All day I talked to my friends and girlfriends, I checked that everyone was okay, but not everyone was okay, some didn’t answer, some told me that they had terrorists right outside the house, and I felt so helpless, I had no way to help them except to say that everything would be fine OK, although we didn’t quite believe it.
Every hour that passed felt like a whole day, and eventually we too started hearing gunshots. It was the biggest fear I’ve ever felt in my life. We closed all the windows and blinds in the house, turned off all the lights, and entered the dimension, all except my father, who was a reserve man for 20 years, who participated in the Second Lebanon War. He prepared three vantage points in the house so he could look at what was happening outside. We waited and worried, and I thought about what would happen if God forbid they entered our home. I thought if that happened, Dad would try to take down as many terrorists as possible before he let them get to us, and that at that moment was my biggest fear.
Hours passed until two or three members of a moshav set out on a mission to stop the terrorists, and then battles began between the terrorists and our standby class and the moshav next to us. We received messages to shut ourselves inside the dimension and not open the door to anyone because the terrorists are posing as soldiers, and this made me doubt even more about our security, how are we supposed to know who is coming to help us and who is coming to murder us? Night came and with it the soldiers who started going around the seat and checking that everyone was okay, told us it was okay to open the door for them, that they were supposed to shout “IDF, IDF” in a clear voice, that they were ours, but I was still afraid that they weren’t.
As time passed I heard about children, teenagers, adults I know, friends of friends, parents of friends who were murdered, who were kidnapped, teachers who hadn’t heard from them since morning and I felt as if they had taken parts of my body. For every person I heard about, I felt as if another part of me had disappeared. In the morning, most of the seats were vacated, and we decided that we would stay, for all kinds of reasons, and another day passed, and more people vacated, but we stayed. On Monday night I started receiving messages from my friends asking me to evacuate as well, that it is too dangerous there, and I tried to explain to them why I was staying.
Later my mother received a message from someone in the settlement who asked why we were not evacuating and that there were only a few families left in the settlement, about 20 people and we were 5 of them. My mother explained that my brother is waiting for them to come pick him up for the reserve, that we have animals and we are not ready to leave them behind, that my father will not leave and we do not want to leave him alone. A few minutes later, my mother spoke with my father and brother and they decided that, despite everything, we were evacuating. She spoke with a mine worker who said that she found a place for us at Emek Jezreel Academic College, which accepts evacuee families with their animals, and that we can evacuate in the morning. We thought about it and came to the conclusion that it was the best solution, at that moment we started packing everything we could – clothes, hygiene products, some dry food and went to sleep. At night there were monstrous sounds, cannons, batteries, planes, helicopters and shots – all together. I was happy that in the morning we are flying away.
On Tuesday morning we started putting everything in the car, we said goodbye to our two cats, because we couldn’t bring them, we left a lot of food and water outside for them hoping that it would be enough, and we got in the car, we arrived at the secretary’s office and waited for everyone to arrive, but then we realized we were the only ones there. There are no more people who stayed so late like us, soldiers came to explain to us how we will leave with the convoy, where we will go and when they will leave and we will be left alone. We started driving, got into another seat and a few more cars were added, we drove through the fields, through the greenhouses, and those were the quietest 20 minutes of my life. We couldn’t stop looking left and right for fear of a terrorist coming out from somewhere, and in the end when we got to the highway, and the convoy had to leave us, my father gasped as if we were being chased. We tried to get out of the area as quickly as possible and then I wrote to my friends that we were evacuating.
Now we are in a safer place with people with hearts of gold who just want to help and I am so thankful that we are no longer there. But I think about the seat, about my council, the most beautiful place in Israel, with so many colors, and the best people in the world, and instead of being happy, I feel sadness, pain, anger… They massacred my people, massacred my house, murdered me the friends and kidnapped them to Gaza, nothing can fix it, the place I call home is painted red, in blood, and no matter how much we try to clean it, it will not come down, not in the next few years. May their memory be blessed to all the people who were murdered. I will never forget you. And that all the abductees will return to us safely.