By Anat and Etan Markus

Anat and Etan Markus were born and raised in Israel, but they have lived in Connecticut for 30 years — first in Manchester, then in West Hartford and now in Mansfield, a short distance from the University of Connecticut’s Storrs campus where Etan is a professor and researcher 

All three Markus children are American born, graduates of what was then the Bess and Paul Sigel Hebrew Academy in Bloomfield and Hall High School in West Hartford. In recent years they each made aliyah — Dror, 31, lives in the Tel Aviv area and is in the process of getting his doctorate in Big Data polling at Hebrew University; Hadar, 30, lives in Tel Aviv with her husband, Netanel, and their one-year-old son; and Talya, 28, a student at Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, lives in Jerusalem and is married to Menachem.Hadar. 

As the conflict in Israel intensified, the Ledger asked Anat and Etan to share news about how their children were coping. Here is what they had to say.

As Israelis, unfortunately we are veterans of multiple terror attacks, suicide bombings, missiles from Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza.  

The current round of events has been unique in that this time all three of our children — as well as our only grandchild — live in targeted cities. Furthermore, there have been riots in mixed Arab-Jewish towns with both Arabs and Jews being targeted. 

The situation is reminiscent of stories of European pogroms and pre-Israel foundation massacres. It is quite unsettling.

Jerusalem was targeted on the first day. Our daughter Talya and her husband Menachem “missed hearing the siren,” since they were inside a supermarket shopping. Coincidentally, on the same day there was both good news: Talya, a medical student, lost her job at the Hadassah coronavirus ward which closed for lack of patients. And bad news: They needed to help organize the shelter in their building.

Our son Dror, and our daughter Hadar and her husband Netanel, who all live in the Tel Aviv area, experienced intense rocket attacks in the first few days which were very scary — one fell between two buildings across the street from Dror, another hit an apartment building close to Hadar and Netanel’s.

The attacks occurred mainly at night, and when you hear the sirens, you have a minute and a half to get to the bomb shelter (shared with the rest of the building). They have a one-year-old baby who they wake up and carry down three flights of stairs each time the siren is sounded.  When the siren ends and they return home to put him to sleep again they have to repeat his nightly ritual: dinner, bath, story etc.  We joke that if this goes on they will have a very tired, very clean and overweight baby! 

Of course, we should not forget that for the people living in the south of Israel in the vicinity of Gaza, this routine has been the norm already for many years.

Dror is doing his PhD in Political Science and is socially and politically active. He saw the reports of riots and attacks in mixed Arab-Jewish towns and no police presence.  Once such town is Akko (Acre), a city north of Haifa. The city has been known for co-existence between Jews and Arabs. However, early on a Jewish resident was attacked and critically injured by a mob. Subsequently, Akko’s Hotel Efendi was damaged and the Uri Bruri restaurant torched.

Dror joined some friends and went to lend support to the terrified residents. Being on the ground he witnessed first hand the chaos and evolution of false rumors. He was staying at a yeshiva in Akko when a masked group started approaching the yeshiva. A number of guards fired into the air and dispersed the mob, who turned out to be Jewish vigilantes planning to cut through the yeshiva on the way to an Arab neighborhood.  However, later that day on social media someone posted a clip of the event describing this as an Arab attack on the yeshiva.

Clearly, this type of internal chaos and violence between Jews and Israeli-Arabs is of utmost concern. This has somewhat subsided now that the police and Magav (Border Police) have stepped up their presence and started making arrests.  

However it continues to simmer.  Over the weekend Dror volunteered at a JNF forest-fire/arson watchtower near Afula (Hartford’s sister city). On Sat night as they drove down Highway 6 (Israel’s equivalent of the Mass Turnpike) burning tires were thrown at them…

And so it goes.

Main Photo: Hadar Markus’ husband, Netanel, carries their one-year-old son down to their building’s bomb shelter after a siren warning of a rocket attack sounded.