Texas Sen. Ted Cruz also calls for foreign students harassing or threatening Jews to be deported.
ADDISON, Texas—On Oct. 7, 2023, Sgt. Yoav Tzivoni, an Israeli special forces soldier, was celebrating his birthday on a beach on the Sinai Peninsula, enjoying a morning cup of coffee with his girlfriend.
Twelve hours later, he was preparing for war against the terrorist group Hamas that had savagely raped, tortured, and killed some 1,200 Israeli civilians that day, many of whom attended a music festival.
A month later, while fighting Hamas in the streets of Gaza, he almost died when an explosion blew off his left leg.
Tzivoni told his story exactly a year later to a hushed audience at “A Texas Tribute,” an event honoring Israel and commemorating Oct. 7, 2023.
America for Israel and other Jewish groups organized the event near Dallas. It included survivor stories from the Holocaust and as well as the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and panel discussions about antisemitism on college campuses and in schools.
State senators and representatives said new legislation is planned next year to address campus antisemitism. It could include deportation for foreign nationals harassing or threatening Jewish students.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gave the keynote speech at the event, with other state and federal lawmakers from Texas discussing what the state and nation could do to combat antisemitism even as the war in the Middle East intensifies.
In a proclamation, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas and U.S. flags to half-staff and requested that religious leaders light a candle in observance at their next service.
During his appearance, Tzivoni was almost in tears as he told the audience of his ordeal, which began last year.
He recalled leaving the beach that morning after a man jogging by alerted them that there was heavy rocket fire in southern Israel.
Rocket fire, in itself, was nothing new to him, Tzivoni said. But the couple decided to go into town where they could get internet service to see what was happening.
“As I went to the restaurant, I saw many Israelis glancing at their phones, looking confused. I open my phone, I go on the news, and sure enough, there’s heavy rocket attacks on Israel,” he said.
“To my horror, I see videos of pickup trucks packed with fully armed terrorists.”
At first, “I thought this is fake,” he said, but after seeing video after video, he realized Israel was under attack.
“We’re leaving right now,” he told his girlfriend.
Back in Israel, he received a “call for war” from his commanding officer, and by 7 p.m. he was at his military base with his unit, preparing for war.
Tzivoni said he and his fellow soldiers were dispatched to Gaza to kill Hamas terrorists and bring back hostages in late October.
On Nov. 20, 2023, Tzivoni, a medic, was the last soldier in a formation moving through the streets of Gaza when suddenly a blast hit him, throwing his body into the air.
He remembers landing on his back.
“My body was emitting smoke, and my gear was partially on fire,” he recalled. “I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t feel my leg.”
Tzivoni came in and out of consciousness. Gunfire and explosions surrounded him. His team administered first aid to keep him alive while taking enemy fire. He was evacuated to a nearby hospital by helicopter, where he survived.
When he awoke from a coma two weeks later, his leg was gone below the knee, and he was deaf in his left ear. Burns and shrapnel wounds covered his body. He suffered multiple breaks to his jaw.
“I carry my scars with pride,” Tzivoni said.
He said it was the first time he had told his story at an event.
A Miraculous Escape
Another survivor speaking at the event, Ofir Bugana, was attending the Nova Music Festival that day. She and her friend escaped the slaughter at the Re’im kibbutz.
They saw terrorists shooting at people as they drove to escape the chaos. Not a single bullet hit their car.
Bugana said her cousin in Tel Aviv guided them by phone to an unpaved road leading to Shokeda, a town that was not under attack.
She believes it was a miracle they survived that day.
She recalled telling her friend not to bother filling up with gas when they met at a gas station on the way to the Nova festival.
Her friend was insistent, although “I told her, no, we don’t need to, it’s OK. We can take care of it later,” Bugana said.
After driving 30 minutes to the festival itself, driving back and forth over back roads for an hour, and hiding for hours to escape the terrorist attack, they made the five-hour journey home, picking up bloodied people along the way.
“As soon as we got to her house, that’s when the gas light turned on,” she said.
Ted Cruz: ‘Who Do You Stand With?’
In the keynote address, Cruz described the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 as the single worst mass murder of Jews in one day since the Holocaust.
Cruz criticized elected officials calling for a cease-fire, or for Israel to stand down after the terrorist attack.
“Every day since then, elected officials have had a choice,” Cruz said. “Who do you stand with?”
Cruz described watching videos from the attack. “It makes you violently sick,” he said. “These are real people being murdered for racist and genocidal purposes.”
He went on to describe some of the gruesome scenes depicted in the videos, including mutilation of bodies, and the reference to the victims “as ‘it’—as something less than human.”
Cruz called the antisemitism on college campuses demonstrated by pro-Hamas groups “disgraceful.”
Painting Israel and America as oppressors while portraying terrorists as victims is “the fruits of cultural Marxism,” he said.
The audience cheered when Cruz said that those threatening or harassing Jewish students should be arrested, prosecuted, expelled, and deported if the perpetrators are foreign students.
Cruz said not a single university has had its federal funding cut off for allowing anti-Semitic threats.
The Texas senator called Iran “the head of the snake,” saying it was a mistake for the Biden administration to give $6 billion in ransom for five American hostages and to lift oil sanctions imposed under the Trump administration.
Allowing Iran to make money on taking Americans hostage puts a bounty on American citizens going forward, he said, adding that removing sanctions allowed Iran to fund terrorism.
Iran’s leadership is “unambiguously evil,” Cruz said, and America is a target just like Israel.
“If history teaches anything,” he added, “it is that when somebody tells you that they want to kill you, believe them.”