The following is a first-person account from BookTrib contributor Jennifer Blankfein, who was in Israel about to start a dream vacation when the first bombings occurred.
“OMG, it’s under attack.”
My husband Eric and I have had many dinners with close friends Wendy and Spencer. We are all Reform Jews and many times have expressed an interest in taking a trip to Israel together.
We spent a year researching, crowdsourcing hotels, restaurants and all the important sites, working with a tour guide to craft the perfect trip for us and a travel agent to arrange flights and hotels. The four of us anticipated a trip of lifetime, looking forward to making unforgettable memories, knowing it would be moving and an important part of our lives. We planned an epic journey that ended up being nothing like what we had expected.
Friday, Oct. 6, 7:30 pm
An almost 11-hour overnight flight was ahead of us, and we all planned on trying to sleep. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:55pm. I was already one episode into Below Deck Mediterranean on the seatback TV and looking forward to tackling the season. At 12:00 am we were notified that our plane had too much freight and Delta needed to unload a bit. They told us we were free to leave the plane to stretch our legs. This seemed strange because everyone was settled and it was the middle of the night. Several minutes later, before anyone made a move, we were told we would be taking off shortly, to buckle up and they were sorry for the unclear prior announcement. In retrospect, it was very strange to announce we would be lightening our load and then retract that and hurry to shut the doors and be on our way. Unbeknownst to us, a horrific terrorist attack was in progress.
At 11:30 pm ET (6:30 am Israeli time), the barrage of rockets into Israel began, and I wonder if the pilot and crew were aware we would be flying into a potentially dangerous situation. No communication with passengers occurred and we took off approximately an hour late.
Around the time of takeoff we were informed that not all of the airplane TVs were operable and they were going to reset the system. A few minutes after that another announcement said they were not able to get them to work so we would have no TV service for the entire flight. Did Delta turn off our TVs to block out the live news coverage?
Sat. Oct. 7, 7:15 am ET (approximately 7 hours into the flight)
My friend Jen texted me while I was in the air asking “Are you guys ok?” I told her we were in-flight. She said “Enjoy. Just checking in.” It seemed odd to ask if we were ok but then we texted a bit back and forth about other things and I put it behind me.
7:44 am
Less than a half an hour later, another friend, Bonnie, texted me asking “Are you ok? Are you in Israel?”
Now I was getting concerned.
7:45 am
I texted back to Jen asking “What is happening in Israel? “ She told me there had been some incursions from Gaza and she wanted to know how much longer we would be in the air. I told her 3 hours.
7:45 am
Bonnie texted “Gaza launched a surprise attack on Israel.” She then sent me a photo of a news article that I was unable to read due to the limited wifi so she dictated it to text for me. Her daughter had recently made Aliyah, moved to Israel and into a new apartment in Tel Aviv the day before, and I could tell she was concerned.
7:48 am
I texted another friend, Emily, whose daughter was also living in Israel. “I am hearing there is something going on in Israel. We are in-flight. What is happening?” Emily responded “OMG it’s under attack. It’s very bad. Hamas has infiltrated Israel through land, sea and air taking hostages and bombing everywhere.”
With my heart pounding, I asked Spencer to go online on his iPad to see what was happening. I continued to text my friends and we had lots of discussion about the possibility that our flight could get rerouted or held at airport, yet no announcements came. I asked a flight attendant what was happening and she said she really didn’t know, but we were going to land in Tel Aviv and someone from the airport would come talk to us. That never happened. The pilot made an announcement as we were descending saying something was going on in Israel but the airport was safe and we would be landing shortly.
Even though we never met Amy, our tour guide, in person, she was there for us in every other way, including the fact that she made the arrangement for someone to meet us at the gate. Our guide was a young man who met us at the door of the plane and took us through all security check points, luggage claim and to our driver.
We asked him what was going on. He was somber and told us the situation was not good, and if he were us he would turn around and go home.
He said many of his friends were in the reserves and they were already called up earlier that day. He was waiting for his call; he was a medic and he seemed conflicted about heading into a war, scared to go but wanting to help. He spent 2 years and 8 months serving and was trained for this, but never expected to have to go to war. We told him he was the best thing about Israel so far and to stay safe. I can’t stop wondering about him and all that he may see and experience if he went to Gaza. All these soldiers and citizens of Israel along with their families will never be the same after all this.
Our drive to the Carlton Hotel was quiet – hardly any cars on the road, no people on the streets and deserted along the beach. It felt eerie, like NYC during the early days of COVID, but I was not really aware of how strange that was because I had never been there.
The hotel lobby seemed busy and nobody mentioned anything out of the ordinary. We went to our rooms and while I was in the bathroom I heard some banging and was thinking it was someone else’s room or the elevator door closing.
But my husband started screaming and I ran out to see him on the balcony facing the south, shocked to be watching missiles light up the night sky. We were witnessing firsthand the iron dome in action; we could feel the vibrations of the explosions in our guts.
