Our Wartime Visit to Our Children and Grandchildren in Israel
May 1, 2026
by Don Sable
Friends.
My wife, Randye, and I returned about four weeks ago from a trip to Israel that we had planned months ago. I wrote an op-ed including observations and experiences from that trip which was during the first month of the fighting with Iran and the op-ed was included in a recent Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
Please feel free to share any comments or feedback that you might have. In addition, I have included four photos taken during our trip that are described further below.
My op-ed began as follows:
“Many reading this column have probably been closely following the war with Iran through the media. My wife and I experienced the first month of the war firsthand as we had been in Israel since two days before the fighting began and returned home as originally planned about four weeks ago.
“In the past we traveled to Israel once a year to see our son and good friends and to support the country with our visits and purchases. Once we had grandchildren there, we visited twice a year to see and stay with our two grandchildren, son and daughter in law who live in central Israel.
“I have heard and read that some in America think that Israelis are very afraid of the dangers they have been facing due to the Iranian missiles or shrapnel (destroyed pieces of huge missiles) or Hezbollah rockets that have landed there. I did not see that during my in person observations of Israelis while we we there.
“Instead, I saw a resilient, courageous and confident people resigned to the fact that the great sacrifices they are making and the very difficult circumstances they have to put up with are worth it in the end.”
Don’s full op-ed can be found here.
This first picture is from a walk on a trail that we took a week after the fighting with Iran had begun. Our son in Israel saw on one of his apps that the area had not been attacked probably because it was not very populated. So the six of us drove to this trail in the Carmel area and had a nice walk on the second Shabbat we were in Israel. That night things changed as Hezbollah started firing rockets in that area perhaps on orders from Iran.
This second photo was taken in the safe room and you can see the two mattresses in the background as our grandchildren slept there during the fighting so their nights would be a little less disruptive – if I can call it that – when the missile alerts would go off during the night.
This third photo taken in the middle of the night is of an Iranian ballistic missile that had just been hit by a defensive missile from Israel and in the photo you can see red on top of blue representing the intercepted missile. Of course the size of the pieces of such destroyed ballistic missiles are huge and cause major destruction depending upon where they land. I took this picture in central Israel looking east and the missile probably was hit over the Green Line in a far eastern part of the historic region of Samaria.
This last photo taken on a main street in front of a shopping center is street art of a combination of former hostages in Gaza who were returned alive and the bodies of two soldiers – Hadar Goldin Z”l from 2014 and Oz Daniel Z”l from Oct 7, 2023 – who were returned. Photos, posters, street art, stickers of photos, etc. could be seen all around Israel of the hostages, of soldiers and others who died on Oct 7th while fighting the terrorists and of soldiers who died fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. This street art of the six Israelis in the photo is the largest such tribute I saw during our travels in Israel which travels were of course less than usual due to the ballistic missile attacks from Iran and the rocket attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon.
