Of all of the terrible stories coming out about Israel these days, this one is among the saddest and it actually originates in New York City. A young woman from Long Island named Natalie Sanandaji is a Jewish, native-born New Yorker. She was in Israel on October 7 to attend a friend’s wedding and was at the music festival where the terror attacks began. She managed to escape with her life after a harrowing flight and eventually made her way back to New York. But now that she sees what’s going on at home, she told reporters that she is more determined than ever to move to Israel permanently. She’s not going there to fight, though she will if she has to. She said she wants to leave because she feels safer in Israel than she does in America. She was taught all about the Holocaust as a child and says she sees the signs of it happening again all around her. (NY Post)

A Long Island native who survived Hamas’ slaughter at an Israeli music festival said she still doesn’t feel safe after returning home due to the increasing acts of antisemitism put on display at the countless protests that have erupted since the war began.

Natalie Sanandaji, 28, thought the worst was over after surviving the horrifying attack on Oct. 7 and returning home a week later, but the Jewish New Yorker said the ensuing onslaught of antisemitism scares her.

“A lot of people have asked if I’m scared to go back to Israel after everything that’s happened, and my honest answer is … now more than ever, I want to move to Israel,” Sanandaji told The Post as she calmly recalled her terrifying ordeal Friday.

Natalie’s story is as incredible as it is terrifying. She is of Iranian descent, making her situation all the more complicated. She was at the music festival near Kibbutz Re’im, not far from the Gaza border when the attack began. She and her friends had already been sent to a bomb shelter once because of warnings of incoming rockets, but they expected the situation to settle down quickly. Instead, all hell broke loose.

Her friends had been preparing to leave when Natalie and a couple of friends decided to use the bathroom before their trip. That turned out to be the same bathroom that was seen in videos released by the terrorists where they shot everyone in all of the stalls. Natalie had emerged only moments before and she and her friends began to run in panic. An Israeli security guard told them to “run toward the sun.” They did just that, but soon found themselves running toward another panicked crowd of festival-goers who were fleeing a second group of terrorists.

Natalie and her friends eventually found a driver willing to give them a ride out of the area in their truck. She was desperate to get home, but was only able to do so after convincing a friend to giver her an airline ticket to Greece. She had to beg people at the airport to allow her to change the name on the ticket. She eventually arrived back in New York eleven days after the initial attacks.

Can you imagine surviving an ordeal like that only to return to a country where she no longer feels safe or welcome? Natalie said she know neighbors who are removing the mezuzah scrolls from their doorways out of fear of being identified as Jews. She compares this to the practice in Germany of drawing Jewish stars on homes where Jews lived in the runup to the Holocaust. (That’s happening again today.) I never would have imagined that we would live to see such times, yet here we are. The poison of antisemitism is spreading throughout the global bloodstream and too many governments and institutions are failing to take a strong stand against it.