October 7 survivor Natalie Sanandji finds strength in advocacy work

A year later, life has taken on a new meaning for Natalie Sanandji narrowly escaped the brutal massacre on October 7 In Israel.

The Iranian-Israeli New Yorker turned his career into real estate to advocate for Israel and the Jewish community, address audiences across the country and the world, and sound the alarm on the Islamic regime’s proxy armies.

“The person I was before October 7 was much more innocent,” she recently told The Post. “It was delightful.”

“I was much easier then than I am now.”

Sanandji, 29, who grew up on Long Island, fled the Nova music festival for her life – as Hamas terrorists killed some of the people 370 mostly young people exactly the same as.

He recalled his “endless” hours-long journeys to avoid “getting shot, having rockets exploding over your head.”

“I was running to save my life,” she said.

Sanandji returned home to New York shortly after the attack but has since returned to the Jewish State several times – a pilgrimage that helped her heal.

“It is not Israel that tried to kill me. The party did not try to kill me. Hamas tried to kill me,” he said.

During her first visit last December, she met Moshe Sati, the stranger who packed people into his truck. He saved his life.

Sanandji recalled, “It was like a full circle moment, to go back and see where it all happened and have pictures of all those who did not survive and pay my respects to them.”

Sanandji will mark the anniversary Monday doing what she’s loved doing for the past year — talking to audiences about her own experiences and the dangers of antisemitism and terror as head of the public affairs office of the Combat Antisemitism Movement.

“That’s what I want to do most that day – be a part of something that feels meaningful,” she said.

While the unnaturally excited Sanandji is mostly “in good spirits and happy”, he points out how many survivors suffer from severe PTSD.

“Many of the survivors are not well,” he said.

With so many NOVA survivors – including young people struggling to reintegrate into the world – organizations likelet’s do something“Help send them to treatment centers in Thailand, while nonprofits likeFor the survivors and the injured“Provide mental health and medical services to victims of terrorism.

But the courageous survivor refuses to believe she was in the wrong place at the wrong time on October 7 – and insists it is quite the opposite.

“I was in all the right places at the right time as I made every small decision – to turn left or turn right or hide or keep running,” she said.

“I was actually all in the right place at the right time and that’s why I survived. That’s why I’m here today.”