When 16-year-old Noa hears the siren ringing through the city, she has a minute and 30 seconds to get to a bomb shelter. “Five days ago the head of a rocket fell near my house and the body of it too,” she explained, “It’s important to get to bomb shelters in time.”  Living in Tel Aviv, Noa is one of millions affected by the Israel-Hamas war. We recently got to interview her to understand what her experiences have been since October 7th, the day of the massacre. 

(if you would like to know more about the war, read our article  [here]

However, I add one note before you read the following. With the world torn by polarization, misinformation, and politics, I ask you to take a step back from it all when reading this. Try and take a step back from looking only at black versus white or basing your perceptions on social media. Instead, look at this as the story of a teenager — one who has had their life completely shifted in recent months. 

The following has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? 

I’m Noa and I live in the northern part of Tel Aviv and I’m in 11th grade.

What were your experiences like on October 7 with the day of the massacre?

Where I live, we had a siren at 6:30 in the morning and we got up. Sometimes last year we had a couple of sirens but it was usually just rockets, but we managed to take them down. Nobody got hurt. So we were like ‘Oh, there is just a siren and it’s fine. And it’s just probably there was an operation and it’s going to be okay.’ And we didn’t really realize what was going on. 

Then there was another one at seven and then there was a bit of like “hmm” to that and then we opened the news and realized what happened. It took like, I think one day to get out. I was watching the news with my mom.

Also, a lot of people I know got called to serve – people who have been released from the army, but they called them back if they needed them – the Reserves.

I think two days later, we were officially at war and that and yeah, a lot of terrible stuff has happened. I’m smiling, but it’s been terrible. A lot of people got killed. I also know a lot of people, my friend, for example, but her uncle got kidnapped and taken hostage in Gaza and they still haven’t found him. They don’t know if he’s alive or dead. And it was really terrible to see. It’s a very small country, so a lot of people know each other, so it’s really hard. 

You talked about the sirens. What does the typical procedure look like when you hear one?

So it really depends where you live. In Israel, in Tel Aviv, we have a minute and a half to get to bomb shelter, because stuff can rain down, for example, shards from the rocket. Actually, I think five days ago the head of a rocket fell near my house and the body of it too. So it’s important to get to bomb shelters in time. People who are closer to Gaza, they have 40 seconds and so it’s very stressful. You want to be near a safe area. You don’t go outside where there aren’t safe areas — we are very lucky to have a safe area in our home. But most people, I think in Israel use a public one in a park.

So actually our family friends don’t have a safe area and they have a baby and a dog so they came to live with us because we have and they don’t. But yeah, you go to a safe shelter and you stay there for ten minutes. You hear usually the booms because the Iron Dome explodes the rocket so you hear the boom of the explosion, then it’s fine, you can come out. 

How long have you dealt with the sirens? 

So every time there’s an operation in Israel there’s been sirens, but nothing like this before. For the first few weeks, it was every day. Every time they threw rockets they were very precise, it was always either 6:00 or 6:30 or 8:00. Every day,  three or four times, we had to go into the shelter. Luckily no big casualties happened in our area – a lot of casualties happened elsewhere and it’s been going on for a while. Over the few months, there were a couple of days that there weren’t and then there were days that there were like three sirens or two. Also, I live in Tel Aviv, which on one hand gets a lot of sirens just because it’s a big city, but it’s nothing like people who live closer to Gaza who get every day a lot. 

You mentioned that today was your first day back at school, so what has your everyday life looked like since October 7, have you been mainly at home? 

My parents didn’t really want me to go out because you’re not supposed to go out where there aren’t bomb shelters and stuff like that. My school is old, so it has bomb shelters – every school in Israel does, but it wasn’t big enough to contain all of us so they let special ed study at school but we studied on Zoom. It was very much like COVID. The systems were also set up already. So we went immediately into Zoom and over the past week we’ve been on and off. I’ve been at school for like 3 hours a week, 4 hours but today we’re officially back, which is nice. 

Thats nice. What has changed about school? 

Everyone is on edge, everyone has family that is either serving or knows someone who has been affected or has been affected. In my school, there have already been five soldiers who died because of the war who were graduates of my school. They were two years above me, and their siblings still study in the school, so it’s very sad to see. We have memorials all over my school, lots of pictures of them. So it’s definitely different.

