SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. — A group of local college students who were in Israel during recent airstrikes are now back home following days of travel challenges.
Among that group who were visiting on a Birthright trip—a free 10-day heritage trip to Israel for young adults of Jewish descent—was Kennesaw State University graduate Aaron, who preferred not to share his last name.
“It was a couple of days of just mayhem—running to shelters, evacuating us to the south of Israel,” Aaron said.
The KSU graduate shared that Tel Aviv smelled like sulfur and gunpowder. Aaron said he and others had to shelter multiple times during their trip.
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“It sounded like fighter jets going over our heads. You heard explosions,” he told Channel 2’s Brittany Kleinpeter.
Georgia Tech student Chase Barkley, who was also traveling on a Birthright trip, said he was woken up at 3 a.m. one night when airstrikes were heading their way.
“It sounds like an Amber Alert, but 10 times louder, and in all of the hotels, it’s someone speaking on the intercom telling you to go to the bunker,” Barkley shared.
Rabbi Joshua Heller of B’nai Torah in Sandy Springs said his daughter was also on a Birthright trip. He said he was glued to his phone tracking airstrikes.
“I’d call her and say, ‘You’re about to get an alert,’ and she’d say, ‘Oh, I’m sleeping,’ and then you could hear the alarm go off in the background and she’d be on her way to the shelter,” Heller said.
Heller said all the local students who were part of that Birthright trip have made it home safely.
For some, like Aaron and Chase, the trip is one they won’t soon forget.
“Never been so grateful to be on American soil,” Aaron said.
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