Follow up: “That’s not human.” Sioux Falls and Israel resident describes his life near Gaza war - Dakota News Now

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) — As the Israel-Hamas war rages into its fourth week just 45 miles away in Gaza, David Nachenberg — who also has residency in Sioux Falls and spends about a month every summer here — continues to feel relatively safe in his residence of Modi’in, Israel.

“I don’t feel necessarily fear,” David said on Monday in a 55-minute follow-up interview three weeks after Dakota News Now first reached him, when the war was two days old.

“It feels weird. It feels weird. Now, I will tell you, my daughter and husband — they’re very afraid.”

David’s 25-year-old daughter Sara and his son-in-law Eran live five minutes away in Modi’in, a city of 92,000 between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Their fear is amplified by the presence of their three children who are all under age five.

That, plus the Palestinian suicide terrorist bombing in Jerusalem that Sara survived when she was two years old. A nail from the explosion struck her mother — David’s wife Chana — in the heart and left Chana in a vegetative state for 22 years until she died this past May. Sara was one of the few people in that Sbarro pizza restaurant that came out unscathed, as 14 died.

Needless to say, fear and anger toward Arab terrorist groups run deep in the Nachenberg family. For David, it is more anger than fear.

Modi’in is in the West Bank. There has been fear of the carnage will spread from Gaza to the West Bank. David doesn’t suspect that will happen anytime soon because he thinks Hamas will only go after major metropolitan areas like maybe Tel Aviv (over 4,000,000 people, 24 miles away) or Jerusalem (over 1,000,000 people, 20 miles away) first.

But this past Friday night, while walking his dog at a park near his home, Nachenberg heard a siren that warns of incoming missiles. It was the first such siren in Modi’in since first attacks of the war on Oct. 7, which he detailed in our previous story.

“And what that means is, basically, there’s missiles,” Nachenberg said. “And, so it means you’ve got, in our particular city, 90 seconds, a minute and a half, to get into a sealed room.”

So, David and his dog scurried to the bomb shelter in his apartment. No sirens have followed since. So, once again, Nachenberg feels relatively safe — for now.

But Sara’s family sleeps nightly in their house’s bomb shelter. Almost every building in this modern city has a bomb shelter — a sealed room to protect people from earthquakes and other explosions. These rooms are also soundproof from war sirens outside, and Sara and Eran don’t want their toddlers to hear and become frightened by those noises.

David visits his only child and grandchildren every week. He watches the news and consumes horrific stories and images of Israeli women and children in Gaza, and it hits home.

“When I was at my daughter’s house,” David said, “and I saw my little grandkids, I’m thinking, ‘How could these beasts have tortured and maimed and raped and killed and baked in an oven little kids that are my grandkids’ ages? How could they have done that?’”

He described other brutal acts he has read about. We’ll spare you those details.

“That’s not human,” David said of Hamas. “That has to be ended. Not just the weapons, but they have to be ended.”

Schools had been closed in Modi’in for two weeks after the initial attacks. They re-opened last week, then again Sunday and Monday after Friday’s sirens. Most stores and restaurants are closed or empty, David said. While he feels safe to walk and drive around within the city’s borders, he won’t be going outside them anytime soon, for fear of his safety.

But he has helped protect Modi’in’s border at city roadblocks as a member of civil patrol. David has twice volunteered as a guard there.

“We have Arab villages nearby,” David said. “Israeli Arab villages, but they side with Hamas. They side with the Palestinian Authority. We make sure they’re not coming into Modi’in to do damage.”

He wore a helmet and a bulletproof vest filled with lead. He was not armed with assault weapons, as he is not a member of the Israeli armed forces, but he did have a baseball bat. He checked the I.D.’s of every driver and passenger coming through. They needed Israeli identification cards to get into the city. Citizens from any area under Palestinian Authority are not allowed.

His daughter didn’t want him to do this.

“I don’t want to lose two parents,” Sara told him. But he insisted that wouldn’t happen.

“I realized that a lot of the people had fear, and they were all grateful for seeing us there,” David said of his experience at the roadblocks. “But, I also realized something else. What we were doing by being at a roadblock was basically a show. Because, if anybody really is a terrorist — I mean, they are sick, so you never know — would you come in through a roadblock where there are people who are armed, or would you try to sneak in through the forest on the other side of town?

“So, it was a show to make people feel secure, and all the people are saying, ‘Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.’”

David works in an after school program with third graders at a school. Some of their parents are in the Israeli army or have been called up to the Israeli military reserves since the war started, making them “more tense then usual.”

