Israelis shared shocking impressions of the war: “Sister sent to hell”

How can it be that nothing—nothing—is functioning here?” – these are the questions the Israelis have been asking themselves for two days now, since the beginning of the war.

Stupidity or betrayal: what made it possible for Hamas to break through into the territory of a developed country with a strong army?

In Israel, authorities declared a state of emergency. The residents themselves are still in some kind of prostration and do not know what to expect next.

Yesterday I called a friend in Tel Aviv. 45-year-old Tatyana has been living in Israel for more than ten years. Medical worker. We have known each other since the pandemic. She cannot come to her senses from what she sees and hears around her. “It’s chaos. Complete confusion.” Sends me shocking ones. clips from Israeli chats. Many are being spread en masse by Hamas, apparently to intimidate.

Heavy footage: here is an Israeli family with children hostage, their house has been seized.

The children’s murdered sister lies in the next room. A voiceover tells those present: “Your sister has been sent to hell.”

Numerous photographs of hostages, both adults and very young children who had barely learned to walk.

“I didn’t sleep all night, I read a closed group where terrorists staged a real auction for the sale of girls they had captured,” says another Haifa resident. – We took hourly or overnight sales. Whoever gives more is the one who takes away. By the morning this group had been destroyed: either everyone was sold and they closed down on their own, or the admins finally started fussing and began to fulfill their functions, I don’t know.”

“We always lived on a powder keg and knew it. In the years that I have lived here, everything has happened. In 2014, I remember, there were bombings in the summer, so you could hear them even in Tel Aviv, we swam in the sea while our air defenses were working. There were terrorist attacks and security checks, but I don’t remember such a brazen and unexpected invasion. After all, Jewish holidays also began for us, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, the festival took place at which hostages were taken. We rely only on God, because the authorities are behaving strangely, as if they themselves do not understand anything,” says my interlocutor Tatyana.

Since the morning, people have been hastily leaving the country. There is no crowd at the airport. “It’s basically crowded here. Some were also planning to go on vacation. But many Russians and Ukrainians who have settled here over the past year and a half, as far as I know, now want to move to third countries or even return home,” says Boris, another local resident.

The Kan 11 news channel reports that the army command recommends that residents of the northern border regions of Israel evacuate themselves within 48 hours from settlements near the border with Lebanon to “rear settlements.”

At the same time, it is reported that Israeli aircraft began bombing some areas of southern Lebanon.

The rear command reminds you what you need to have with you during evacuation: don’t panic, get up and prepare an “emergency backpack”, money and documents, a first aid kit, things for the family and children, water, canned food, a radio, a flashlight with batteries.

“One question: what are “rear settlements”? Maybe someone knows, given that both the south and the center are under constant rocket fire?” the Israelis ask a reasonable question.

The Gaza Strip is a microscopic patch of barren desert measuring 6 by 40 km. There is nothing there. There is no economy, production, culture. Beggar fanatics sit on each other’s heads. And they dream of spreading their way of life to the entire world around them. So that everyone lives the way they do, because that’s the only way, from their point of view, that’s right. This is understandable logic.

How absolutely clear is the whole tangle of contradictions, religious, cultural, mental, territorial, the roots of which go back to ancient times, and which are in principle unsolvable – it is better not to touch it, so as not to explode completely.

A friend from Tel Aviv sends me a poster on which it is written in Arabic that Hamas is in its right because it is liberating its own occupied territories.

How was Hamas able to so carefully plan and carry out such a complex and coordinated operation outside of Gaza? Where could several thousand missiles come from to attack Israel?

What will happen next? Well, that’s understandable. Some will kill others. In retaliation for the murders of the first. And so on endlessly. Some are unsystematic and chaotic, while others, when they come to their senses, are systematic and rigid.

In the morning they send me a video with footage of Israeli artillery and people killed in Gaza. There are children there too.

The only thing that unites both sides at the moment is mutual hatred without end and edge.