Adam Brema spent fifteen years building a life in Sderot after fleeing genocide in Darfur. He volunteered to help other asylum-seekers navigate their new country. He worked two jobs—cleaning for the municipality and a local mall—and dreamed of studying at Sapir Academic College. On October 7, 2023, when he heard gunshots, he left his home to help. Hamas terrorists murdered him in the street.
In the extensive documentation of October 7 victims, Brema's story represents thousands of lives that complicate simplistic narratives about Israeli society. He was neither Jewish nor Arab, but Sudanese—one of approximately 30,000 asylum-seekers from Africa, most from Eritrea and Sudan, who have made Israel their refuge from persecution and war.
"Adam would help everyone," recalled Nana Yosef, his former girlfriend, in an interview with the Times of Israel. "He had a pure heart."
In Israel, as across contested regions, security concerns and aspirations for normalcy exist in constant tension. But Brema's fifteen-year journey reveals a more complex reality: asylum-seekers who integrated into border communities, built relationships across ethnic and religious lines, and died defending a country that never granted them permanent status.
Brema arrived in Israel around 2008, part of a wave of African asylum-seekers who trekked across the Sinai before Israel completed its border fence with Egypt. He fled Darfur, where the Sudanese government's campaign against non-Arab populations killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions.
Like many asylum-seekers, Brema settled in Sderot, the working-class border town that has endured decades of rocket fire from Gaza. The community offered cheaper housing and, paradoxically, a kind of familiarity—residents who understood what it meant to live under constant threat.
For nearly a decade, Brema worked as a cleaner for both the Sderot municipality and the local Big shopping mall. But he aspired to more. Friends recall him speaking of attending Sapir Academic College in Sderot, pursuing formal education to complement his self-taught Hebrew and deep integration into the community.
He also volunteered with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society-Israel (HIAS), helping newer asylum-seekers navigate bureaucracy, language barriers, and cultural adjustment. "He understood what they were going through," explained Saleh Adam, Brema's friend, who noted that Adam never saw his close family in Sudan during those fifteen years.
The October 7 attack on Sderot was among Hamas's first objectives. Terrorists breached the border fence and swept into the town, firing indiscriminately and attempting to take hostages. Israeli security forces were overwhelmed in the initial hours.
When Brema heard gunshots that morning, he made the same choice as many Sderot residents: he left his home to help. Exactly what he intended—to guide neighbors to shelter, to assist the wounded, to confront the attackers—remains unclear. He was killed in the street before he could act.
His death received little attention amid the overwhelming scale of October 7—1,200 killed, over 240 taken hostage. News coverage understandably focused on Israeli citizens and the communities most devastated. But advocates for asylum-seekers argue that victims like Brema reveal an underappreciated dimension of Israeli society.
"These are people who chose to stay in border communities when they had every reason to leave," noted a HIAS representative. "They integrated, they contributed, and when attacked, they responded like their neighbors."
The Israeli government's asylum policy remains contentious. Successive administrations have granted very few formal refugee recognitions, instead offering temporary protections while pressuring asylum-seekers to leave through financial incentives or detention. Right-wing politicians characterize African asylum-seekers as economic migrants, not refugees, while human rights organizations point to conditions in Eritrea and Sudan that make return impossible.
Brema lived in this limbo for fifteen years—present but not permanent, integrated but not official. He could work, volunteer, dream of college, but he could not visit family in Sudan without forfeiting his ability to return to Israel. He existed in the margins of a society that simultaneously relied on his labor and questioned his presence.
Yet when Sderot came under attack, those distinctions dissolved. The terrorists did not check citizenship status. Brema responded as a member of the community he had called home for a decade, and he died as so many Israelis died that day—trying to help.
Friends gathered to remember him in the weeks after October 7, a small ceremony that mixed Hebrew prayers with Sudanese customs. His story circulated within the asylum-seeker community as both tragedy and testament—evidence that they, too, had lost lives on that day.
Fifteen months later, Adam Brema's story remains largely unknown beyond those who knew him. But it complicates the narratives. It reveals an Israel more diverse than often portrayed, a Sderot that included Sudanese Muslims alongside Israeli Jews, and an October 7 that claimed victims whose relationship to the state was complex but whose commitment to their community was absolute.
In death, Brema achieved a recognition that eluded him in life—not citizenship, but acknowledgment that he belonged to the place he died defending, and that Israel's hidden victims deserve to be seen.