I opened my Instagram a few weeks back and everything was I’m not sure if you have that, but when somebody has a funeral, there’s like a white space and you write their name, like, when the funeral will be. So I opened up my Instagram and everything was just funerals. And that’s a lot of casualties. So it’s very different than before, but it’s good to be with each other. Everyone is very comforting and here for each other, very supportive. We bring food to people. Lots of people who have been evacuated from their homes have come to our neighborhood, so they study in our school with us, which is nice. So we bring them food. There are lots of farmers’ markets from farmers near Gaza. Now they can’t go back home, so they sell stuff here and that. So lots of also help and support. But yeah, it’s totally different than before. 

I think you mentioned how some people from the south had come to live with you in the north. What has that looked like? 

For us, our family friends came to live with us because she is a doctor, the mom, she was in the hospital working 24 hours. Really amazing person. And her husband is actually in the military right now. He got drafted. So it’s hard with the kids. They have a three-year-old. So they live with us and they sleep and, we are together, but it’s nice to be together in a time like this. And also, for people who got evacuated from the south, there were a lot of hotels that took them because they have empty rooms now. A lot of people are in Elat, which is the southern tip of Israel, so it doesn’t get a lot of rockets. It’s very far. So they went there and there was a new complex building in my neighborhood with empty apartments, so a lot of people were evacuated there. I want to volunteer with I’m a counselor at that, so I want to volunteer with kids and do that. So a lot of people like full buildings. People got evacuated and they place them whenever they could – hotels mostly. 

Wow. What has counseling looked like?

Before the war, I volunteered at a community center, so it’s kind of counseling. Kids come from the neighborhood and we do stuff together, kind of like Scouts. And so we took a bunch of counselors, and we did a lot of activities for the building complex just to give the parents a break. Also, most of the parents are mothers, whose husbands are now drafted in the military. So we played with the kids and we talked and we sang songs, which was nice, but it was very sad to see, too, because they probably either can’t go back to their home or will not be able to for a while. 

Its really nice that you’ve been able to help out with counseling. 

On the other hand,  what are your views on the government’s management of the war? 

Personally, and this is really personally, it’s politics in Israel. It’s also very heated in that I’m sure in America, it’s too, I think, know it’s really hard. It’s a really hard situation to handle. There is no right way of going at it. Not that I know. Definitely, I would say that usually the Prime Minister has to take responsibility for stuff, and I think the government has to be there for people, for the families of people who were kidnapped. They are now trying to reach out to the government for help. And there was a deal struck out ago. I’m not sure if, you know, a day of releasing 50 hostages. So I think I’m trying to be optimistic that it’s going to be okay. But honestly, I don’t understand enough about the side that they know they have information we don’t. So I can’t really judge. 

Yeah, that makes sense. What has the hostage deal looked like? How has that impacted you?

My good friend’s uncle was kidnapped, so we don’t know what’s happening. One, it’s really hard to trust ceasefire deals because in the past, when Israel did strike up ceasefire deals with Hamas, it did not work. They broke it. So it’s hard to trust the other side because they have no reason to uphold their end. On the other hand, it’s very important to negotiate and get the hostages back. That is the top priority for everyone in Israel. And I think the hostage deal involves releasing 50 women and children. So hopefully it’ll go well in that. But you don’t know who’s going to get released. You don’t know what’s going on with them. It’s a lot of scary uncertainty. Nobody really knows anything. So my friend’s really hopeful, though. Her family is out, I think, almost every night protesting and putting up posters of him. They have T-shirts and that and everything you can imagine just to kind of raise awareness of him. So it’s nice, but it’s very tragic for the whole family. A separate person I know his child has been kidnapped too but has now been returned with his mother, his grandfather is still kidnapped in Gaza. 

I hope for the best for them and their situation. You’ve mentioned protest. What has that looked like? 

Protest is not the right word for it. It’s more like rallies, I guess, for support. There’s been a lot of for example, there’s a big roundabout, a big center in Tel Aviv. And last Friday there was like a ceremony with a lot of families of people who were kidnapped there. They had a rally to show support and love, and there were a lot of candles and food and know, just to show support. So I guess a rally is kind of a not protest but a lot of people are also angry and anxious for their families to come home. So definitely there are a lot of mixed emotions. 

