Residents react to fighting in Middle East

For some Valley Stream residents, the fighting in Israel and Gaza that has taken more than 2,000 lives over the past six weeks is more than news reports of war on the other side of the world.

“It was horrible. My sister was running with her children three times a day to the shelters,” Rabbi Yitzchak Goldshmid, of the Chabad Outreach Center, said of the height of the violence.

Goldshmid’s parents and seven siblings, all with families, are scattered across Israel, some closer to Gaza than others and within range of rockets fired by Hamas fighters. “My father has knee problems,” he said. “He can’t get downstairs when the sirens go off, so he just covers himself with a blanket.”

Goldshmid said he has spoken with family members almost daily, despite the fighting. He also has friends in the Israeli Defense Forces, who are involved in what is being called Operation Protective Edge. “They are determined to do whatever they have to do to protect Israelis,” he said.

Rabbi Steven Graber, of Temple Hillel, also has relatives in Israel, and his son and daughter-in-law have been visiting the country as the fighting in the south rages. “They’ve spent hours in a bomb shelter,” Graber said. “One time, they were on a bus when the sirens went off, and they had to get out and lay on the ground. That’s a little scary to hear as a parent.”

Waleed Gabr is a member of the Masjid Hamza Islamic Center in Valley Stream. He is also the regional manager for the Northeast for Islamic Relief, a global humanitarian aid organization that responds to emergencies around the world.

Gabr’s mother is from Ramallah, in the West Bank, where the Israeli Defense Forces conducted an intensive search operation after three Israeli teens went missing near the West Bank city of Hebron. Thousands of homes were raided and hundreds of people were arrested, but the situation facing civilians there paled in comparison with what transpired in the Palestinian territory to the south.

“Nobody expected it to be this bad,” Gabr said, noting the severe lack of medical supplies and food available to a civilian population that has had thousands injured and a half million displaced, with more than 10,000 homes destroyed, by most reports.