Israel-Hamas war hitting home in Minnesota among those with family, friends overseas
PLYMOUTH -- The calendar reads Thanksgiving Day, but for Sophie Stillman, every day is still the day after Oct. 7.
"I keep saying this, that it feels like the eighth of October," Stillman said. "The eighth of October was the day we woke up to a new reality of fighting and, you know, doing what we need to do to survive."
Stillman, a Hopkins native and graduate of the University of Minnesota, was visiting a friend in the village of Urim in southern Israel when Hamas terrorists rampaged Israeli communities, killing more than 1,200.
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Stillman said she heard "everything," including the massacre at the Nova music festival in nearby Re'im.
This Thanksgiving, Stillman had the option to come home to Minnesota to visit family, but she said she chose to stay in Israel because she said it didn't feel right to leave a nation in mourning.
"I could say I'll miss the turkey, I could say the stuffing. I could say the turkey trot," she said. "But the thing I've realized that's so much more important than anything else is being around family. Without my family, I couldn't have gotten through the past month in a half."
Still, that disappointment isn't sadness, Stillman maintains, especially as she talks about her friend, Romi Gonen, one of more than 200 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
"Who knows where they've been? Who knows what they've been eating? Are they cold? Are they hungry? Every single time I sit down to eat a meal I think about them," Stillman said.
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It's a perspective shared by Shifta Livne, whose husband, Shmuel, left for Israel on Oct. 9 to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces.
"His nephew, our nephew was missing," Livne said. "We pretty soon learned that it was worse than just missing. He was one of the victims of the massacre."
Livne said she and her kids have been able to send video messages back and forth with Shmuel as he balances any free time with his army service.
"We're doing our part to help prevent anything like [Oct. 7] from happening again, and we're hoping we'll be together again soon," Livne said.