LI Man Describes Fear In Bomb Shelter Amid Missile Strikes In Israel

BAYVILLE, NY — So many New Yorkers have strong ties to Israel, which enters its second week of war against Hamas.

Jesse Osher, who grew up in Bayville, was in Israel to celebrate the High Holidays. He was scheduled to depart a day after the surprise attack.

Osher, who has observed the Sabbath for more than a decade, only knew what he heard from his hotel in Tel Aviv, while he slept, until grabbing his cell phone after sundown.

"The sirens started going off. They were loud but they weren't as if it was so obvious what was happening," Osher told Patch. "I actually thought it was my next-door neighbor's obnoxious alarm in the hotel."

A minute later, he heard the "loudest boom," several times rattling windows and his nerves. When Osher went to the synagogue on Saturday morning, he started to hear news from congregants about fighting at the border.

Osher still didn't fully grasp the magnitude of the carnage, even though a slew of messages from family and friends were waiting for him when he retrieved his phone on Saturday night.

"Shortly after that we started hearing bombs go off over our heads," he said.

Osher was walking in the suburban part of Tel Aviv as missiles exploded nearby. He approached a high school.

"I saw this couple with their baby running full speed towards me," he said as the sirens went off. Osher entered the school seeking shelter.

"A bunch of people from the town ran in there by the stairwell," he recalled about his first experience as a witness to war. "I'm kind of shaking at this point."

Ultimately, he joined others in the school's large bomb shelter.

"There were people with their babies, their animals. I remember there was a dog there and it was shaking," Osher said. "There was a level of fear of 'will I get out of here?'"

This went on for an hour or so. However, once he left the school, while on the street "I hid in a bathroom shelter. Israelis find ways. They kind of wave you over in different situations," Osher said.

Amid the rockets raining on Israel, Osher was still hoping to make his Sunday morning flight with the encouragement of his wife, who was unable to make the trip.

It was even tougher for Osher, who can't speak or read Hebrew enough to understand it.

"You're like a lost soldier just kind of running around, not knowing what's going on," he said.

Osher, physically and mentally exhausted, crashed for four hours, with no sirens going off. He got a taxi to the airport. "They charged a premium because [of] putting their lives at risk."

He compares the flight to the final scene in the movie "Argo."

"While we were taking off, there was not a single word spoken [by] any of the passengers. It was silent, so tense," Osher said. "We took off very low to the ground [and] did a zig-zag [to] avoid missiles from Gaza. It wasn't until you hear that [remove seatbeats] ding that everyone was so relieved because we were out of the danger zone."

Tense times are unfolding in Israel, but Osher said once the war is over, he will return.

"There's not a more fun, cool place to be," he said. "The beaches are gorgeous."