This is the dramatic moment a British mother fled the besieged settlement of Yeted with her family through open fields past army forces in a gun battle with Hamas troops – while leaving behind her grown up soldier son to fight on the frontline.
Debby Sharon put her foot on the accelerator and sped past tanks and dodged bullets after hiding away in the family’s safehouse for over 36 hours while their village, a community of just 120 families four kilometres from the Gaza border, came under Hamas fire.
While she was fleeing to safety, her son was on the front line, one of the soldiers taking on the hundreds of militia who had infiltrated Israel’s borders in the early hours of Saturday morning.
One of 300,000 reserves now serving Israel’s worst offensive in 50 years, Sharon now waits anxiously hour by hour for updates from her son Zohar, 27, who was called up on Sunday with his paratrooper unit, one day after Hamas declared war on Israel.
After a full evacuation, her home Yeted is now among several settlements now made a Closed Military Zone and dozens of the community are still missing or feared dead. Debby Sharon (pictured with her dog) had been hiding away in the family’s safehouse for over 36 hours while their village, a community of just 120 families four kilometres from the Gaza border, came under Hamas fire Debby put her foot on the accelerator and sped past tanks and dodged bullets
She and her husband, their daughter and son-in-law, autistic son and three grandchildren under the age of 11, were all in one room just 3×2 metres square without electricity while they heard hour after hour of gunshots and missiles.
With charge on their phones running out just hours into the ordeal, they had no idea what was happening beyond their small home in Israel’s southern region and its most active front.
‘It was in those hours that I really understood the mentality my English mother had raised us with after having grown up during World War Two and how she taught us to behave in emergencies,’ she said.
She recalls looking out of the window during a quiet moment she left the shelter to gauge what was happening, seeing people running chaotically. ‘It was apocalyptic,’ she said.
‘Nothing could have prepared us for this. The idea of “keeping our chin up” and staying positive in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty, I could see it all taking place in those moments. I felt like I was playing out all those stories my mother had told me growing up.’
Trying to keep the kids calm, to stop them screaming, to stop them leaving, all this while we are all together in a safe room which was designed to keep us safe from rockets, not from terrorists, so it didn’t even lock from the inside.
Having lived in Israel from just five years old, wars were all too familiar to Sharon, a criminal lawyer, but what unfolded on Saturday morning is like nothing she has ever witnessed.
Her father had served in the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago, but with hundreds of Hamas militia on a killing spree in Israeli homes, it brought the battlefront far closer than the country had ever known.
‘It sounds crazy to say it but the rocket attacks we lived with before are not hard for us any more, you don’t feel it turns your life around, but when you know there are people around your house shooting, it is a different feeling altogether.
‘I felt sick from the minute it started. You have all these thoughts of what could happen. If a rocket falls on you there aren’t many alternatives of what could happen,’ she added.
Evacuated by a convoy of reserve soldiers from the community through the fields, Sharon and her family drove past a graveyard of wrecked civilian cars and army vehicles, a chilling sign that not even the army was safe here.
Once they began to get radio reception and she heard the news updates, she realised the scale of the war after being sheltered without contact for around 24 hours. Debby’s made the dangerous journey in her car, passing tanks. After a full evacuation, her home Yeted is now among several settlements now made a closed military zone and dozens of the community are still missing or feared dead Debby’s family at the dinner table. While she was fleeing to safety, her son was on the front line, one of the soldiers taking on the hundreds of militia who had infiltrated Israel’s borders in the early hours of Saturday morning Debby’s family in hiding. She and her husband, their daughter and son-in-law, autistic son and three grandchildren under the age of 11, were all in one room just 3×2 metres square without electricity while they heard hour after hour of gunshots and missiles
‘I can’t breathe yet, I can’t sleep, and it’s the first time I admit, I’m traumatised,’ she said. ‘My son is still serving and clearing out the area of what’s left of the worst kind of enemy that exists these days,’ the local area now unrecognisable.
In spite of the fact that huge chunks of the region known as Eshkol have been devastated from bombings and shootouts, houses burnt down by the militia, she said there are no questions about them returning.
‘Leaving isn’t an option,’ Sharon smiled, with an indomitable spirit. ‘It will take so much to build it up again, so many things have been diminished altogether and there will be a lot of work and getting through the trauma, learning how to sleep again, how to trust again.
‘So many little children have suffered terrible mental injuries, and there is work to do, but I can’t imagine giving up that beautiful area. So many people died here that by abandoning it, we aren’t respecting their memory.’
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