DALLAS — At the International Arrivals area Tuesday at DFW, folks returned from vacation and family trips. Among them, a woman and her two children who came to North Texas under very different circumstances.
WFAA was there when Aydela Shatzberg embraced her sister after three long days of travel.
Shatzberg, and American-born Jew moved to Israel seven years ago with her husband, an Israeli man she met in America.
When the war broke out, he stayed to help. But Monday she evacuated with their 8-month-old and 3-year-old daughters, joining 2,000 other US national evacuees on a cruise ship to Cyprus.
"We were constantly having to run to the shelter room, with two little babies waking up in the middle of the night," she told WFAA of life in Israel upon her arrival in Dallas. "This is not a life."
After 12 hours at sea, followed by two flights, Shatzberg and her daughters finally made it to family in North Texas.
"I felt a little guilty leaving," she said. "But I have to do what’s best for my kids, and I’m not gonna [sic] let them go through trauma that I already started experiencing."
She's tried to shield her girls from the reality of the war, smiling with them for photos on the ship, singing with them on the airport shuttle.
Her husband, who works in animal rescues, stayed behind to help save abandoned cats and dogs whose families were killed or abducted by Hamas.
"It was very hard, because I don’t know when I’m gonna see him again," she said. "We said I’m gonna come back when the war is over, but nobody knows when it’s gonna end."
Shatzberg said she distanced herself from watching a lot of news because it's too painful to see what's happening. But did want to say something to WFAA's viewers:
"We deserve to have our army fight for us, and nobody is gonna tell us we don’t have the right to defend ourself," she said. "Because Hamas took hostages, they butchered babies. It's just horrible."