For Brevard residents with connections to Israel, a time of horror, history as war escalates

Corinne Meyers was fast asleep in her Tel Aviv home on Oct. 7, a Saturday — the Jewish sabbath and the last day of the joy-filled Sukkot holiday festival — when the phone call came.

It was her aunt, alerting the 22-year-old, who made the journey from Melbourne to Israel three months ago, about incoming rocket fire and providing instructions on finding shelter.

“The alarms stopped but the next time they went off, we figured out where to go,” Meyers told FLORIDA TODAY through a Facebook Messenger call.

Then came the horrifying rumors and nightmarish images on social media, detailing raids in southern Israel, of desperate gun battles after an unprecedented surprise attack by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists.

The dark reality was even worse.

More than 1,200 Israelis dead. Burned-out homes.

More: Space Coast faithful to gather for prayer, candlelight memorial in support of Israel

Civilians, including babies, shot, set afire, raped, Israeli government officials reported. Churning smoke from an unending barrage of rocket fire on Jewish villages bordering the Gaza Strip and the kidnapping of more than 100 women, children and men, including at least 27 identified as Americans. More than 1,500 Palestinians living in Gaza have since died as a result of Israel's targeting of Hamas militants operating among the civilian population as the war escalates.

“There are a lot of emotions. I don’t think anything will be normal for a while, there are so many heartbreaking stories. It’s just horrifying,” said Meyers, who moved to Israel with a dream of being connected with her family and the land of her ancestors.

A week after the surprise attack, the Jewish community worldwide remains increasingly rattled, offering prayers for the dead in Israel and watching as the war escalates with a possible ground invasion of Gaza by Israel. More than 300,000 reservists with Israel's military have been called up, including some from Brevard.

Already, before any pending move into the 2.3-million resident city of Gaza, videos of the city’s bombed-out ruins and shattered bodies of Gazan children are circulating. Likewise, so are the stories of Israelis killed after attending a music festival or forced from their homes at gunpoint.

Rallies on both sides have sprouted across the U.S., including Florida, but there is no equivalency, Jewish leaders. Photos from a New York rally of Palestinian supporters showed a protester displaying a swastika as Hamas leaders called for a day of rage aimed at the global Jewish community.

In Melbourne, some residents with ties to the Holy Land are preparing to return to Israel to fight what they see as terrorist extremists hiding among civilians, even as nations like Iran, Syria and others warn against Israeli air strikes in Gaza and talk openly of a regional conflict. Others worry for friends and relatives now in the line of fire.

More: Mass distribution of anti-Semitic fliers in Brevard, South Florida, condemned

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, declared a state of emergency in Florida relation to Israel’s war on Hamas. The order also means that Florida will organize charter flights for Americans who want to leave Israel as the war continues.

More: Rosh Hashanah brings awakening, and stepped-up security, at Space Coast synagogues

“We will not leave our residents behind. To the many Floridians who are stuck in Israel, trying to get home — help is on the way,” DeSantis said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Local gathering unites faithful in prayer

The attack comes as American Jews face mounting, troubling episodes of antisemitism, from the 2018 shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 dead to, in September, neo-Nazis protesting and shouting racial slurs in front of Disney World in Orlando.

Locally, an Oct. 3 incident involved state Rep. Randy Fine, who is Jewish. He reported an "unsettling” encounter with neo-Nazis gathered outside a Brevard Federated Republican Women’s meeting in Cocoa, a meeting at which Fine spoke.

Outside of Brevard's synagogues, Brevard County sheriff's deputies and local police have stepped up security.

“We are deeply affected,” said Rabbi Craig Mayers of Temple Beth Sholom, a synagogue in Suntree. Mayers led an interfaith prayer Wednesday, with more than 300 people from various backgrounds — from Pentecostals to Greek Orthodox — crowding into the temple pews to pray for Israel and peace.

The attack was the single bloodiest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Jewish leaders have urged the community to pray, gather for sabbath services and send aid and financial relief to soldiers and citizens alike.

It is a perilous time that for Mayers draws comparisons to the atrocities carried out under the brutal Nazi regime in Germany that made antisemitism and hatred of Jews a centerpiece of its supremacist ideology. Six million Jews died in the ensuing Holocaust during World War II.

