Just fifteen seconds could be the difference between life and death for the residents of a ‘kibbutz’ of Brazilian Jews, who have little time to take shelter as Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas exchange artillery fire.
“It is important to understand that there are 15 seconds between the moment the alarm siren goes off and the moment we enter the shelter. There are closer places where the siren doesn’t even go off. In this case you hear the rocket and then it’s ‘BOOM’. Yet 15 seconds is very little time,” explains Lusa Yanai Guilboa, 60 years old, a descendant of Brazilians who lives in Kibbutz Brur Hayil, seven kilometers east of Gaza.
When the Islamist movement Hamas fires artillery rockets from Gaza, the anti-missile defense system is activated.
In Tel Aviv, further north, the time limit to seek shelter is 75 seconds from the time the siren sounds and in Jerusalem the safety time is 90 seconds because the city is geographically further away.
“Distance is a game. The closer (to Gaza), the greater the danger,” said kibbutzim (kibbutz resident) Yanai Guilboa.
“Since Saturday, the sirens have sounded six times here in the ‘kibbutz’. Down there, in the city of Sderot, rockets have fallen (…) It is war. It is not a joke”says Guilboa, emphasizing that people living on the top floors of houses need to move even faster.
‘Sometimes her [Hamas] they attack at night. My son has to come down from the second floor. You have to run to reach the shelter within 15 seconds. You have to wake up, run, close the door and stay in the shelter,” emphasizes.
In the ‘kibbutz’ the houses are equipped with defensive shelters and in the city of Sderot, visibly marked missile protection points have been installed in the streets.
Residents of the region also have procedures when driving their cars on the roads near Gaza.
“We are standing on the corner of the Gaza Strip. The kibbutz is large and there is a road running through it (…) When the warning sirens sound, the driver must stop the vehicle. Then the occupants must lie down on the floor of the Gaza Strip right side of the car and wait at least a minute,” says Yanni Guilboa.
Kibbutz Brur Hayil, located seven kilometers east of the Gaza Strip, was founded in 1948 by four Jewish families who came from Egypt and in 1952 the first Jews from Brazil arrived.
Currently, about a thousand people live in this kibbutz, more than half of whom are descendants of the founders.
Eugénia, another resident of Brur Hayil, says that in recent years at least “one bomb” has been fired at Israel every month, in a region where there are 25 kibbutz, but since October 7 the situation has changed.
“We have time to flee. But last Saturday the ‘devils’, the ‘beasts’, the ‘monsters’ entered the kibbutz and neighboring towns and entered the shelters,” says Eugénia, who has lived in Bur Hayil for twenty years . old.
‘My parents survived the Holocaust (during World War II). I don’t think I’m safe anywhere in the world. Maybe in Portugal. But despite all this, I don’t want to leave here.’ I’m not leaving here,” he declares.
For Eugénia, the solution to the problem can only be possible if the “whole world wakes up” and stops supporting terror, thus removing the “de facto” power of Hamas and the Islamic State group.
“Not until they no longer have the power to do what they do: not against us, not against the world and not against their people,” he concludes.
Socialist Jews marked the pre-1948 era and the first decades of Israel’s existence by founding communities (kibbutz) around collective farms with a “deep connection to the land and possibilities for self-defense.
Source: DN
