Desiree Rugani, a media personality from Brazil, has been living in Israel since the end of 2022. She spoke to Arutz Sheva – Israel National News on the October 7th massacre and the experience of living in Israel since then.
Desiree Rugani said, “Being in Israel on October 7th was really hard. In Brazil we have another type of violence, but this was really hard. Brazilians can’t understand the war itself and how to survive with so many alarms, so many terrorists that can just kill you for no reason at all. You don't have to go to a certain place. You could be anywhere. They came into our homes and it was a big shock to me at the beginning. I thought it was going to end really fast. Of course nothing like this was going to happen and I even sent messages to my friends on WhatsApp and they told me to lock my door. I said ‘come on, calm down everybody. Let's not be afraid, because you know when you're afraid, I think it's even worse. So I always try to calm down and believe that everybody's going to be okay.”
On world media reports, Rugani says that “from the beginning I knew that the media in Brazil would never show the truth. They will show it all messed up. I knew this from the first day and that's why I said to myself that I would try to help in a few ways. Then I realized that around the world Israel needs help. It needs someone to tell the truth and I'm here , so I will tell the information from the battlefield. I will be this person for Brazilians and actually I did become this person for Brazilians. I started small, at the beginning I had 14 followers, and gradually got more and more followers. I watched TV and the news, and I translated it to Portuguese, also because people in Brazil don't really speak English and of course not Hebrew.”
She continued, “I started to translate everything and to post day and night. I was barely sleeping so that I could inform people as much as possible. I felt that it really made a change. People suddenly understood what we were going through. They saw it live and were saying ‘wow, what if what she is saying might be true. So I got a really good audience. People were really respecting everything that I said, because I always checked my information before posting.”
Rugani realized that “My mother was concerned so I flew home to Brazil for some time also because of personal family issues and then I stayed in Brazil for a while, but I still kept informing people and with all my friends here I really barely slept. My work is important but I think the soldiers work is so much harder and I appreciate their jobs much more than mine. It was hard to be there in Brazil especially during these difficult days. My body was in Brazil, but my heart was in Israel. The rest of me was all here. I was constantly searching the news and I was very worried. I have a red alarm on my phone, so every time I saw an alarm I sent a message to everyone I knew checking that they were okay.”
Rugani joined a delegation from Brazil to the demolished kibbutzim. “I was invited to join the group and on the first day we went to kibbutz Nir Oz. I think it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, because everything is destroyed. The first house we got to was an old lady’s and she had an autistic kid living with her. The whole house was burned down. You could smell that everything was burned. You could see all the blood around. You could see the people and the lady that held the tour, she knew everything that had happened in each house, because they sent messages while it was happening – ‘I'm here, I'm holding the door,’ ‘I'm in the safe room,’ ‘I'm holding the door, but they are shooting, they're shooting. Help!’ So she kind of knew what happened to each one of them and she was explaining this to us.”
Rugani says that they “went to the Bibas' house and it's one of the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. And you can see where someone died, not because they just died, but because someone got in there and killed them. It's super, super hard and it's important because we can now tell the story authentically. We saw it with our eyes and we can prove that we saw it because we have cameras. There's no way someone can come to you and say it's a lie.”
Rugani said: “As a woman, there’s also a big struggle about telling the story of the sexual abuse, the sexual violence and the world women’s organizations around the world are silent. This is for me one of the saddest things. ‘How dare they not be there for other women who are suffering so much. Hamas said that they did terrible things, so why are you doubting the word of other women? How dare you? This is not right in any way.”
On Rugani’s growing number of followers, she said that “she started with 15 followers and now has 54,000 followers. Some of them have sent harsh responses, antisemitic and anti-Israeli responses. At the beginning, I had 24 million views in my Twitter and a lot of them were bad messages. I still get a few but the people there also defend me really well. I got antisemitic comments, like people called me a Nazi and said that ‘Israel is a terrorist. I have learned not to respond to people that hate so much and they are just fake. I try to inform people who are of the middle class, who don't really have knowledge. You can teach these people, but I don’t even waste my time with the ones who hate and have fake accounts.”
Rugani concludes. “As someone who is not Jewish I have learned about the hatred for the Jewish People throughout the generations, but I have always had respect for the Jewish nation, because we are all the same. We are all humans and we just want to live in peace and love. There was a Brazilian girl Bruna who died at the party and her mother asked for 10 men to go read a prayer in her memory. I drove there in lots of traffic in the middle of nowhere and thought that a lot of people must have died. Then I found out that about 10,000 people had come for this woman. Most Jewish people were there in silence, and you could only hear her mother crying. It was so respectful. There were people who didn't even know Bruna. I knew her and it was really hard for me. I realized that these people are the kindest, because it's a dangerous time and they are not only sending something, they came themselves. They drove here for a girl that they didn't even know. For me it’s really unbelievable how Jews can be so kind. I never saw this in my life and I have already lived in many countries. I have a feeling of family here. I feel that no one is alone here. If you need anything people will come to you and do their best to help you and show support. This is something that I have never anywhere else in the world.”