“I am a great friend of the Jewish people and of Israel,” the former California governor emphatically stated, Arnold Schwarzeneggertenderly embracing a 14-year-old Israeli girl who managed to escape from the hands of Hamas.

The “hard man” of the “big screen” met on Friday afternoon in his office in Los Angeles relatives of three people who had been kidnapped by Hamas, but he was clearly “bent” hearing what 14-year-old Ella Sani went through who escaped from the hands of Hamas. but who murdered her father.

“It’s extremely important that people hear these stories,” Schwarzenegger told PEOPLE magazine. “Hopefully this will slowly fade away that hatred. Because so much damage is done through hate, so many lives are lost.”

“I’ve never dealt with anything like this,” admitted Schwarzenegger during the event organized by the Israel Museum of Tolerance. “I want to always be there for the Jewish people and for Israel.”

“When something like this happens, I personally feel that we must speak openlyadded the former governor of California.

“On October 7, I woke up hearing voices like ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘Allah is great’), gunshots and explosions,” said Sani. She hid, she said, in a shelter in her kibbutz with her mother and younger brother.

Ella sat in the dark for hours as Hamas had cut off electricity to the area. But she managed to keep in touch with her other teenage friends through WhatsApp.

“We usually use this group to discuss silly things like what time is dinner or what time is the bus coming. But that day, it was different. On October 7, children and teenagers were only writing messages asking for help.”

After hours in the shelter, “the Israel Defense Forces” (IDF) brought out Ella and the others hiding there, including seven children.

The soldiers took her to a nearby house. Then they told the adults that they should prepare the children for what they would see.

But there was no way they could prepare for the horror that awaited them.

“The living room, the floor, everything in the house it was covered in blood, there were human parts scattered everywhere,” Sunny said, adding: “It was hard to understand what I was seeing, but once I realized what I had in front of me, the first thing I did was cover my little brother’s eyes.” .

MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE JERUSALEM

It was only when she boarded the bus to Tel Aviv that Sunny allowed herself to cry.

“An eight-year-old boy, a friend of my little brother, came with us wearing nothing but his underwear and a shirt, he had blood on his face and his glasses, he told us, he had lost.”

A few days later, Sani learned that her father had been murdered by Hamas terrorists. Her 16-year-old cousin Amit remains in the hands of the Sunni group.