Rodolfo Skariszewski, 56, got into the car last Saturday and drove to the city in southern Israel where his daughter lives. She had said he was afraid of the bombings. On the way, a group of Hamas militiamen intercepted him and shot him and other drivers traveling on that road. It was one of Rodolfo’s sons who recognized his body hours later. Ricardo Skariszewski, Rodolfo’s older brother, 60, reported by phone this Tuesday the torment the family is experiencing: “They say that 900 people have died, and that’s not true: 900 families have died.” “I’m half dead. “Early Wednesday, Israel raised the death toll to 1,200.
Ricardo, 60, is one of thousands of Latin Americans who have a relationship with Israel and are now suffering the most from the consequences of Hamas violence. In his case, like his brother, he was born in Córdoba, Argentina, and moved to the country more than three decades ago. Rodolfo, the younger of the two, settled in an agricultural settlement (kibbutz) on the border with Gaza, where he worked as a computer scientist. Every time the bombings began, Ricardo called him so that he and his family could seek refuge in his home in the center of the country. But that almost never happened because “people from the south are very used to it,” he complains. However, he believes that the recent Hamas attacks, the deadliest Israel remembers on its territory, have “broken all boundaries.”
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“What did you think would happen next?” She [los milicianos de Hamás] They knew very well that Israel would attack with all its forces,” says Ricardo, who has not yet been able to recover his brother’s body. In Israel the death toll stands at 1,200, while in Gaza there are at least 830 dead. According to the government of the South American country, home to the region’s largest Jewish community, at least seven of the victims are Argentinian. Authorities have said they will begin evacuating more than 700 nationals who have requested to leave Israel on Thursday, including students, tourists and workers. “What is coming now was not known in history,” says Ricardo.
Israel stepped up its offensive against Gaza on Tuesday and Hamas responded with an attack in the south of the country. The daughter of Deborah Michanie, a 47-year-old Argentine born into a Zionist family and living in Israel, was assigned to a military base in the area on Sunday. The young woman, who is 18 years old and is training to be a soldier, received a WhatsApp message early in the morning: She had to pack her suitcase and travel south for an indefinite period of time. “On the first day he found out about two school friends who had died. Today there are three. “In addition, another companion was kidnapped and rescued by the army, although his parents are still missing,” says Michanie.
Israel’s missile defense system intercepts rockets fired from the Gaza Strip on October 8.AMIR COHEN (Portal)
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When the alarm sounded about the attacks on Saturday, the entire family fled to a safe room in the specially built house. From there they found out what was happening outside. Now they have accumulated enough to survive for 72 hours without leaving this room if necessary. She can work remotely and her children can attend classes the same way, even though they are suspended, she says, and there is a television in the background that stays on all day. Everything is “uncertainty,” he says: “I’m worried about my daughter. I’m worried about my children who are here. I am worried about my mother, who is almost 80 years old. “I’m worried about the missiles.” But it won’t go away. “This is my place and I will defend it,” he says.
From Mexico to the Strip
It is clear to Berel Borowsky that he will not return to Mexico. At 47 years old and with two nationalities, one Mexican and one Israeli, he would be ready to fight for any of his home countries, but now he would do so for the country under attack by Hamas. “I don’t have any military experience, but if they give me a weapon and tell me, ‘You have to do it because there are no other people,’ then I’m doing it for the country of my children,” he explains from his home in Ashdod (221,591 inhabitants), Israel’s fifth largest city, just 20 kilometers from the Gaza Strip.
Mexico City was where his grandparents grew up fleeing the Russian Revolution and where he studied political science. “Mexico is a country that I love, that I miss,” he explains, then points out that he left because of the insecurity. Two gunpoint attacks and three robberies at his homes forced him to leave the country. Once when the thieves broke into his home, he was in a synagogue in the Mexican capital during Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
Now the violence in Israel has caught up with him. This Monday, a rocket hit a block from his home. One of many he has heard thunder falling since Saturday, when the Hamas attack began. The first thing he did that day was call his ex-wife to take his children, aged 13 and 9, to the north of the country. On Monday afternoon, when the situation was “calmer,” the children left Ashdod.