We turned our TV on in the hotel room, set to a news channel, and I don’t think it was ever turned off for the next 3 days. We learned of the music festival massacre, the hostages and the barrage of missiles fired at Israel, targeting the Jews, and we were tired and scared and it was so much information to absorb.
We realized our epic trip would not be happening and we needed to get out of Israel.
At dinner in the hotel, while we were picking at our plates, we heard loud sirens in the hotel, going off for the first time since we arrived. We shuffled quickly to the stairwell, plate of fries in hand because we hadn’t had a proper meal in hours. In the stairwell, we all had conflicting emotions, on one hand a bit of fear and worry paired with the camaraderie and connection with one another which allowed us to smile for a photo.
Sunday, Oct. 8
Sunday was a beautiful sunny day, blue sky, families with children playing around in the rooftop pool. Our travel guide offered to revise our itinerary to go north rather than south if we were interested in venturing out but none of us wanted to stray from a bomb shelter and we all agreed we would stay at the hotel for the day.
News reports about the attacks was unbearable and we were trying to get flights out ASAP. We were offered to join Westport friends, Liz and Avi, who were also attempting to leave Israel, on a chartered flight to Athens but decided against it because we hoped our travel agent would make arrangements for us to go directly home. As it turned out, it was more difficult than expected and he couldn’t get us to NY or all on the same flight, so we booked 2 tickets to London on El Al and the other 2 to Paris on Air France for Tuesday.
We had dinner at the hotel lobby restaurant. When we asked the waitress if her family and friends were safe, she silently nodded but seemed like she was on the verge of tears. Everyone seemed to know someone impacted by the violence.
Monday, Oct. 9
When I woke up at 4:30 am, I could see on What’s App that Wendy had been up until 3:30 am online. We were on different schedules yet both getting only around 4 hours of sleep each night. I went to the lobby at 6:45 am and was texting my kids and some friends in the US. At 8 am I went up to the rooftop to reserve poolside chairs, feeling strange trying to make our stay feel like a vacation.
We settled at the pool after having a conversation with Amy, our tour guide. We asked her what she thought about taking a walk down the street or near the beach outside the hotel and she told us it should be ok but if we hear sirens, we have 90 seconds to get to a bomb shelter. If we can’t do that then we need to hide behind a concrete block or lie face down in the sand and cover our heads.
It was then I realized the Israelis have to compartmentalize fear and march ahead all the time. When I think about how we were paralyzed by COVID and how it affected mental health in our country, it is hard to imagine the constitution of the Israelis who live with various levels of threat on an ongoing basis.
We spent some time talking to Elisa Albert, an author we met at the pool whose stepfather grew up on a Kibbutz in the south. She lives in New York and was visiting family and attending an event with her mom, and like us was very upset about what was going on. We alternated topics from books to the Palestinian Israeli conflict and social media. It was a welcome break from feeling fearful to intellectual stimulation and human connection.
Shortly after, I decided I would go back to my room to put on my bathing suit.
I walked over to the glass door that led inside and at that moment heard an explosion and felt the vibration in my gut. I froze and looked south at the horizon and across the city and coast, realizing the quiet I had hoped for was just a pipe dream.
At the same time the sirens sounded, and we quickly turned around to enter the stairwell, looking behind us to ensure our husbands were on their way.
This was the third time in the bomb shelter and my stomach was in knots; we heard all El AL flights were operating as scheduled but we did not have confidence the Air France flight would take off before the unrest escalated to the north.
The rest of that afternoon we attempted to find 2 tickets to anywhere in the world on El Al with no luck. Late afternoon in Israel, once dawn broke in the northeast, we asked the travel agent and a friend from home both to work on finding flights while we were on a live chat with a Delta employee. We were filling out government forms that would go to the US consulate in case we needed to be airlifted out. Air France was still supposedly operating and we were trying to check in online but the system wasn’t cooperating and it was so difficult to do all the paperwork on the cell phone. Stress levels were at their peak as we had all our electronic devices charging at an unused bar station in a room adjacent to the rooftop pool deck on a sunny day.
Then there were murmurs of Air France shutting down all flights in and out of the country and finally the travel agent was able to locate 2 tickets out so we double booked and reserved those tickets from Tel Aviv to Dubai on Emirates. We would have to stay over in Dubai and then stop in Milan on the way to JFK. A close-to-24-hour trip around the world, seeing nothing and costing a fortune, but the only way to escape a war zone that was getting more and more dangerous. As it turned out, Air France canceled.
The four of us had dinner at the hotel lobby restaurant for the third night, our last meal together before we took our separate flights out the next day. I don’t think we ever made a toast or ordered a dessert, or even talked about anything other than Israel, our situation and how we were getting home. We were instructed to arrive 4 hours prior to our flight because of the anticipated crowds and long lines.
We took a group photo, unsure if smiling in a group photo was appropriate, but also aware that a photo of us together in from of our hotel was all the visual proof we had to show for our time in Israel. Everything else we experienced was through interactions with others and our own personal emotions, which we will have forever and will take time to unpack.
A longer version of this story originally appeared on BookNationByJen here.
