EXCLUSIVE — When newlyweds Yitz and Rivka Friedman booked flights in September from New York City to Israel for their October honeymoon, they expected a carefree vacation and time with loved ones to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
For one week, 25-year-old Yitz, and Rivka, 23, got this opportunity: touring the Old City of Jerusalem, visiting the Western Wall, and enjoying outdoor holiday feasts with family. Then came the deadliest terror attack against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
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The couple, in interviews with the Washington Examiner, explained how they were in lockdown in a village outside Jerusalem as the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas abducted, raped, and murdered innocent Israelis before they eventually found a flight to the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday. But on Saturday, the day Hamas struck, resulting in Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later declaring war against Hamas, Yitz and Rivka were without technology in observance of Sukkot.
“At the synagogue, in the middle of prayers, the Rabbi got up, and he said, ‘Anyone who is a reservist, go home and check your phones. A war has broken out. As for the rest, you’ve got to go home,'” Yitz recounted. Earlier on Saturday, someone that Yitz and Rivka know came to where they were staying, scrambled to change into a military uniform, and stated, “I’m going to war,” while trying to reassure the couple he would be back that evening.
That person didn’t come back that evening, and he hasn’t in the days since. He’s alive and stationed south toward Gaza, alongside hundreds of thousands of other Israeli troops, fighting the terrorists that have claimed the lives of over 1,200 people in Israel. In Gaza, more than 1,000 are estimated to be dead, while at least 22 American lives have been lost, with more than a dozen unaccounted for, according to the U.S. government.
“We started hearing there were going to be missiles and rockets coming in, though thankfully there were not missiles where we were,” Yitz, who works as a spokesman for the American Accountability Foundation, a conservative watchdog in the United States, told the Washington Examiner. “Either way, we were told that Hamas was going to infiltrate villages. Everyone was kind of jumping at every sound and movement. We started hearing gunfire, explosions. The worst thing was the rumors because people’s minds really fly.”
‘People were talking to God’
Rivka, a graduate student at Touro University, a private Jewish university in New York City, said, “We were shaking, very scared.” As the couple hunkered down in the village while men picked up their arms to go to war, women and children were crying and screaming outside their doors.
Following the sun going down that evening, the Friedmans finally checked their phones and put on the television, per their adherence to Sukkot. The synagogue was closed, but people in the village wanted to pray in the streets. “Everyone was armed,” Yitz said.
“The prayers were very, very intense,” Yitz said. “Probably the most intense prayers I’ve ever witnessed. People were talking to God. We went back in the house, and the horror became clear. We were told terrorists are coming to settlements. So, we’re looking out the windows, checking the roads. Obviously, people didn’t sleep well.”
The couple’s trip was supposed to end following a trip to the beaches of Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea, with flights to Egypt and then New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Sunday morning, the state-owned carrier Egyptair canceled their flight without notice.
Calls for assistance to the U.S. Embassy in Israel proved “disheartening,” according to Yitz, with the office directing the couple to contact their airline. “They were just rude and short,” said Yitz, who added that he began scouring online looking for any tickets out of Israel to “literally anywhere,” including China.
Then the news came. An uncle of a friend of Yitz and Rivka’s was killed, while another person they know was kidnapped. Rivka texted her friends closer to southern Israel, who were in bomb shelters.
Meanwhile, amid the chaos, fear, and confusion, there was a wedding supposed to take place in the village, and Hamas wasn’t going to stop it. Boys not old enough to take up arms became volunteer waiters. The best man had an M16 rifle around his left shoulder.
‘I would like to thank President Trump’
Yitz and Rivka eventually found a flight online to Dubai from Tel Aviv for Wednesday. Getting to Tel Aviv required going through numerous military checkpoints.
The pair said goodbye to loved ones in the village Wednesday morning, something Rivka expressed to the Washington Examiner was unimaginably difficult. They found an armed driver, and the streets were “basically deserted,” Yitz said.
Upon arriving at the airport, Yitz checked his phone. Hamas was starting to bomb Tel Aviv, though sirens in the city did not sound. From there, the couple flew to Dubai and then JFK on Wednesday morning, leading Yitz on social media to declare, “I would like to thank President Trump.”
“If not for the Trump Abraham Accords, this would be unthinkable,” Yitz posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “There would be no flights from Israel to the UAE. To be able to fly to a friendly Arab country when even American flights won’t dare, at a time of war, is miraculous.”
The watchdog spokesman is happy that “thousands of American citizens have a way home from a very dangerous situation” over former President Donald Trump’s policies. On Tuesday, more than 140 House members called on the State Department to charter flights out of Israel amid airlines canceling trips in droves.
“We are acutely aware of the currently limited capacity on commercial flights and the high demand from U.S. citizens wanting to depart,” a State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “Our goal is to assist U.S citizens who want to leave Israel with a safe means of doing so. We encourage U.S. citizens to take advantage of commercial flights that involve transiting a third country if they are unable to book a direct flight to the United States. In order to meet high demand for flights, we are also exploring other contract options by air, land, and sea to nearby countries.”
As for Rivka, she said she’s been “impressed” with how President Joe Biden has condemned Hamas and offered support for Israel, though noted “some policies were a bit disappointing.” In the days since the war broke out, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have sharply taken aim at how the Biden administration in September unfroze $6 billion in Iranian funds, while reports now indicate that Iran helped plan the attack against Israel.
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Putting politics aside, the Friedmans are just happy to be back home in the U.S., though they pray for those stranded in Israel at the hands of Hamas and their family members in the Jewish state.
“Our hearts are in Israel,” they said in a joint statement to the Washington Examiner.
