Most people are usually sound asleep at 6:30 a.m. However, on Shabbos, October 7, 2023 (22 Tishrei 5784), the silence was broken by thousands of bombs and missiles hurled at Israel from Gaza. Hamas had struck the Jewish nation, putting the lives of nearly 10 million Israelis and many tourists visiting during the High Holidays at risk.
Those who did not wish to be in Israel scrambled to leave the country. However, airlines such Delta, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways cancelled all flights entering and leaving the country.
Each person had a different story to tell.
“As I was leaving, I went to Ben Gurion (Airport) during normal processing time. They say to arrive three hours in advance; I arrived three and a half hours in advance and, in my estimation, the actual processing time was anywhere between six to eight hours. I have never seen Ben Gurion as busy as it was that day,” Rachel Bledi, the Albany County Republican Board of Elections Commissioner, told The Jewish Press.
“Ben Gurion is a huge airport; the processing area is huge and there are thousands of people waiting to get out and be processed. What made the situation more difficult, and I think people didn’t realize, a lot of the people who work at Ben Gurion are military age. Suddenly you find yourself with triple the number of people and half the number of staff. People were trying to rebook to try to get out and El Al, to their credit, mobilized themselves as well and added lots of flights and helped compensate for other airlines that were no longer flying, and people were able to start booking and get out.”
The bottleneck occurred for one major reason.
“They weren’t Israeli residents. They were people who were visiting Israel during the High Holy Days – Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. They came with their families. It’s a high tourism time of year for Israel,” Bledi said.
She knew almost immediately something serious was mounting that was more than a drill or a scare tactic.
“I have an app on my phone that tells me what’s coming in and where it is landing. I noticed the rockets were coming in in the hundreds if not thousands. It’s hard to assess, but it was clearly an abnormal number of rockets that they [Hamas] were shooting into Israel. I knew something was going to happen and something was on the verge of unfolding that was unlike any other time that I was there,” Bledi said. “In the past, you had five here, six there, days in between. This was fast and furious. It was about 6:30 in the morning and I noticed it wasn’t stopping. The app kept sending me many updates and it didn’t stop. I noticed it was closing in on Jerusalem where I was staying. I had four days of bombings while in Israel and was in and out of shelters during that time.”
Bledi goes to Israel often to visit loved ones.
“I’ve been in Israel before because I go regularly to visit family. My father’s whole side of the family is from Israel. My mother lives there. My brother lives there with his children. All my aunts and uncles live there,” Bledi said. “I’ve been to Israel on numerous occasions where we had sirens and you went into the shelter. It wasn’t like I wasn’t accustomed to it. Was I surprised? Yes. What really started to concern me was the number of rockets they were sending. I figured it was only a matter of time before it started to head up here. I was right. Within minutes the sirens went off and we spent a couple of days in and out of shelters.”
Bledi, 46, said she didn’t want to leave any earlier than she planned to, since she was holding an airline ticket to get her out on time and safely.
“I was visiting my mother who happened to be in Hadassah Medical Center at the time for a procedure. She’s home now. She’s okay. She’s 81 years old. She’s tough,” Bledi said. “My initial reaction was not to escape. It was, what can I do? And this is so great to see. You want to stand with your own people and you feel a sense of unity and affinity. This is your land. This is your Jewish state. We are the Jewish people. If we ever learned anything after the Holocaust: Never again. That has to mean something. I did not feel this immediate sense of urgency to leave. My time was delegated to assisting my mother. Part of what I did was stay with her to ensure her safety and security and to keep her company so that she wasn’t going through this alone by herself as a patient in a hospital. In Israel, patients can have family members stay with them in the hospital room, unlike here. My mother was discharged the day I left (Tuesday, October 10) so that was good.”
Being an elections commissioner, politics runs through her veins, and she has definite opinions about how this war started from a political viewpoint.