One of David’s nephews is in the Israeli army, assigned to remove dead Jewish bodies where a massacre occurred. David said he watched one video his nephew’s group filmed that made him “want to throw up.”

“All the way through the whole house, the floor had blood all over it,” David said. “It looked like a sea of blood. I’ve never seen something so sickening in my life.”

Dakota News Now produced two recent stories about Palestinian-American residents of Sioux Falls who have family living in Bethlehem, a city in a Palestinian state — an area, like Gaza, carved out of Israel. Bethlehem was under Israeli control from 1967 to 1995, when it was turned over to the Palestinian Authority. But those DNN talked to recently said Israeli leaders control the supply of water, electricity and medical aid to innocent Palestinians in that city and others under Palestinian Authority, and those things are occasionally shut off.

To this, David said, “I have no freaking idea why Israel provides them with free electricity and water. Why can’t (Palestinian Authority) provide it themselves? If they have autonomy, which they do — complete autonomy — why don’t they just say, ‘this is our state and let’s establish a water plant and let’s establish an electric company. Let’s do it.’ But, no instead they’d rather not establish it, get it for free from us, and then use all the money that they get to make more missiles and to buy more missiles from Iran.”

One Palestinian-American woman in a DNN story blasted President Joe Biden and South Dakota political leaders for extending support to Israel.

“Biden is offering expansive military support for the Israeli occupation as they genocide Gaza without distinguishing between anyone at all,” Nadiah Musa said. “And, as such, all Palestinians are subject to murder and displacement as if they are Hamas. In my eyes, and in the eyes of many Palestinians, this is a blatant war crime.”

To this, David said:

“Genocide would be a country or group of people deciding to completely wipe off the face of the map the people of another race or religion. That is genocide. Israel does not engage in genocide. Anybody who believes really, really, really, really, really doesn’t understand the meaning of genocide and is very wrong. Period. And, if Israel is attacking civilians, it is not being done on purpose.”

When confronted with the notion from these Sioux Falls Palestinian-Americans that innocent Palestinians want equal rights and want to be left alone by Israeli occupants and militants, David said: “Then, let them speak up, because Hamas is controlling them with an iron fist. Hamas is making them (human) shields to protect their weapons.

“When they (Hamas) put a missile inside a school, inside a hospital, they do that because they know that we (Israel) want to take out the missile launcher.”

He said Israeli forces warn Hamas in advance that Israel is “coming after your missile launchers,” and advices Hamas to move Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way.

But Hamas, David said, tells Palestinian civilians they can’t move, and that if they do move, Hamas will try to kill them.

“So, Hamas is basically terrorizing their own people, too,” David said. “But, we can’t let their missile launchers be used. What are we going to do? We’re going to let them use their own people as a human shield? We’re not going to take out their missile launchers, and they’re going to continue firing missiles — thousands and thousands of missiles — purposefully at our civilians. Not at bases, but cities and towns and villages, We can’t let that happen. And we warned them. It’s not our fault their their civilians aren’t being allowed to be moved by them.”

The nearby presence of and menace from terrorists is nothing new, but David said it has never been higher in the nearly three decades since the native New Yorker moved to Israel. He said he is against most Muslims because he feels like “most of them are against me.”

He also said, “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim.”

But, he said plenty of Muslims and Arabs live among the Jewish and Christian Israelis in Modi’in — including his dentist, orthopedist, and construction men who are remodeling his apartment.

“They’re not my friends,” David said. “It’s a professional relationship. Like with any other. My plumber is Jewish. It’s also just a professional relationship. He’s not my friend, either.”

But in the global picture, he said he is following via the news the moves of the most powerful nations in the world are making. He thinks the planet is on the brink of World War III.

“Not only are we not safe where we are, but you’re not going to be safe where you are,” David predicted. “These riots are going to spill over. Not into Sioux Falls, but go to Chicago. Go to L.A. There’s going to be all kinds of things going on in those big cities. And, they’re already happening. This is going to be World War III. This is it. I don’t want it to be. I’ve got a life to live. I’ve got things to live for.”

His voice rose a crescendo — it’s most passionate pitch in a nearly hour-long interview.

“And, what I despise, OK, whether it’s a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim — let’s get rid of religion (in the equation) — I, David, do not like it when other people make decisions that affect my life. I want to control life myself. I don’t want other people to make decisions that could put me in jeopardy, or put my loved ones in jeopardy.”

It was the closest he would come to expressing a sentiment that lined up with those of Palestinian natives — and loved ones of Palestinians — living in Sioux Falls.

Copyright 2023 KSFY. All rights reserved.

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