MINNEAPOLIS — Cheyn Ezra feels powerless to help during the greatest crisis in the history of Israel.
The Israeli citizen was vacationing in Minnesota when Hamas launched a massive attack on Israel Saturday, killing hundreds of civilians and kidnapping others as hostages. Now Ezra's finding it difficult to return.
"I was supposed to fly back to Israel yesterday, on Sunday night, but my flight was canceled," Ezra told KARE. "The next possible flight is Friday but I will be surprised if it's note delayed or canceled, too."
His youngest brother in Israel is a military reservist who has been called up for active duty as Israel looks to end the attacks and start finding hostages captured by Palestinian militants. Another brother is a member of the Israeli military, but is stranded in Texas and unable to join his unit.
"He’s going nuts because his entire unit is now in training, and he’s stuck here and he can’t join them," Ezra remarked. "We were raised on to protect our family and our country when this stuff would happen, and now we're just stuck here unable to help."
His mother Sherrie is safe for time being in Northern Israel, away from most of the fighting. She's been busy raising donations and collecting supplies for survivors and the military.
"From food, medical supplies, deodorants, toothpastes, every single thing you can think of, transporting it to soldiers and injured people in hospitals."
But Ezra's distraught because he hasn't heard from many of his friends who were at the music festival near Gaza that was attacked by Hamas terrorists.
"One close friend, seven other friends have been missing since the attack at the music festival. And I've been watching the videos just trying to look, to see if I can recognize people I know in Gaza. I haven't yet. I can’t find them and these are people I talked to last week! These are people I talked to last week!"
He went from enjoying his vacation in Minnesota to being extremely distraught.
"There is no sleep. There is no flight back to home."
Ezra's aunt Andrea Shapiro says she's stunned by the images coming out of Israel, and worries it could spread to the United States with sleeper cells that are part of Hamas or sympathetic to the cause of destroying Israel.
"The inhumane way this was all done was horrible. I mean these were innocent people, civilians that were just living life and being peaceful."
Her brother Steve Finkelstein says an already complex situation in Israel has become even more complex with Hamas' unprecedented level of aggression and the taking of hostages.
"Just the difficulty it's going to take to try to get some resolution, and save lives, to me seems is paramount, but very, very difficult."
The one silver lining to the situation he sees is the support he and other families with connections to Israel have been receiving.
"The outpouring of support from our community, not just the Jewish Community, but outside the Jewish community too, has been phenomenal. I've heard from people I haven't heard from in years and that's pretty special."