Israeli diaspora: ‘It’s not just over there, it’s happening to us in Australia too’

These are the stories of Australia’s Israeli diaspora touched by Hamas’ brutal attacks.

Australian Emily Gian was cramped in an underground bunker no bigger than a crawl space with her husband and three children.

The Hamas militants’ shock attack on Israel is not a distant conflict for Australia’s large diaspora.

“We feel like it happened to our synagogue. It’s not an international thing. And it’s not a political thing. Everyone is in mourning,” said Rabbi Chaim Levy from Sydney’s Shul.

Many locals who spoke to The Australian have been trawling social media for images and videos of parents, friends and cousins who might have been killed in the brutal attacks. They wake up many times in the night to check their WhatsApp groups for any news.

“Everybody has friends who are in shelters or who have been called up to the army. We’re all seeing on our Facebook feeds, friends reporting their cousin is someone who has been killed,” said Rabbi Ben Elton from The Great Synagogue of Sydney.

“This is not just international geopolitics – our own friends and family are being killed.”

On Saturday, militants invaded southern Israeli towns by air, land and sea to the shock of the nation and the world, leaving more than 700 of its citizens dead and at least 100 taken hostage.

Australian Emily Gian, a writer for the Zionist Federation of Australia, was cramped in an underground bunker no bigger than a crawl space with her husband and three children on Saturday.

The family emigrated from Melbourne to central Israel in July, and now live in the city of Yehud. “(On Friday night), we had a really lovely dinner with the family. Our kids went with their cousins in the streets on their own,” she recalled.

The next morning, they woke up to the sound of a red alert siren and ran down to the bomb shelter.

“The closer you are to Gaza, the less time you have to get to the bomb shelter. The people that live in communities in the south like Sderot … they have about 15 seconds,” she said. “When you’re in the centre of Israel, you have … closer to a minute.

“It felt like, on reflection, that we were living in some sort of a dream and now we’ve woken up to basically a nightmare.”

“Sleep evaded me yesterday and today. I had … this very heavy feeling in my heart like I almost couldn’t breathe. Every time I closed my eyes, I just thought about all the images that I’ve seen on the TV.”

Laurie Alfandary, 28, could only watch as friends from her hometown in Israel went missing at the Supernova music festival near Re’im, which was raided by Hamas gunmen.

Ms Alfrandry is originally from Ashkelon in Southern Israel and has been living in Sydney for four years.

“My sister, 24, has two friends who were murdered in the rave in the desert,” she said.

“I had three friends who were at the rave. One of them, she was found alive by the IDF after she had to hide in the bushes for over ten hours … I have another friend, he’s still missing. He could be still hiding in this place because there’s still Hamas around.

“It’s been horrible. We have groups for Israelis in Sydney. It’s a feeling like my body is here but my mind is there, my heart is there. I haven’t been able to leave the house … It’s a constant feeling like a deep depression.”

Australian permanent resident Ahron Shaprio and Sydney-based Ilana Lipski were able to flee from Jerusalem late on Saturday night.

They said the sound of rockets interrupted their Simchat Torah celebrations on Saturday, with Mr Shapiro adding much of the city was enjoying the Jewish holiday before the rockets rained down.

Fortunately, he and his two children were in “secure rooms” as they read the Torah – as part of the Simchat Torah tradition.

“My son got up and starting reading his portion and in the midst of this, an air-raid siren began and he looked up, then looked right back down and finished what he was doing,” he said.

“I thought after that, no one should have to live this way.”