Saturday, October 21, 2023–1:04 a.m.

-Adam Carey, Rome News-Tribune-

This story is possible because of a news-sharing agreement with the Rome News-Tribune. More information can be found at northwestgeorgianews.com

Israeli filmmaker Yahav Winner was last seen by his wife holding a window closed as Hamas terrorists tried to smash it in and enter their home.

Winner’s body was found three days later, with a single gunshot wound to the head in a field outside Kibbutz Kfar Aza, about a mile and a half from Gaza.

Staffers of the Rome International Film Festival learned of the killing of their colleague soon after. Winner was the Israeli liaison between RIFF and the Cinema South Film Festival at Sapir Academic College.

“We spent two weeks in Israel at Sapir University in 2021,” President of the Board of the Rome International Film Festival Mark Van Leuven said. “They have a fantastic film department and we were interested in collaborating with them.”

The unique partnership includes shared programming and cross-promotion of films, as well as academic partnerships between Georgia Highlands and Sapir colleges.

Van Leuven said the relationship was spawned by an Israeli filmmaker who had submitted a small, animated film to RIFF a year prior.

“It was a small, animated movie, but it sparked an interest in Israeli filmmakers,” Van Leuven said. “One thing led to another and soon we had a partnership with the Cinema South Film Festival at Sapir Academic College.”

Van Leuven and other RIFF staffers traveled to Israel to sign partnership documents and met a number of new colleagues at Sapir, including Winner.

Yahav was an actor, filmmaker and a staff member at Cinema South and Sapir whose film “Neurim” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2020.

“I’ve seen video the terrorists took of the attack,” Van Leuven said. “They were rampaging through the same cafes and restaurants we’d visited.”

“When the terrorists came through the bedroom window, we didn’t even manage to say goodbye. We shared a look and decided that I’ll run away with the baby,” Winner’s wife Shaylee Atary told the Deadline website.

Atary said Yahav held the window in front of the terrorists, so that she and their 1-month-old daughter Shaya could escape through the door.

“I am disabled, but I ran without my walking cane, with no shoes, and no phone,” Atary said. She spent the next 26 hours hiding in a neighbor’s house without food or water before being rescued by Israeli forces.

Another Israeli with ties to Rome, Amir Peleg, is a real estate developer with offices in Atlanta and Tel Aviv.

Peleg says that he is lucky, as he lost no one in his immediate or extended family, however his two sons are both in the Israeli Army.

“My oldest son works with computers, so he was not directly involved in the fighting,” Peleg said. “But my younger son is supposed to start Special Forces training in January, he will be in the field.”

Peleg says the terror attack in Israel is a lot closer than it seems.

“Israel is simply the front lines for the U.S. and Europe,” Peleg said. “These terrorists aren’t fighting for land or a country, they are simply trying to murder as many people as they can.”

Peleg says that as his children served, so do the children of all his friends.

“Israel is a very small country,” Peleg said. “This attack is felt by every Jew in the world, because every Jew knows someone, or knows someone who knows someone who was killed.”

The Rome City Commission will be issuing a proclamation condemning Hamas and in support of Israel during their regular meeting Monday night.