When Anagu Walle, her husband, and seven of her eight children were sheltering from clashes between armed militias and Ethiopian security forces in Gondar earlier this year, Israel represented a crucial lifeline. But five months after immigrating to the Jewish state, they are again caught up in war.

“Nobody told us about any security problems,” said Walle, who was evacuated from an immigrant absorption center near the Gaza border town of Sderot to the Carmel hills in the north on October 8. “The first we heard about rockets was from my husband’s niece, who immigrated six months ago, a month before us.”

The niece arrived in time for Operation Shield and Arrow in May, which Israel launched in Gaza with the targeted killings of three senior members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group.

Walle recalled that when she heard the first siren, on Saturday, October 7, she froze. “My 23-year-old daughter said, ‘Mom, that’s a warning. Let’s get the children together and go into the shelter.’”

Sderot, long a target of rockets from Gaza, has come under repeated attack since Hamas terrorists launched their bloody assault on Israel on October 7. On Sunday, authorities began to evacuate residents still there, ahead of an expected Israeli ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

On October 8, Walle’s family was among 531 new immigrants to be bused out from the city’s Ibin Immigrant Absorption Center. Of these, 451, including 120 children aged 12 and under, were sent to a resort at the religious cooperative community of Nir Etzion, south of Haifa. The rest are in the nearby town of Zichron Yaakov or at the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya.

When this reporter visited Nir Etzion, the children from the absorption center were playing on the lawns or sitting in the lobby, doing jigsaw puzzles and playing games, while two groups of fathers played cards.

A Jewish Agency team of 12 has been with the newcomers since they arrived.

Team coordinator Turu Dabasu, 27, who herself immigrated from Ethiopia 20 years ago, noted that immigrants who had been in Israel for some time had become used to sirens and rockets from Gaza.

But the surprise Hamas infiltration and the bloody massacres the terrorists perpetrated in the Gaza area communities were beyond anyone’s imagination, no matter how long they’ve lived in the country. These new immigrants are now in shock.

Read more: New immigrants who fled strife in Ethiopia now face war in Israel

Source: Times of Israel