‘Real Hero’: American Attending Music Festival Near Gaza Border Praised for Charging Hamas Terrorists to Save Two Women

A man who had been attending a music festival when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 was praised for being a "real hero" as he tried to charge terrorists in order to save two women.

Morielle Lotan, the aunt of 23-year-old Addir Mesika, who was born and raised in New York, described to Fox News how her nephew was a hero and "knew what his end" would be like.

Mesika had been attending the music festival known as the Supernova Dance Festival with his girlfriend, three childhood friends, and another woman when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, leaving more than 1,400 people dead, including 32 Americans.

"He was a real hero," Lotan told the outlet. "I think he knew what his end was going to be, and he did it anyway."

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At the time that Hamas terrorists had begun firing rockets and launching their ground invasion of Israel, Mesika and his group of friends had been resting in tents at the music festival.

Upon hearing rocket sirens go off, they packed up their belongings into the vehicle and drove to a bomb shelter to seek safety. During this time, Mesika had been informing his brother what was happening, Lotan told the outlet.

While at the shelter, Mesika and his friends heard the sound of machine guns and Arabic. They knew the terrorists were searching and killing people, Lotan told the outlet.

After seeing the terrorists approach other shelters and tossing grenades into them, Mesika and his best friend, Eli, told the females to hide as they left the safety of the shelter and distracted the terrorists by charging them.

Mesika, Eli, and their other friend, Matan, who had been childhood friends, were all buried next to each other in Israel after being killed in gunfire while trying to save the women, Lotan said.

"There's some... vortex that we're in at the moment," Lotan told the outlet. "We're broken and devastated, and angry."

Lotan described her nephew as being a larger-than-life person.

"Now we all have to live a really large life in his name because that's what he would have wanted," Lotan told the outlet. "And we have to be meaningful with our lives because he was meaningful with his."

In the aftermath of Hamas' invasion, Israel declared war. Since then, Israel has put off launching a ground invasion of Gaza in an effort to negotiate the release of more than 200 hostages held by Hamas.