New Yorker Natalie Sanandaji, who survived Oct. 7, turns to advocacy work to find strength: ‘That’s why I’m here today’
Life has taken on new meaning for Natalie Sanandaji, one year after she narrowly survived the brutal Oct. 7 slaughter in Israel.
The Iranian-Israeli New Yorker swapped her career in real estate for work advocating for Israel and the Jewish community, addressing audiences around the country and the world and sounding the alarm on the proxy armies of the Islamic regime.
"The person I was before Oct. 7 was much more naive," she told The Post recently. "It was blissful."
"It was so much easier than who I am now."
Sanandaji, 29, who grew up on Long Island, escaped the Nova music festival with her life – as Hamas terrorists slaughtered some 370 mostly young people just like her.
She recalled her "endless" hours-long odyssey to survive "being shot at, rockets exploding over your head."
"I was running for my life," she said.
Sanandaji returned back home to New York shortly after the attack but has returned to the Jewish state multiple times since – a pilgrimmage that's helped her heal.
"It's not Israel that tried to kill me. The party didn't try to kill me. Hamas tried to kill me," she said.
During her first visit back last December, she reunited with Moshe Sati, the stranger who piled people into his truck. He wound up saving her life.
"It was like a full circle moment, going back and seeing where it all happened and the photos of all those who didn't survive and paying my respects to them," Sanandaji recalled.
Sanandaji will spend the anniversary Monday doing what she's come to love this past year – speaking to audiences about her own experiences and the dangers of antisemitism and terror as a public affairs office for the Combat Antimsemitism Movement.
"This is what I want to do most on that day – to be a part of something that feels meaningful," she said.
While the preternaturally upbeat Sanandaji is mostly "in good spirits and happy," she noted how many survivors are suffering with severe PTSD.
"A lot of survivors are not OK," she noted.
With so many Nova survivors – including young people struggling with reintegrating into the world – organizations like " Let's Do Something " help send them to healing centers in Thailand, while nonprofits such as " For the Survivors and the Wounded " provide mental health and therapeutic services to victims of terror.
But the plucky survivor refuses to believe she was in the wrong place at the wrong time on Oct. 7 – insisting it's just the opposite.
"I was in all the right places at the right time because every little decision I made – to turn left or to turn right or to hide or to continue running," she said.
"I was actually in the right places at all the right times and that's why I survived. That's why I'm here today."
