Two hero brothers credited with saving dozens of people at the Oct. 7 Nova festival massacre by taking over an abandoned tank and firing at the terrorists, survived another indignity — a “brainwashed” New Yorker defacing posters of Hamas hostages in Times Square.
Neria and Daniel Sharabi visited the Big Apple this week to raise awareness for the victims taken by Hamas and found themselves confronting a man zealously scaling a traffic pole at the Crossroads of the World, trying to scrape off posters of the hostages before cops dragged him down.
The brothers were holding signs reading, “My best friend was kidnapped in Gaza” and “I survived the October 7 massacre,” when a friend began filming the sign ripper, who looked directly at the camera and hissed, “Why don’t you go blow up another hospital? Why don’t you kill 10,000 more kids?”
The alleged agitator was caught on video spitting in the direction of police and was immediately handcuffed.
Once cuffed, the Sharabi brothers flashed their signs and confronted the man, saying, “In your face” and challenged his accusations, asking, “Where do you know these lies?”
Neria, 22, and Daniel, 23, had only seen the brazen vandalism in online clips until the Thursday night incident.
“You see it in videos, but when it happens in reality, I get pissed off. People deny our experience, but you can’t deny reality. We’re proof it happened,” Neria told The Post.
On Oct. 7, the brothers watched their best friend, Yosef-Haim Ohana, get dragged off by terrorists to Gaza. Ohana hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
“I have video of our friends being raped, kidnapped to Gaza,” said Neria. “We’re here to face them and tell them that they’re liars. If they think this never happened, they’re just brainwashed.”
During an earlier visit to Times Square this week, the Israeli brothers, who are dark-skinned and of Yemenite descent, were met with a sympathetic passerby who mistook them for Gazans, telling them “We support Hamas,” before the brothers brandished their stars of David necklaces to aghast stares.
“People think Jews only look white. They’re hypocrites,” blasted Neria.
The brothers attributed their heroism during the Hamas attack to God, saying they went “into army mode as civilians” when they took over the tank as they battled “more than 100” terrorists, according to Daniel, a former combat medic.
“It’s like the story of Hanukkah — the small against the mighty. It’s a miracle,” he added, noting that dozens of people were able to take cover behind the tank as the brothers assumed command. “Most people feel fear, but I feel like God came inside me.”
They’re also promoting the welfare of the Nova survivors.
“I still have faith in good people,” said Daniel. “We’re human and we’re supposed to spread light, Jewish or not.”
“You can post a dog missing, but not our friends?” Neria said. “It’s crazy. I’m alive for a reason. I saw so many people get killed – hundreds of dead bodies, pieces of bodies – hands, heads, legs just lay there, people getting burned. After you see these things, you don’t think you’re going to get out of this,” he said, adding, “But we survived – we are the messenger now.”