Yeah, that makes sense. How much have you seen about international responses to the war? And do you have views on those or what is the response look like to that? 

I mean, America’s response has been amazing. I know the support from Biden and just the general hopefully the general American public agreement with them is very it helps us. 

Also, I’m not sure if the media exacerbates it or if it’s actually like that, but with all the protests going on for Hamas and stuff like that and people are not separating it like Hamas from actual, it’s very important that big countries like America put the facts in order because there’s so much misinformation going on. Like on Instagram, I scroll through videos and I see them saying things that are out of pocket. It’s not even an opinion. So I think it’s really important, it’s really good that we are getting support because we need it. And it’s not just Israel’s fight it’s also a fight against terror. America fights it. Most European nations fight it. So it’s important. 

The lengths people will go to to put fake newspapers is just you see it from Israel and you see it while you’re here and you know these stuff are not true and see how it’s staged. And they take the statements back, of course, but the damage has already been done. Still, people believe it. It’s very hard to spread the truth. 

I just wanted to ask, what are your hopes for the future solutions? 

Like anything, I guess, It’s hard. Again, I was thinking with myself, I think, a few days before, because you hear all these stories and you see terrible things and you’re kind of just like, there is no solution from here. We can’t coexist. How can you go regular after something like that? It’s terrible. But hopefully, we can find a way. We can find a solution. I think that that is what this thing has proved to me. I see all the rallies and support and the amount of people donating and the food. All the volunteering and just I think everyone in Israel helped in their own way of so it gave me optimism. I think we can get through. And I’m not sure what it’ll look like, though, honestly, I don’t think anybody’s sure or knows, but hopefully we can get out. I really do believe we can do that and continue living in Israel. 

And lastly, if there was one thing you could tell people just about what’s really happening, what would it be?

I think that we are here and we’re fighting and we’re trying to bring the hostages home, which is the most important thing right now. And trying to save as many casualties from both sides. Protecting also Palestinian casualties too, trying to limit all the casualties from both sides. But also eradicating Hamas, because over the past few years, this is not the first time operations have been done, rockets, and it’s been a constant thing by the sides. This is just the height of it, the climax. So I think it’s important to support Israel, and there’s so much misinformation. So check your sources. 

It’s important to know your truth and know what’s real. Listen to stories from families that people got kidnapped. They’re real people and I can’t imagine what it’s like for them, honestly, heartbreaking.  It feels like we’re living behind a wall and we’re saying stuff and people don’t believe us, so it’s very important.

Ever since October 7th my whole country has been under constant attack, by missile shootings, or by the brutal murder and kidnapping of innocent men women and children, by the additional terror attacks and stabbings that are still happening. Parents still have no way of knowing if their kids are alive and kidnapped or dead, there was a mother who found out her teenage daughter was taken because of a video posted by Hamaas showing her kid in it in Gaza, I will not go into detail but I’m sure you can imagine for yourself what the video contained and the worse part of it is that she does not know even if she is dead or alive. Another mother said in her testimony she saw in a video posted by Hamas that her son, missing a hand, was taken into Gaza. All of these families of people in captivity are unsure if their loved ones are even still alive. There have been so many horrific testimonies from people, about the atrocities that were done to them or were witnessed too during October 7th and after, including a lot from especially women but also men, who were subjected to horrible sexual violence. The crazy thing is people don’t believe it, and it showed me how extreme antisemitism is, for example when the UN Committee for Women didn’t publish a single statement regarding the Israeli woman and their rape testimonies until a week ago.

We are not in a conflict, a conflict is when two sides disagree, what happened here was a massacre, Hamas came into Israel, into cities and towns, and murdered almost everyone in them, parents in front of their children, whole families in their sleep, little children had to hide under their parents dead bodies from Hamas terrorists, its stuff nobody should ever be witnessed to or know but, conflict it is not. It was a massacre that started an ongoing war. I think people just don’t grasp the brutality of what was done here, thousands of lives are forever ruined in the worst ways imaginable, and that is not a just conflict.