For Israelis, Saturday’s shock assault from Gaza was a recurring nightmare, 50 years and a day after invading forces from Egypt and Syria overran Israel, sparking a 19-day struggle that has lengthy traumatized the nation.
Israeli tv channels and newspapers have been crammed in current days with commemorations of that struggle, and lots of Israelis on Saturday noticed parallels between the assault unfolding round them and occasions a long time earlier.
That struggle additionally started on the Sabbath, with sirens blaring throughout the nation on October 6, 1973, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day within the Jewish calendar.
On Saturday, many Israelis deliberate to have a good time the vacation of Simchat Torah. As a substitute, the armed wing of Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, fired hundreds of rockets into Israel. On the similar time, studies poured in of a serious breach of Israeli fortifications alongside the border with Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave that Israel and neighboring Egypt have saved below blockade for 16 years, citing safety causes.
Unverified photographs quickly emerged of closely armed Palestinian militants getting into Israeli border communities in pickup vans, on bikes and, in at the very least one case, crossing the fenced border by paraglider. Grotesque, unverified movies started circulating, exhibiting the bloodied corpses of Israeli troopers and hostages getting into Gaza.
Terrified Israeli residents in border villages known as native tv stations from protected rooms. They whispered in pleas for assist, saying they might hear the militants outdoors and even inside their houses.
As confusion and worry unfold, many puzzled how the Israeli authorities and its vaunted army and intelligence companies might be taken abruptly once more. In one other echo of the 1973 struggle, the military rushed to name up and mobilize army reservists.
