The Jewish Review invited members of the community with conenction to, or living in, Israel, to share their stories from the recent attacks on Israel. Opinions expressed in these submissions do not necessarily reflect those of the Jewish Review or the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, its governing board or the staffs of either the newspaper or the Federation. These submissions have been edited for clarity. Some of the accounts are graphic in nature. 
If you wish to share your own story, please email editor@jewishportland.org with the subject line "Am Yisrael Chai." Please limit submissions to approximately 400 words.
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My niece, Debbie Mathias, and her husband, Shlomi, threw themselves on their 16-year-old son, Rotem, shielding him from their murderers. They were shot at point-blank range. Rotem was seriously wounded in his abdomen by a bullet that had passed through his mother slowing down its velocity and likely saving his life and was left to bleed out alone in their kibbutz apartment, which the murderers had set on fire as the attack continued, for nearly twelve hours. He tried to call my niece, his aunt who is a therapist specializing in PTSD for victims of terrorism in Southern Israel. She and her three daughters – all social workers – chatted with him on WhatsApp along with a physician, keeping him alive and focused. He kept saying he was going to die. He went blind, he couldn’t stay conscious, he had lost his sense of smell. The trauma physician had him describe the wound and told him how to stop the bleeding. 
Finally, after almost twelve hours, IDF soldiers directed to the place by his aunt were able to get through the battle and evacuate him to a hospital in Beersheba where he underwent two surgeries. His face was black with soot; he was unrecognizable. He reached my sister (his grandmother) and my brother-in-law, Professor Ilan Troen, an internationally acclaimed expert on the Middle East conflict, from the hospital. They rushed through rocket fire to be at his side. 
A nephew was called up to milluim (reserve duty) from London; he had a 104-degree fever when he landed and was rushed to forensic headquarters to provide DNA to help identify the remains of his sister. As of this writing, her remains have yet to be identified and no funeral can be planned.  My niece’s two daughters were in their kibbutz apartment when they heard explosions and gunfire. They locked themselves in their saferoom and turned off their phones to avoid detection. They cowered in fear for 24 hours while family members frantically called them, fearing they had been abducted or murdered. They are now with their grandparents, my sister and brother-in-law, with the rest of the five siblings and many grandchildren, in Omer in Southern Israel – still in the line of fire. Just today there were alerts in their village.
Dark days.
-Michael Rosenberg

The following was sent to my daughters in Portland yesterday morning (in Israel) after the holiday in the US ended:
Dear Daughters,
At the moment, physically, we are all fine. But our hearts are broken at the tremendous loss for our families and friends and our people living in the area of Gaza. 
Here on our Yishuv (settlement), there are almost no families that do not have husbands, children or grandchildren who are in the army, who will be participating in the Israeli response in the south, and if necessary, in the north. 
During the davening (praying) on Shemini Atzeret, we saw a stream of young men get up from their seats and leave. They brought their phones to shul, knowing that they might get called up. Most did. 
Our closest friends have multiple sons who are in combat units in the south. My grandson is in a fighting unit in the south. Our granddaughter is in a fighting unit in the south. G-d speed them, and G-d protect them. G-d please protect all of our soldiers and our people.
Since yesterday, the jets have been consistently circling, guarding our skies. We really don’t know if, and when, Nasrallah in the north or Tehran in the east might launch their next wave.
It is hard to say what will happen in the next days and weeks, but it is my fervent hope that we will have the courage to do all that is necessary to destroy this threat entirely. Our response must not be one of punishment, or vengeance, but rather prevention of this happening again. That will only happen through the destruction of the Hamas organization, its allies, and its followers, and a strong response to Iran. Meanwhile, we fully expect that Iran’s northern puppet Hezbollah is likely to join in with their hundred thousand rockets aimed at our heartland. 
The next days and weeks will be painful, but our prayers and our fighting forces will see us through to the end. And may Hashem protect us all.
-Steven Bloom

I was born in Israel in 1945 and grew up in a kibbutz in the Galilee named Beit Alpha. I have many family members in Israel who are suffering through this terrible period. My legal career in energy took me to Israel many times, and I had great joy in watching Israel become an economic superpower. 
The events we are all experiencing right now, the existential fears, sadness and worry, are familiar to me from infancy. My earliest memory, as a three-year-old, is in 1948; my father running with me into a bomb shelter as the mortars shot by Palestinians and the Iraqi army rained down on our kibbutz from the top of Mount Gilboa. After we moved to America, I watched and dreaded every war and plane hijacking, every bus bombing, every boycott. 
This threat to our existence has gone on for almost a century. I have lived long enough to see Israel go from being the darling of the left to the enemy of the left. I have seen Israel offer practically every concession for peace, to an Israel that no longer seems to want peace, to an Israel that is practically in a civil war with itself. 
It is not easy to be Jewish in this world, but it is a joy to be Jewish in Portland. This community, its incredibly effective institutions like BB Camp and PJA that our grandchildren enjoy and the youthful can-do spirit it has shown from the moment we arrived truly keeps me going on tough days like these. It is wonderful to be Jewish in Portland. 
My advice for the Jews of Portland is to remember, in the midst of all this fear and horror, that Israel, the miracle of our times, will survive and our broken hearts will be restored when the Portland community again visits Israel. We have been here for three thousand years, and we are not going anywhere.
- Shua Bar-Lev

In 1998, after living in Israel for two years, my husband and I were so excited to formally make Aliyah! Having no family in Israel, our neighbors, new friends and community quickly became “like family.”
We ate together, celebrated together, prayed together, mourned together.
We returned to the U.S. in 2013 assured that we now have family in Israel. Our bonds are deep and strong.
Miraculously, during those 15 years and until now, no one of our immediate circle experienced untimely death or serious injury from a terrorist attack. Still, I knew that I am Israeli and any loss is my loss! Any loss is someone’s child, someone’s parent, someone’s sibling, someone’s friend. And we mourned together.
But this! The horror! The shock! The atrocity! This turns my blood cold. And I can’t get warm.
To discover friends and their three adorable babies had been brutally murdered by watching video footage a terrorist had recorded on their phones and sent to their contacts! To learn two children’s parents were butchered in front of them and the precious children were missing?! Unable to even conceive of the horrors they might be experiencing at the hands of such monsters, unwilling to even go there. Thank God they were found safe three days later, but the roller coaster of emotion! 
How to tell my autistic grandson that three (and counting) of his childhood playmates are dead…
The agony of still not knowing. My heart is fragmented. Ripped into so many pieces. My thoughts hurt.
Reading Torah helps. Hugs soothe. Somehow the old folk songs and dances are a balm. But there are no words. 
I’m so torn. I want to wipe out Gaza so Hamas can’t thrive there anymore! But how can I wish this pain, or worse, cause this pain on someone else’s parent? Someone else’s sibling? Someone else’s child? Someone else’s friend?
-Nehama Bennett Teasdale