Support Israeli Hero Rami Davidian

My name is Ariella Cohen Coleman, and I live in California.

I'm fundraising for the Israeli hero Rami Davidian who saved 750 young people from the Nova Music Festival on October 7. I spent time in Israel with Rami in April 2024 and January 2025. You may have seen Rami share his story in Sheryl Sandberg's documentary, Screams Before Silence, or in the Nova Exhibition.

Rami is a farmer who lives in Moshav Patish, an area very close to where the Nova Music Festival took place. On the morning of October 7, the sirens began sounding and Rami and his wife went to their safe room. Rami's friend called him, asking him to go rescue his son who was at Nova. Rami went out to go find his friend's son, and what was expected to be a quick outing turned into over 24 hours of non-stop rescues.

When Rami shares his story, he speaks of the people he saved as children so I do the same here.

Without any weapons or bullet-proof vests, Rami went into the Nova Festival site and surrounding areas to rescue children who were running for their lives but didn’t know where to run. Rami gave them directions to run to a certain location where Rami and others from his moshav would rescue them. Rami managed to rescue his friend's son and hundreds of others who were fleeing the massacre 750 lives. The volunteers set up an impromptu situation room, allowing them to ultimately save hundreds of lives. Rami and volunteers went back and forth to rescue more and more children.

Rami's entire story is absolutely remarkable. One particularly shocking part of his story is when he arrived at one particular location to save a young woman, she was surrounded by 5 terrorists. Rami shouted at them in Arabic, "Ahalan, my name is Abu Rami. I'm Muslim, and it's better than you give the girl to me and escape from here as fast as you can because the whole area is full of armed security forces." The terrorists assumed Rami was a Bedouin, and they gave the girl to Rami and ran off. That's how this young woman got home safely.

Rami received thousands of messages from parents who got Rami's number from people he had already saved begging him to rescue their children: ‘Rami, please try to find my kid. He’s not answering. We don’t know where he is…’

Rami did everything in his power to rescue as many children as he could. He got into places where the army wouldn’t go inside – under fire and without weapons or bullet-proof vests for protection. He was determined to save as many children as possible. What keeps him up at night now is the lives he was unable to save. Sometimes he arrived at a location only to find bodies that had been tortured, raped (both men and women), mutilated, dismembered, and burned. A father of daughters, Rami did what he could to bring dignity to the murdered children, covering bodies and picking up and bringing body parts together.

The trauma that Rami experienced from this massacre has left him with tremendous pain and suffering. The horrors of the massacre haunt him. Once he began understanding the impact that his trauma was having on those in his life, he began undergoing extensive trauma treatment.

Rami doesn't think of himself as a hero, but I do. I think "hero" is too small of a word for him.

Rami is unable to work right now. He needs our help.

I spent time with Rami when I was in Israel in January 2025, and he is so incredibly grateful for the support he has gotten from our community. Let's keep it up!

This is my LinkedIn, where I share a picture of me with Rami.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or if you would like to invite Rami to speak to your community or support him in any other way.