"Siren here is not the same as in Ukraine". Children and adults who fled to Israel on Hamas rockets, fear and confidence

Since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, tens of thousands of people have come to Israel: some have been repatriated, having Jewish roots; those who did not have this opportunity became refugees. In the first days of the Russian invasion, the Israelis organized a psychological assistance center, based on their experience of living through local wars.

Soon, this experience was repeated: the early morning of October 7 began with sirens blaring: the Hamas group had attacked Israel. Our partners at SpektrPress talked to Ukrainians who had fled the bombing in their home country about how they were experiencing the new war.

“If your friend is scared, bring him to us”

Nine children are sitting in the living room — children who were born in Israel, moved here a long time ago with their parents or fled the war in Ukraine. Olena Dubrovner, a volunteer and founder of the children's home club, hands them cards to play Mafia and tells them how to behave during missile alerts and shelling.

“Friends, who among you has been in a bomb shelter? If you go to the toilet and the azaka (siren) starts at that moment, you finish your business, then get up and go to the bomb shelter. We are now learning to survive,” the woman explains.

When the war started, she was the first to gather children at her place: Olena has an after-school club, which is a private after-school program. The children of Ukrainian refugees became part of it and now study together with the rest. According to Olena, it was difficult for them to integrate, as none of them were ready for the long journey and the loss of their homes and social ties. Many of them have parents and elderly relatives who stayed in Ukraine.

“Parents need to be supported, they are most likely nervous and tense. Try not to yell at home. Talk to your mother and find out if you have food and water, candles, and flashlights,” Olena continues to talk to the children. “Raise your hands, who has flashlights at home? Good. What do you like: stew, corn, or tuna?”

“What if we eat all the food at once?” a girl with a blond braid asks timidly.

“Then, honey, you just text in the group chat: ‘Friends, I have a problem!’” replies Olena, not at all confused.

Outside the window, we hear distant explosions. When they get closer, we all get up and go down to the bomb shelter. It is a spacious basement room with a heavy door. Inside, there are two sofas and a table, boxes of toys, a toilet, and a tiny room in case of a nuclear threat. Children's drawings and paintings hang on the walls of the shelter. The lesson continues.

“During the day, you can come to me, I receive all children during the war,” Olena addresses the children. “If you have a girlfriend who is sitting at home in a panic, you can bring her to us. If you have a scared friend, bring him to us. We have space, we can take in even more children, and it will be even more interesting to play Mafia, don't you agree?”

“When the siren sounds, my stomach hurts”

“I don't remember how the war started. I don't remember anything,” says 9-year-old Yana from Lviv. “I remember that we packed our things, went to my grandmother's house in the village, and then we went to the airport. If we had stayed, a missile could have hit our house. And I realized that it was better to leave to stay alive.”

Yana left Lviv with her mother and two sisters. Her father stayed behind. According to the girl, at first, he said he was going to go to war, and she wanted to cry because she was worried that her father would be killed.

But when they got to Israel, her father changed his mind: he is now in Italy (men of military age can leave Ukraine legally only in special cases; it is unknown why Yana's father left — ed.)

“In Ukraine, I have a grandmother, a cousin, and his mother. Almost all of my classmates and my best friend Dasha stayed there. She lives in the village, and now she seems to be there too. We haven't talked for a long time. I would like to return to Ukraine,” says Yana.

When the war in Israel broke out, Yana was visiting a new friend and stayed overnight. The girl woke up to a strange sound. Her friend was asleep. In the morning, Yana thought it was an alarm clock. She looked at her phone, but it was off. Only then did she realize it was a siren.

She began to wake her friend: “Eva, get up!” Eva’s mother came out of the room, calmed them both down, and assured them that drills were going on, so they could go back to sleep. When the siren sounded again, the woman came out worried and said that war had broken out.

“We were sitting on the bed, our hearts were beating fast. We thought it was going to be over,” Yana recalls. “My friend lives on the first floor, and we just stayed at home. In the evening, another siren started. They had a thick wall at home, and we were standing next to it. And so on all these days...

I was told that there is a dome over Israel. I knew it, but I forgot — as always when I'm scared, I forget everything... If rockets are fired, the Israelis press a button, and this dome closes. The missile hits and flies away. Of course, this did not calm me down. When the siren blares, my stomach starts to hurt a lot — probably from fear. And my heart starts beating fast. Now I think of all loud noises — from a car, motorcycle, helicopter, airplane - as a siren, and I'm always scared.”

“We didn't even go down the stairs”

Before the war, 10-year-old Oksana lived with her parents in the small town of Kaharlyk, Kyiv region. Oksana's older brother is an aerial reconnaissance officer in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, one of the first to enter Bucha, Irpin, and Borodianka, which were liberated from Russian occupation. He persuaded Oksana's mother to repatriate to Israel — they moved in June 2022.

“The war [in Ukraine] started, and we were only told about it a few months later at school,” says Oksana. “I knew what bombs and war were. It's just that when they told me at school, I was surprised that the war was still going on, I was a little shocked.”

Oksana's brother is about to fly to his family in Israel for a short vacation. But the war has also broken out there, and now his trip is in doubt.

“If the war in Israel doesn't end in a week, he won't be able to come. I really hope he can come!” Oksana concludes.

She says that she survived the first siren in Israel calmly: they didn't even go down the stairs.

