Terror and anger, but also love and kindness
Gaza is intense and mindboggling, and it’s very painful and frustrating
Shaun Byneveldt, South Africa’s ambassador to Palestine
● South Africans living in Israel and Palestine have told of the terror they experienced this week as missiles and rockets rained down on them.
South African-Palestinian literature professor Haidar Eid was trapped with his wife and two young daughters in a small room in Gaza. He has been sending intermittent voice notes to friends in South Africa.
He said their flat had been bombed on Tuesday. Since then, they had been unable to leave the room they were in.
“We have no food [and] no electricity, and hospitals are [being] bombed. But the international community is standing idle, supporting apartheid Israel and blaming the victim. What is going on right now is genocide,” he said in a voice note.
Eid, who is an associate professor at AlAqsa University in Gaza and completed his PhD at the University of Johannesburg, has written extensively on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In a voice note sent yesterday, he said the latest Palestinian death toll was 1,900, including 614 children and 420 women.
“Yesterday [Friday] we were asked to leave Gaza — a city of 1.1-million people — and head south. People were panicking. We didn’t know if we should drive to the south, or if this was a trap. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a trap. People moved, [and I did so myself] because I didn’t want to put my family in danger.
“While people were driving and walking, [as well as] riding bicycles and motorbikes, Israeli occupation forces decided to attack and killed 70 civilians while they were evacuating. Today in the morning there was a warning issued by occupation forces to alQuds Hospital in my neighbourhood in Gaza to evacuate, saying that they would bomb it.
Before that, last night they issued another warning to a hospital in Jabalia [a city north of Gaza].
“The number of people who were evacuated yesterday [Friday] from Gaza City and the northern part of the Gaza Strip is 42,000. Most of them are now homeless in Gaza.”
South Africa’s ambassador to Palestine, Shaun Byneveldt, who lives in east Jerusalem, said that he and his family spent much of last weekend in their safe room in anticipation of a missile or rocket attack.
“The way houses and apartment blocks are built, there is always a safe room,” said Byneveldt, who was deployed to Jerusalem from Syria last year. “After the sirens you [hear a] sound — meaning the missile or the rocket [has] now hit the ground. You feel the vibration. It [is] intense.”
This situation continued into Sunday, forcing people to remain in their homes and be ready to run to their safe rooms — which are bomb-proof and built to specific specifications — when the sirens sounded.
“Gaza is intense and mind-boggling, and it’s very painful and frustrating. It’s a horrible picture emerging from Gaza,” said Byneveldt.
Jerusalem is informally divided into east and west sections, with west Jerusalem under Israeli control and east Jerusalem and the Old City predominantly pro-Palestine.
Galya Hall, a South African who runs the Christian Friends of Israel organisation and also lives in Jerusalem, said the situation had quietened from Tuesday, with the sirens last heard on Monday. Since then, essential foods had been scarce because of panic-buying.
“Jerusalem is very strange and eerie. The streets are empty, and the shops are closed. It feels very tense. A lot of people have been panic-buying because we were instructed by the Israel Home Front Command to have enough supplies for 72 hours, just in case. But people overbought, and now we have difficulty finding milk and bread,” she said.
Her organisation, which she runs with her husband, has assisted the destitute and displaced, as well as soldiers, with food, water and other essentials.
She said Israelis felt a sense of unity, as they had all come together to help Israeli soldiers and those in need. She said she felt this the moment she went into the bomb shelter under her building last Saturday.
“Even though the people of Israel are grieving, and some are walking around with tears in their eyes trying to figure out what happened, the atmosphere is [one] of unity — it’s a feeling of people who are one and people caring for each other in the most powerful ways,” she said.
Saul Adler, a South African who moved to Israel in December, said that since the schools were closed, his children — aged 14, 12 and seven — had been using their spare time to help where they could.
Adler and his family live in Ra’anana, a city north of Tel Aviv. As they had come from a “comfortable reality” in South Africa, he said his children found the situation difficult and frightening, but had decided to help out.
“They have gone to babysit and bake cookies and cakes for soldiers ... In true South African style, a couple of my friends went to the military base on Wednesday night for a braai with the soldiers.
“There is kindness being shown ... I think it’s indicative of the vibe in Israel. As much as it’s traumatic, there is so much unity, support, kindness and love [being shown] to absolute strangers,” he said.