On Oct. 7, as Hamas attacked Israel, Pastor Jason Duff could hear numerous explosions as he was at his hotel in Galilee, about 90 miles north of Gaza.
Duff, who leads the nondenominational Garden Fellowship in Indio, was in Israel with his wife and four friends, planning routes for future tours, when he first heard of the attacks.
“We were driving along the shores of the Dead Sea toward Galilee when we heard reports of rockets being fired,” he said. “After many trips to Israel, I didn’t think anything of it. There were always reports of a couple rockets being fired.”
But soon, Duff said, he realized that this was something far more serious.
“I knew it was severe,” Duff said. “At noon, when I met with our Israeli tour guide and good friend, there was fear on his face. His wife kept calling him, saying she was cleaning up their bomb shelter. All Israelis have bomb shelters under their homes.
“I suddenly felt an unimaginable pain for their families and their loved ones who died or were taken hostage, and sending their sons and daughters into battle.”
After growing up near Camp Pendleton, north San Diego, Duff said he is familiar with the sound of explosions. “My mother would always tell me not to worry; they were just practicing,” he said. But in Israel, “The windows were rattling and shaking. That’s when reality hit me. I was in a war zone.”
Duff’s group had originally planned to stay in Jerusalem. “It (Jerusalem) was eerie,” he said. “The city was empty, the thousands of tourists who were usually there were gone.”
In Galilee, he saw fields full of parked cars, those of “the reservists who were called into service and headed off to battle,” he said.
He and his group decided to leave Israel the next day. Since many of the flights to and from the Ben Gurion Airport (near Tel Aviv) were cancelled, his party drove to Jordan, where many others were also trying to get out of the Middle East. They wound up waiting four days in Amman before they could fly back to Palm Springs via London.
Duff compared the attack to Sept. 11. “You have to understand they are a small country, the size of San Bernardino County with a population of 9.3 million. The 1,400 Israelis who died would be equivalent to 35,000 American casualties.”
Duff’s said his Jewish Israeli tour guide, a friend of many years, told him Israelis had become complacent regarding external security, because they were busy fighting each other politically.
Duff said he’s dealing with lingering guilt for leaving that friend behind. “I feel I abandoned him and his family. I fled and left them there,” he said. “I can get to a safe place by going home, but they can’t leave their homes.”
He has visited Israel 17 times over the years.
“My love for the nation and the people who live there started when my pastor took me there years ago,” he said. “I have met many Palestinians and Israelis who want to live in peace and raise their families, but the terrorists don’t want that, so you need to rout them out. How do you do that? I don’t know. My prayers go out to the Israelis and the Palestinians who are victims of Hamas, and I pray for peace on all sides. It is important for the human race to stand up against terrorism, and to rout out the terrorists.”
Thank you Cat Makino for the story.
I have a better understanding and feeling of what the people are experiencing
A very sensitive subject written with respect for both sides 👏