Leaving the house is virtually impossible. “The shopping can only be done online and I need to pick up the products, but the website of the two supermarkets near my house is blocked and they close at six.” It is the time when you start your work (remotely, from at home) with a financial company. At night, when he goes to sleep, his soundtrack is the anti-aircraft alarm that sounds throughout Israel these days, forcing him to go to the anti-aircraft bunker for shelter.
“We are in a bunker”
24-year-old Brazilian and Israeli Ranani Glazer thought he had found a safe hiding place when he recorded and broadcast his last video message: “In the middle of the rave we entered a bunker, a war has started in Israel. At least we’re in a safe bunker now. “We will wait until the situation calms down,” he explains in Portuguese as he smokes. He says they had to walk miles to find shelter. Glazer, who described himself as a Brazil-based artist living in Israel, is the first Brazilian-Israeli confirmed dead in the war that Hamas unleashed at dawn on Saturday. The young man was with hundreds of people at the electronic music festival that took place just a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip. He fled with his girlfriend and a friend who survived. The details of his odyssey and the circumstances of his murder are unknown.
After being missing for two days, an Israeli soldier knocked on the door of his father’s home on Monday to tell him that his son’s body had been found, a relative told the Brazilian press.
Glazer’s Instagram account shows him as a big fan of electronic music parties, who can be seen dancing or on the beach with his friends, and who completed his military service in Israel. Two other Brazilian-Israeli women who were at the party, one 24 years old and the other 41 years old, are still missing.
The creator of the Universo Paralello electronic music festival, celebrated in several countries, is a Brazilian named Juarez Petrillo, who celebrated the Israeli edition in an open field next to a kibbutz very close to the Gaza Strip. Petrillo, known as DJ Swarup and father of DJ Alok, one of Brazil’s most famous artists, was about to DJ when the first rockets were heard flying across the sky from Gaza to Israel. It had just begun, the party was in full swing with hundreds of people and several stages. Petrillo ran with other people while taking some pictures that he later posted on Instagram. “This is from Gaza, they are shooting from Gaza,” his companion explains in English, to which he replies: “My God!”
People show their support for Israel this Tuesday in São Paulo (Brazil).AMANDA PEROBELLI (Portal)
Some survivors of the massacre said they knew of the danger that the shells from Gaza would make their night bitter. They were certainly confident that they would be intercepted. No one could have imagined an attack on the scale of that carried out by the Palestinian Islamists Hamas. 260 people were murdered at the rave.
It was the first edition of Universo Paralello in Israel and coincided with the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Created by Petrillo in the 2000s in Goias, central Brazil, the festival spread over time with editions in other Brazilian cities and later abroad.
“Communication with Chile has been interrupted”
The chancellor of Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s government, Alberto van Klaveren, confirmed on Monday evening that Chilean Loren Garcovich was “abducted by terrorists in the conflict zone.” And he added: “We will not give up supporting his search and return.” Loren Garcovich, 47, has lived in Israel since 1984, when his family left Chile. The kibbutz where she lives with her Spanish husband Iván Illarramendi was bombed on October 7 and since that day her father Danny Garcovich has had no information about her whereabouts. “We don’t know where it is or what condition it is in. What we know is that they are not injured and that they are like many people from the same kibbutz in the Gaza Strip,” Garcovich, who lives 100 meters from his daughter, told Chilean national television.
The Chilean woman’s father said that a massive bombing began at 6 a.m. and that “at that point a large number of terrorists entered and took over the place.” “My daughter was in contact with me from the shelter, but at some point the communication was interrupted because they were able to destroy the cell phone antennas and the power supply. This shows us that this is a fully planned and very well thought out operation.”
Foreign Minister Van Klaveren contacted Danny Garcovich on Monday and said on Tuesday afternoon that the Chilean government was in contact with the government of Spain because Loren Garcovich was married to a Spanish citizen and that both countries were therefore examining the implementation of “a joint action.” The father said that although his daughter and son-in-law were “as if kidnapped”, they had “hope to get them back,” as he told Chilean broadcaster Channel 13.
With information from Constanza Lambertucci, Naiara Galarraga Gortazar, Jorge Vaquero Simancas And Rocio Montes.
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