More: Brevard Rep. Randy Fine says run-in with anti-Jewish extremist left him 'a little shaken'

“The parallels are there (to the Holocaust) this time around, seeing the brutality, it is like that. To be living through this and seeing what’s happening in Israel ... the difference now is that we know we have allies,” said Mayers, adding that the Jewish community is bent but will not bow in wake of the attacks.

"We're going to double-down and do more praying. If there was a thin veil before, it is gone now."

Omri Einav, a 34-year-old Cocoa resident born in Jerusalem, spoke during the prayer rally, imploring those gathered to help Israel's military with donations in what will be a turning point in the nation's history. He is preparing to leave his family to return to Israel after the nation called up its reserve combat fighters.

“You see the news and you are sad and depressed,” said Einav, whose job with the Israeli Defense Forces was to clear out tunnels and move out any explosives.

Israel, he points out, has over the last year been roiling with political protests in the streets and religious division — to the point where some observers warned of a civil war in the Jewish state.

Einav believes the horror of the moment has brought the Jewish people together.

He spoke at the prayer rally about raising funds to help supply Israel's military with life-saving equipment, including bulletproof vests, water canteens, flashlights and other items.

“You heard about people who got in their cars to go and help. You are seeing people starting to come together. Make no mistake, we will come out of this united,” said Einav, who monitors social media for the names of the dead and missing from the attacks carried out by Hamas.

Einav’s wife is worried about her husband’s pending departure but is hopeful.

“I’ve got a lot of feelings,” 30-year-old Alexis Einav said.

“But I understand that it's for our country, for the Jewish people."

A repeat of history?

The Oct. 7 attacks caught Israel by surprise and shattered conceptions of safety for Jews living in a Jewish state.

For Viera resident Yair Feldman, 71, the atrocities brought back memories of 1973, when Israelis were observing the holy day of Yom Kippur. It was a time of quiet and fasting when suddenly the Egyptian and Syrian armies attacked Israel from the west and north.

Feldman, the son of an Auschwitz survivor, was with a friend when the call to fight came.

“I took a moped and went to the (military) base,” Feldman recalled, adding that he lost a number of friends in a war that saw Israel push back its enemies.

"What we see happening now is the same mistake life before. But this is also different," Feldman said of Hamas' tactics.

"The other was war but this is kidnapping, beheading. These are horrible stories coming out now. To tell you the truth, I am very emotional. If they call me up, I tell you, I would go back. And this would not happen again. We must destroy the terror."

Rabbi Mayers, who came together with Rabbi Zvi Konikov of the Chabad of the Space and Treasure Coasts, during a candlelight ceremony outside the temple, called on Israel's allies to support the nation as it readied for what could be a decisive moment in its modern, 75-year-old history.

"Whenever Israel is in this distress, it is as if God is distressed...we are all hurting right now, we have been grievously wounded," he told those gathered.

"We are not OK, but we're also not alone. We see you. We will not forget your kindness and solidarity."

Corrine Meyers, who attended the Chabad in Satellite Beach when she lived in Brevard County, said that the situation in Israel is tense but focused.

“I had met my neighbor the day before and the next day after the attacks he texted and said, ‘You can come sit with us,’” Meyers said. “Everyone in Israel is supportive. Everyone is so desperate right now to volunteer."

'Vulnerbility, insecurity but sense of survival'

Meyers' 26-year-old cousin Shani Odessky, who lives in Be’er Sheva, the largest city in southern Israel, said the attacks left a strong sense of insecurity for many.

“It’s a sense of feeling so vulnerable and insecure in your homeland. It’s hard to be outside right now. We are still completely in the middle of it all,” Odessky said, adding that she knew some of the missing.

“It’s kind of shocking that humans can do this to other humans; we saw it with the Taliban but that felt so far away. This is here. It shakes your whole world.”

Meyers, for her part, pointed to the spirit of the Israelis, something she and others say remains strong — and says that despite the mood, the people will continue to survive as they have for thousands of years, through wars, pogroms, the Holocaust and terrorism.

“The community and culture is unlike any other I’ve seen,” Meyers said of Israel, a land she has decided to make her home.

“It’s heartbreaking to see people go through this.”

J.D. Gallop is a criminal justice/breaking news reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallop at 321-917-4641 or jdgallop@floridatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: A time of horror, history and unity for Brevard's Jewish community