“There is no bomb shelter in our house. We went to the bathroom and my mom assured us that it was safe. And then we were told that it was dangerous and we had to go out to the stairs. Later, we watched a ‘fire show’ from the window: first, there were three bombs, then two, then one, and finally they were gone. I was not afraid. Maybe my body is designed that way,” Oksana recalls.

The girl has grandparents, a father, and other relatives in Ukraine, but she does not want to return.

“I don't want to go back to a place where World War III might start. Why the hell did Russia attack us? Why the f*ck did Putin think we would attack them, why would we do that?”

“These are completely different wars”

Larysa is 41 years old and was born in Lviv. Larysa's husband left for Israel to work four years before the war in Ukraine. Larysa’s eldest son and father stayed in Ukraine.

The war caught Larysa in Zaporizhzhia, where she had come to help her husband's elderly father who was ill.

“We used to see these alarms only in movies,” she recalls. “We had a small hut there, nowhere to run, and the alarm was roaring. It was scary, but we survived... I don't remember what I said to my child, or how I calmed him down. My younger son was the most frightened, he was nine years old at the time. My mind was a mess myself. I was very anxious, I just didn't know what to do. We never thought it would affect us.”

The family decided to fly to Israel to visit the father and husband. From Lviv, Larysa and her younger son traveled to Poland.

“On March 4, 2022, we crossed the border on foot. It was freezing cold, we had a bag, me and my child. The lines were kilometers long,” the woman still shudders when she recalls that day. “People from Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk... Oh, my God, there were families with four or five children, and they were wearing thin jackets! They didn't even have time to get ready, so they went out with whatever they had on. We shared with them.”

In early April, the family reunited in Israel. Larysa admits that for 4 years she and her husband have been estranged from each other, even though they have known each other since childhood — the couple has been together for 25 years. But when the war broke out in Israel, they came together again and support each other.

“When it started here, oh! My eyes were frightened, I was grabbing my head,” says Larysa. “My husband supported me and calmed me down, convinced me that we should trust Israel. The first morning the siren was every few minutes, and we went down to the bomb shelter every time. The siren here is not like in Ukraine: in Ukraine, it is quieter, and you can't even hear it through closed windows, but here it pierces you, and you don't even think about whether to go down to the bomb shelter or not...”

After the first sirens, the woman prepared coffee and tea in a thermos for her family, a blanket, and sandwiches — everything was packed in case of more shelling.

“These are completely different wars and people have different attitudes toward them. In Ukraine, it seems to me, people take it more lightly. Here, no one runs away from mobilization. Here, when the sirens sound, I see fear in the eyes of children. They immediately run to the bomb shelter. Here they know what it is from the cradle, because the country is always at war, and everyone is used to it.”

Now Larysa receives calls from all over the world saying: “How can it be, you've already fled one war to protect your children, and now this happened.”

“I can't say what I feel. I feel fear. But I trust Israel. I love Ukraine and Lviv, which is the most beautiful ancient city, and I could spend days touring it. But I do not trust our government very much. In Israel I feel calmer, people are more open, everyone smiles, you feel freer, more confident.”

According to Larysa, her state of anxiety never leaves her.

“My husband is constantly using his phone, I ask him to put it down for a while so he doesn't go crazy,” she says. “It's clear that we are all worried — it's scary and painful. We don't know what will happen at night, whether we will sleep or stay in a bomb shelter.”

Larysa has Jewish roots. She and her family have collected the necessary documents confirming their right to repatriation, but their lawyer is also a paratrooper officer. He went to the war, and all the documents remained with him, so the case is not moving yet. Her husband works as a construction worker, and she works as a cleaner in an Israeli school.

“At the request of the principal, I talk to Russian-speaking children and help them adapt. For me, it doesn't matter where the child is from or what side of the border, they are not to blame, they are victims in this situation, just like us.”

“Terror has one face”

Larysa is 52 years old. In 2021, she and her husband moved from Dnipro to Israel, where their daughter already lived. Larysa's eldest son and father remained in Ukraine.

“Here, in Israel, you feel more secure and confident,” she says. “Israel is constantly at war, and here, the attitude is completely different. Although for three days my phone has been ringing off the hook: everyone is calling, sympathizing, supporting, and worrying. But I am most worried about Dnipro, about Ukraine.”

“In the spring, I was at home [in Ukraine],” Larysa continues. “I was walking through the city, a siren was blaring, but people didn't react in any way — no one ran, no one hid, everyone just went about their business. And we already knew how serious it was, having experienced one bombing in Israel in May the year before last. Then the alarm wakes you up from bed and you run. The house is old, the basement is abandoned, there is no bomb shelter, and it's a long way to run to a public one, so we ran to the stairwell. The neighbor's child was two weeks old, our granddaughter was a month old. And here we all are standing on the staircase, and outside there is a roar and glasses are flying. It was so scary for me...”

Larysa recalls traveling across Ukraine by bus this spring and seeing destroyed buildings, broken houses and ruins, buses and cars filled with soldiers. On her home street, a pit remained instead of one of the houses: an old lady, her daughter-in-law, and two children were killed. Her son was at war at the time, and after the funeral, he went back to the front line.

“Now it has reached us,” Larysa continues, “The worst thing is that Russian-made missiles are falling here as well (Hamas apparently has modern Russian weapons in its arsenal, such as Kornet anti-tank missile systems — ed.) Terror has one face.”

With the support of Mediamerezha