer was an amazing person. He loved helping others. He worked in Sderot, and as he arrived that morning, he came across the vehicle at the city’s entrance with the father’s body inside and the mother in a state of paralysis. He went over to help, keeping his father informed of developments by phone. Amer’s father asked his son to leave the area, but Amer wouldn’t. He insisted on helping. He drove the family to the Sderot Police Station, not aware of how matters were playing out there. He was a wonderful young man, and his loss is very hard on us."
