Israel Palestine Conflict: Students and teachers at East with personal connections to Israel and Palestine fear for their families while fighting between Israel and Hamas continues

After the surprise attack, “Al-Aqsa Storm,” on Oct. 7 where thousands of rockets were fired in Israel by Islamic militant group Hamas, students and teachers with personal connections to Israel and Palestine fear for the well-being of their countries and urge students to stay educated on the issue. 

During the attack, 1,400 Israelis were killed by Hamas militants and 200 civilians were taken as captives by the Palestinian government. This is the most deadly attack against the Jewish community since the Holocaust, according to CNN. 

In response to Hamas’ strike, Israel sent airstrikes to 800 targets in Gaza and engaged a full siege over the water, fuel and electricity that Israel provides to Palestine, according to AP News. Since the attack, around 5,791 Palestinians have been killed, according to PBS.

English teacher Samantha Feinberg, who is Jewish, studied abroad in Israel during college and has visited four or five times in total. She was proctoring the SAT on Oct. 7 when she got a text from her friend saying, “Can you believe what happened?” All of a sudden, visions of bombings and shootings from the movie “Golda” about the Yom Kippur war started flashing in her head.  She noticed that the scenes from this movie she watched the previous night were eerily similar to what she saw online.

“[This attack] seems extra dark to me,” Feinberg said. “And, it’s not a country versus country war. It’s a war with a terrorist organization, which happens to be the government in Gaza, against a larger country.”

Senior Liam Jolles had traveled and lived with his brother in Israel for six months and considers Israel his second home. 

The morning of Oct. 7, Liam received a call from his Israeli father Shaul Jolles telling him about the attack on Israel, and that he was leaving in two days with a one-way plane ticket to Israel to guard Kibbutz — a larger Israeli community that got attacked.

“Right [after he told me] I went on the news and the breaking news was CNN with the Hamas attack,” Liam said. “That was the worst thing to wake up to at 9 a.m. It was terrible.”

Forty-nine-year-old Shaul is stationed at Kibbutz and is working with Brothers and Sisters for Israel, providing food, water and medical equipment to soldiers as well as evacuating citizens, searching for missing individuals and providing accommodations to families that have been impacted by the attacks. He has no idea when he will be able to return home.

“[I have] really mixed emotions,” Liam said. “I definitely understand why he wanted to go — and I would want to go if I was his age — because he’s from there and has such a connection. He feels he can’t be here while that’s happening over there.”

Similarly, Feinberg has two cousins currently living in Israel. One is on a gap year in Jerusalem after her college graduation and is volunteering with war efforts and helping her community. Her  other cousin just finished his military service six months ago and is now volunteering at a Yishuv — a Jewish community established during the Zionist movement. He had to abandon his wife and apartment to drive to the Yishuv where he’s guarding the Lebanon border.

“I’ve been really distracted,” Feinberg said. “I feel a sense of responsibility to know what’s going on because I can’t do very much here. Staying informed feels like the best thing to do.”

Conflicts between Israel and Palestine have occurred ever since 1948 when Israel was declared an independent Jewish State in Palestine. This conflict continued during Israel’s rule over Palestine from 1967 to 2005, according to CNN. 

After Israel stepped down from governing Palestine in 2005, an election was held the following year where Hamas was elected to control the government — there hasn’t been an election since, due to Palestine’s authoritarian government.

Since then, conflicts between the two governments have been over the Al-Aqsa mosque and whether the Muslims and Jews are permitted to walk and gather on the holy grounds. In Judaism, the mosque is referred to as the Temple of Jerusalem and is a site of pilgrimage while in Islam it’s regarded as a holy place of prayer.

Although there have been around 166 bombing attacks in Israel since 1994, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, AP Government teacher Benjamin Hendricks believes that the attack on Oct. 7 was unparalleled.

“The coordination, the military intelligence and the sophistication of [the attack] was unprecedented in its size and scope,” Hendricks said. 

Muslim junior Mahad Mirza wishes that people knew the complexity of Israel and Palestine’s history. Last year for a school project, he researched the conflicts between Israel and Palestine and has had conversations with his parents and in his mosque about the issues. He’s hardly heard any discussion of the issue at the school, but through these conversations he’s realized how important it is for people to be educated, no matter their connection to the issue.

“It’s not as simple as a country attacking another and then retaliating back,” Mirza said. “I believe that Israel has a right to exist and have its sovereignty. And I also believe in the Palestinians’ right to have autonomy, a sovereign nation and the right to have opportunities, land, and business, not be an open-air jail and forced by misguided Israeli policies.”

Hendricks has tried to educate his students on the complexity of the war through watching videos about the bombings and various riots taking place. He plans to talk about the issue more as the war progresses and more information is brought to the media.

Liam and Hendricks agree that it’s hard to tell how long the war will go on. If more Arab countries get involved in the war, the war could go on longer than Liam wants it to. Foreign countries are already choosing sides, such as the Lebanese political party Hezbollah aiding Hamas through launching rockets on the Shebaa Farms in Israel on Oct. 8, according to CNN.

“I just hope we can figure this out as soon as possible,” Liam said. “Honestly, nothing is gonna happen until Hamas is gone, and I actually do think that [Hamas’ dissolution] will bring Israel and Palestine a little bit more together.”