Israeli high school basketball team ripped apart by Hamas’ terror attack reunite for nail-biting game in NYC
NY Post
A group of young Israeli basketball players – whose hometowns were ravaged by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack – were reunited for the first time to play basketball against local teams in New York.
A group of 19 former members of high school team HaPoel Eshkol were brought back together again in the Empire State last week after they were forced apart in the fallout of the unthinkable terror attack on their hometowns, according to non-profit Project 24, which organized the trip.
“Each and every one of us evacuated from different places,” Eshkol team captain Guy Moses Auerbach, 19, said to dozens of spectators before a game kicked off Thursday between his team and the Ramaz School, a Jewish high school on the Upper East Side.
“All the team split up. We haven’t played at all this season.”
The nail-biter game ended in a 45-to-45 tie as students and others looked on from the packed bleachers.
The players, from the region of Eshkol, were from some of the hardest-hit kibbutzim, or small agricultural-based communities, including Be-eri and Nir Oz, in the wake of the terror group’s massacre of 1,200 people and capture of 250 more last year.
