The body of a motorist lies on a road following a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel October 7, 2023. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Sderot is located less than a mile from the Gaza Strip. Approximately 90 percent of the town’s 30,000 residents fled on October 7, after Hamas invaded southern Israel. My wife’s cousin, Ilan, is currently stationed with his infantry unit in what used to be a Sderot elementary school. Now, the happy, high-pitched yelping of children has been replaced by the metallic sounds of assault rifles being taken apart, cleaned, and reassembled by soldiers.

We were visiting Ilan’s family in Nahariya, Israel’s northernmost coastal city, when his mom told us that she had just gotten off the phone with him. Ilan had been given a 48-hour pass, was on a bus with a few fellow northerners from his platoon, and would be arriving in a few hours.

Since my wife, our four children, and I needed to catch the final train to Haifa before the Sabbath kicked in, we were not sure we would be able to see Ilan. Sderot is in the western Negev, a good 200 kilometers from Nahariya.

But as we were packing our things and saying our goodbyes, in walked my wife’s cousin.

Ilan, wearing a wrinkled combat utility uniform, had picked up a farmer’s tan down south. His hair had grown shaggy. As we embraced, I saw how bloodshot his eyes were.

My twin sons had never seen Ilan in army fatigues, much less slinging an M-16 over his shoulder. When the two seven-year-olds started to pepper their 27-year-old relative with questions about what he was doing in Sderot, Ilan kept his answers pleasantly vague. My boys’ eyes lit up when he told them about the green parakeet that greeted him and his army buddies when they got to the school.

When one of my sons asked him what kind of food he was eating where he is stationed, Ilan told him that Netivot, a city not far from Sderot, has the best hummus and pitot in Israel.

When Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel on October 7, Ilan was a full-time Civil and Environmental Engineering student at the Technion, one of Israel’s top universities.

Now, he was showing us the inside of his M-16, and explaining how the weapon worked — the explosion creating the gas pressure needed to push the bullet down and out of the barrel.

Ilan, along with 300,000 other civilians, was drafted in response to Hamas’ multi-front attack against Israel. As these soldiers fight to free Israel from the constant threat of annihilation, their lives, loves, and livelihoods are in a state of suspended animation.

I had to cut short the boy’s interrogation of Ilan short, because we had to huff it to the train station.

Back home, we lit a ninth Hanukkah candle. This year, many Israelis decided to extend the Festival of Lights by one day. The traditional Hanukkah prayers include a recitation of previous attempts to destroy the Jewish people — Pharaoh in Egypt, Haman in Persia, the Babylonian kingdoms, the Seleucid-Greek monarchy. Now, there is also a call for the destruction of Hamas, and the safe return of all the hostages.

Since their meeting with Ilan, our sons have been boning up on Sderot. When their stream of questions exhausted their parents’ patience, the boys broke out the maps, becoming pint-sized experts on Sderot’s geography and even topography.

Yet no matter how far Sderot is from our home up here in Haifa, there is no real distance between the two cities. On October 7, Israelis from every corner of the country became citizens of Sderot, Netivot, and all the other southern communities.

Gidon Ben-Zvi is an accomplished writer who left Los Angeles for Jerusalem in 2009. After serving in an Israel Defense Forces infantry unit from 1994-1997, Ben-Zvi returned to the United States before settling in Israel, where he and his wife are raising their four children.