Young Israeli traveller left watching from afar
Dream trip marred by fighting at home
Gili Hazani is a 22-year-old Israeli who is in New Zealand on a working holiday visa. She sat down with the Taupō and Tūrangi Herald this week to describe her experiences of watching her nation under attack from afar.
Hazani has spent the first three months of her planned year-long working holiday in Taupō , which she describes as the culmination of a longheld ambition.
“New Zealand has been a dream for me for a long time. Driving around always feels unreal — it looks like the Windows wallpaper.”
However, after ticking off the first items on her Kiwi bucket list, she noticed the first breaking news alert on her phone last week.
“It caught everyone off guard, at home and here.
“I was just finishing work and some news started to pop up.
“Slowly, I was realising what terrible things were happening . . .
“I think this is the biggest nightmare, or the worst scenario that can possibly happen.”
Hazani was born into an already decades-old conflict between Israel and Palestine, but quickly realised this was something altogether different.
“I think that in this moment, we can’t refer to this, what happened, as the current conflict between Israel and Palestine. That’s not the case. This is [a] war against terrorism.”
Her comments come after Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched a surprise attack against the Jewish state, on October 7, which left about 1400 Israelis dead and thousands more wounded.
Backed by a barrage of rockets, Hamas militants stormed out of blockaded Gaza by sea, land and air into nearby Israeli towns, killing civilians and troops and abducting others.
A stunned Israel has retaliated by launching airstrikes in Gaza. Those strikes on Gaza have killed at least 2778 people and wounded 9700, according to the Gaza Health Ministry on October 16.
Like most Israeli citizens, Hazani was drafted for compulsory military service after graduating high school,
so she has an idea of what her friends are up against — all those who complete their service remain as reserves, and many have now been recalled to duty.
“One of my closest friends who was in those [recent] fights, he lost many, many, many of his friends.
“He fought bravely and managed to beat the group of terrorists that was attacking. He’s wounded, but he’s okay.
“I’ve got friends that were assigned to clear the bodies from the towns. “They’re kids my age, you know? “They’ve seen those terrible, terrible things.
“I have been called back, [but] it’s complicated to get my way back home and then back here.”
For now, Hazani was waiting to see what happens next, but it has changed the mood of her trip.
“I was supposed to go today to Hobbiton for the first time.
“I was really excited about it. “But I cancelled that trip because I definitely cannot go there and enjoy it, fully experience it like I always wished I would.
“I never imagined that instead of going to Hobbiton I will sit in a newspaper office, trying to explain the situation at home.”
Her family, however, are relieved she’s away from the horror.
“They want me to follow my dreams and not go back to war. “Which parent would want that?” “I’m just really, really praying that the news will get better and it will be over as soon as possible.
“This has been the biggest atrocity that happened to the Jewish people since the Holocaust 80 years ago.
“We had no way to defend ourselves and no way to tell the world what happened [then], but now we do and this is my duty, to tell everyone what happened.
“I feel this is our duty as humanity.”