“People viewed my experience as something eye-opening, an awakening that raises concerns and issues regarding extremism and how it plays a role here in America. They also saw the rise of antisemitism on a level maybe they had not been cognizant of, or should have been. We cannot tolerate this level of evil in the world,” Bledi said. “You have leftist academics who have made their way into the military and intelligence agencies and they have no place being there. They take an academic approach to something that needs to be simpler and more practical. I’m not (convinced) they understand who the enemy is and what they are dealing with.
“For example, in Israel, (Benjamin) Gantz was not Netanyahu’s appointee. (He is currently the minister without portfolio.) He was appointed by the previous government and served for months before Netanyahu became prime minister, which is considered to be not appropriate. We have to be aware that potentially we have intelligence and military agencies that are being led and spearheaded by political hacks and leftist academics who have no place being in those positions and no clear understanding of reality and who the enemy is and how to deal with them appropriately. We see that in the United States. We see weaponized intelligence agencies, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA, who have treated United States citizens as enemies of the state rather than maybe keeping an eye on what was going on in terms of religious fundamentalism and extremism. In Israel they did the same thing. They weaponized intelligence agencies and the police to target political dissidents in opposition. They did it to Netanyahu similar to what they did to Trump. Netanyahu was indicted on charges that were nonsensical and irrelevant to the priorities facing Israel. It was simply done to discredit a political candidate who was potentially going to run for prime minister. When you look at the political dynamics that unfolded in Israel, they became more concerned with targeting political dissidents than they did with potential terrorists. That shift in ideology parallel to what we have seen in the United States created a dangerous situation and potentially set it up to what occurred. I don’t blame Israel for what Hamas did. At the end of the day Hamas did what they did because they are evil and a terrorist organization and they are solely responsible,” Bledi concluded.
Bledi said she expects to return next month, after the elections are wrapped up in New York state.
“There’s a part of me that felt I wanted to stay and find a role for myself in terms of the volunteer effort but at the end of the day, I also have commitments here, including a job and an election that’s taking place in just three weeks. I have a commitment to the employees, to the voters and to me that’s equally important in other ways,” Bledi said. “I did decide to come back but I’m not ruling out the potential for returning at a later date, maybe Thanksgiving time.”
Bledi, an Orthodox Jew, is usually in Israel for the chagim, so she does not affiliate with a local synagogue. Being an elections commissioner requires a person in that role to have a steel back to fight off the opposition locally. It’s a common Israeli trait.
“Israelis have learned to become tough, resilient, and to fight back. They are strong people and they’re good people who have a shared value system and understand the difference between good and evil. They have learned how to deal with what has befallen them,” Bledi said. I watched Israeli society mobilize in a way that you don’t really see those more experienced, generally speaking. There was a sense of unity and volunteerism; I saw Israeli society mobilize on a massive scale to the extent where everyone found a place for them in the effort.”
One footnote to this article is that Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy (D – Albany) has a Palestinian sympathizer, Alex Flood, as her communications director. He regularly posts his opinions on social media. Bledi knows Flood’s history well.
“I would call him someone who is aligned with the sympathies of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and he is young, he is ignorant, and he should not be, in my opinion, serving on her staff. It’s inappropriate, frankly. He’s always been inappropriate. Voters sent a very stern message as to how they felt about his views when he was soundly defeated for (Rensselaer) county legislature. He was previously arrested, too. He’s not exactly a productive member of society,” Bledi said. “Those who identify as LGBTQIA would be the first ones targeted by Hamas for their views. It’s bizarre to me that they are in line and sympathetic with their [Hamas] world view. It doesn’t surprise me, because he was advocating to defund the police. He believes that we should live in a world that is free of law enforcement, which is delusional, at best. A New York state legislator should not have a Hamas sympathizer on their staff.”
Also caught up in the war and having left the Holy Land unscathed is Marc Cohen, the chief of staff at the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce. He works for chamber CEO Robert Duffy, the former Lt. Governor. He served as Governor Andrew Cuomo’s second-in-command during his first term. He has agreed to be interviewed for next week’s The Jewish Press.
