Aussie Mai Gutman supposed to go to deadly Israel festival

Mai Gutman, who was born in Israel and moved to Melbourne when she was 18 months old, was planning on attending the Supernova Music Festival where 260 people were killed after gunmen on trucks and motorcycles stormed the area on Saturday.

However, she later made the decision to spend the day with family in Jerusalem.

Speaking to A Current Affair, the 28-year-old revealed the panicked text messages she received in a WhatsApp group with festival goers on Saturday morning.

“My phone started pinging from a WhatsApp group saying ‘help us, help us’,” she told the program on Tuesday night.

“All these different girls were texting … ‘they’re coming at us, they’re shooting at us, my friend is dead, people are dying there are bodies everywhere. Help me, I’m hurt.’”

Ms Gutman said people were begging for other to call the police or an ambulance but she said there was “no one to call”.

“To think that could have been me, to think my friends were there, to think that these people were just young people my age who just went to have a good time.

“You wouldn’t think … that’s where your life would end.”

Despite having the choice to return home to her family in Australia, Ms Gutman said she has a “moral imperative” to be in Israel and fight.

“Every single person that we know has lost someone in the past couple of days. To be trembling in front of the news waiting to hear the name of a loved one come across the screen it’s just terrifying.”

With the conflict raging on, she said she doesn’t have the luxury or time to “be scared” and “have a cry”.

“I think if I took the moment to sit down and internalise what’s really going on I think there would be an element of fear, but living in Israel and living in a period of such heightened tension I don’t have the luxury.”

With her bags packed, Ms Gutman, a trained combat soldier, is currently on standby waiting for a call to join reservists and fight against the Palestinian militant group.

“If things heat up in the north then I’ll be sent there,” she said.

“I’m kind of like a sitting duck at the moment. There’s not much that we can really do. We can go give blood, there are food drives … but there’s really nothing else I can do apart from wait and hope that things either die down or that I will be needed in a way.”

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, launched an extensive air, sea and land attack on Israel on Saturday, coinciding with the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah.

Israel said it had recaptured Gaza border areas from Hamas militants on Tuesday, as the death toll from the conflict passed 3000, including more than a thousand Israelis.

The Israeli army has called up 300,000 reservists and massed tanks and other heavy armour both near Gaza and on the northern border with Lebanon.

– With AFP