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By Canaan Lidor (JNS)
Hezbollah’s drone strike on a nursing home near Tel Aviv on Oct. 11, Yom Kippur, prompted an international uproar.
Yet at Herzliya’s Beth Juliana, war-seasoned residents are taking the attack in stride. Accustomed to conflict and not easily rattled, they see the incident as par for the course of their lives, which they have devoted to raising Jewish families in Israel.
“This is all part of the fate of the Jewish People since its dawn,” Mika Gelber, an 86-year-old mother of four who lives in Beth Juliana, told JNS. It was her reply to a question about what the strike on her nursing home says about the current conflict. “I feel this is just my way of living, and I have accepted it,” she added.
Many share her unperturbed attitude at Beth Juliana, a residential complex with some 100 apartments and some 200 residents that was established in 1979 by and for olim, or immigrants, from the Netherlands. On Oct. 11, hours into Judaism’s holiest day, warning sirens blared and moments later an Iranian suicide drone from Lebanon crashed into the façade of the home’s main building, destroying one empty apartment. No one was injured in the attack.
The drone blew a hole in the third-story apartment’s exterior. The payload only partially exploded, burning the interior—including a bookcase full of items that had been collected over decades—but sparing neighboring apartments. The resident had left the apartment shortly before impact because of the sirens, heading into a sheltered room (there’s at least one on each floor of Beth Juliana.)
During the attack, at least one resident, a centenarian, did not reach the sheltered room in time. She was in her apartment when the drone hit, sending a shockwave through the building.
It was the first time Beth Juliana residents had been under fire since the outbreak of war on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists and Gaza civilians invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting another 251.
The institution’s deputy director, Ido Aronoson, was concerned that following the close call, some residents might panic during subsequent warning sirens.
He needn’t have worried.
“We’ve had several sirens since the drone hit, and there’s zero panic. The residents promptly but calmly get into the shelter nearest to them and wait it out,” he said.
Yossi Dotan, a Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands in his nineties, didn’t let the attack interrupt his fasting on Yom Kippur, according to a Facebook post by his son Yaron.
“I want the whole world to see who they fired a UAV from Lebanon at: My dad, 90, and dozens of other Holocaust survivors from the Netherlands. They were the target of the terrorist attack,” wrote Yaron. ”Those whom the Nazis had failed to murder, Hezbollah is now trying to destroy. They too will fail,” he added.
His father declined to be interviewed by JNS—as did several of his fellow residents, who belong to a tough generation and culture, in which discussing hardships and even traumas is often seen as pointless and even counterproductive.
It’s an attitude that Gelber knows from living with her late husband, Yehuda, a Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands who used to volunteer at Beth Juliana, thereby introducing his wife to the place many years before she became a resident. Yehuda, she recalled, for decades had declined to tell his children about his survival story, until he finally opened up about it in his old age. He subsequently shared his story at schools, and swapped stories with Beth Juliana residents among whom he volunteered.
Such stories have made Beth Juliana famous in the Netherlands, whose monarchs and other dignitaries regularly drop by the place during state visits. The place is named for Queen Juliana, the grandmother of King Willem-Alexander, who visited Beth Juliana in 2020.
The Dutch royal house did not comment on the attack, but Geert Wilders, leader of the Netherlands’ largest party, the Party for Freedom, wrote about it on X. “Wishing a lot of strength to all the residents of that lovely place where I had visited and where many elderly Jewish Dutch citizens enjoy a good retirement,” he said.
Days after that drone hit, another Hezbollah drone killed four soldiers and wounded 60 at an army base near Haifa. Then, days after that, another drone hit near the Caesarea home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No one was hurt in that strike, but the string of drone attacks demonstrated the ability of Hezbollah and its patron, Iran, to carry out lethal attacks despite Israel’s air defense systems and capacity to inflict debilitating damage on its enemies.
Mika’s life with Yehuda and the story of her own family, whose ancient community in the Greek city of Ioannina was wiped out during the Holocaust, helped her internalize the knowledge that she is alive despite the desire of many to see her and her people destroyed, she said. This knowledge has been reaffirmed by her recent interest in the Hebrew Bible, which she is reading regularly for the first time in her life.
“I didn’t grow up religious and at school they taught me little of the Bible, but I’m reading the Book of Daniel now, and it’s all right there, the story of our people’s survival amid unfathomable hatred,” she said. That portion of the Bible features the account of Daniel in the lions’ den, a famous story of devotion, persecution and survival.
It’s a reality that “exists whether you accept it or not, but with this knowledge, I find it easier to accept,” she said of living in the crosshairs of terrorists even in her old age. “I have trouble accepting other things: My deteriorating health, the memory gaps. But the constant strife that comes with being a Jew—that I’ve come to accept,” she added.
Still, the UAV strike did leave its mark on Mika. She has been suffering headaches since the incident, she said. An artist, following the strike she created an abstract painting featuring large spheres of color, some of them yellow and fiery red. Her previous works as a sculptor feature mostly figurative pieces, especially cheerful ones of animals in motion.
“Perhaps I am carrying some trauma, but I’m sure I’ll get over it,” said Gelber, who has 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Referencing her age, she added cheerfully: “That is, if I’m given enough time to.”
