Israeli woman shares story after friend killed near Gaza

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - Over the past 24 hours, rallies have been held across western Massachusetts with many people in support of Israel, but others also expressing support for Palestine.

“I feel like I don’t even have the English terminology to explain the magnitude of everything that’s happening,” said Dar Nadler with Jewish National Fund USA.

As war rages on in Israel, people in the Bay State are feeling the impacts thousands of miles away.

“The numbers that we’re seeing because Israel is so tiny, it essentially means that every single, not every other, but every single Israeli knows someone who is either fighting now, got killed, or is missing or is hostage,” Nadler added.

Nadler is from Israel and currently works in Boston with the Jewish National Fund USA. She told Western Mass News she is keeping close communication with her family and friends overseas in the middle of a war.

“My family is relatively safe because they are in the middle of the country, but yet again, nowhere is safe and every time we talk, we’re talking about possibilities of if something is happening in their proximity, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Where are you hiding?’ ‘Do you have weapon?’ and these are the kind of conversations we’re having now,” Nadler explained. “My brother-in-law is serving now. He is fighting at the front and, of course, we are worried sick.”

Nadler attended Monday night’s solidarity rally in Springfield and spoke out about the horrifying moments playing out in her home country, including the death of her close friend, who was living right near the Gaza strip.

“He was living in a Kibbutz, which were penetrated by terrorists, and he did what anyone else, I guess, would have done and he just went out and started fighting them and he got killed,” Nadler noted.

Meanwhile, the Mass. Peace Action Group also released a statement and said, in part:

“We condemn the use of violence against Israeli and Palestinian civilians...We reject the framing of this event as ‘unprovoked.’ Two million Palestinians in Gaza have been under a brutal Israeli siege since 2007 and periodically attacked by Israeli military assaults. Most of them are refugees from villages cleansed by Israel since 1948.”

“...The US must end its funding of the occupation, $3.8 billion a year in military aid, and pressure Israel to comply with international law that demands humanitarian rights for Palestinians.”

Copyright 2023. Western Mass News (WGGB/WSHM). All rights reserved.