Photo from AFP

Kaunas resident Bella Shirin communicates with her relatives in Israel, which has turned into a kind of hell, day and night. She fears for her son, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are now spending most of their time in a hiding place in their apartment.

Eyes without Pity

Shirin returned to Kaunas from Israel seven years ago after experiencing two wars in Israel. She says she has looked into the eyes of an Hamas close-up.

All she saw there, she says, was hatred for Jews.

“It happened several years after my parents and I came to live in Israel from Kaunas. It was my first meeting with a terrorist. Eye to eye. At the time my friends and I were visiting a kibbutz near the border. Some of my friends wanted to live on the kibbutz but I was still reluctant and just wanted to see for myself what life was like there. At night armed members of the kibbutz used to go on patrol because attackers were constantly trying to get in. I said I, too, would certainly take part in the watch. They told me no very firmly, because I didn’t know how to shoot and didn’t have experience. I began to beg. I said, look, I studied music, I am able to hear and identify every sound, I’ll hear every leaf rustling. I begged them for a long time and convinced them. They warned me to stay close and not get separated. As I was moving through the territory overgrown with bushes I head a suspicious sound. I nudged the armed young man next to me with my elbow and signaled with my hands the direction from which I had heard a suspicious sound. He jumped into the bushes and as it turned out there was a terrorist hiding there. That’s when I came eye-to-eye with him. He looked over all of us with hate burning in his eyes,” Shirin recalled.

Full story in Lithuanian here.