Day 1

All- this email is not a work-related email.

I am writing to you because some of you have reached out and some of you work closely with me and I am sure are interested to know.

We woke up this morning, sabbath day and a holiday at 6:15 to sirens.

The sirens penetrated my dream, but luckily my wife realized quickly what it was – rocket sirens.

We both picked up a daughter and ran downstairs to the safe room (a room built entirely of cement).

In our area we have 45 seconds to get to the safe room before the rockets fall.

A house down the street from me took a direct hit and the whole top floor is gone.

Luckily no one was in the house at the time, but we felt the blast in our safe room and the girls were shaken.

We then proceeded to go in and out of the safe room for two hours while sirens kept going off.

We later learnt that there was a joint terrorist plot by Hamas which used the rockets as a decoy.

They placed explosives along the Gaza border in the south of Israel and sent thousands of terrorists through to the Israeli towns along the border. Those towns are about a half hour drive from where I live.

They went from house to house and slaughtered whole families. Parents, kids, grandparents.

It took the Israeli army by surprise, and it took hours for the army to get down there.

Civilians were heroes, doing their best to protect the towns with their personal weapons, but the stories kept coming in with atrocities by the minute. Live Facebook videos of people in their safe room asking for help while terrorists walked around their living room stealing stuff and lighting fires and shooting.

We are now at the end of the first day and Hamas has killed hundreds (number not confirmed yet as there are a couple of towns that are not liberated yet. They have also kidnapped dozens of people, some Soldiers and some civilians and crossed them back to Gaza.

The Israeli government has declared a full Out war with thousands of reserve soldiers called up to join their respective units.

There is still active fighting in a couple of towns within Israel where the terrorists are still floating around.

I don’t know how long this war will last or how it will end , but Israel is a strong country and we will prevail against the evil enemies that want to just kill everything that exists .

Looking forward to better days and I just want to say thank you for all of your support from across the world.

I appreciate each of you immensely.

To better days ahead

Judah