Manny Yekutiel is the owner of Manny's, a restaurant in San Francisco's Mission District that's also a gathering place for civic events.
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He is visiting his family in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, and sent ABC7 News video where you can hear sirens going off as a missile was being directed right to where he was.
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Manny spoke with ABC7 News Tuesday morning Pacific Time, saying it's been a very frightening scene.
"I've spent more time in bomb shelters than I would ever have liked to," Manny said. "I've seen hundreds of children in synagogues having to run for cover and having to see their parents shield them."
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He says the streets in Tel Aviv have been empty, but he's also seen signs of hope and inspiration.
Manny says he spent time in a hangar, where there was a massive support effort for the soldiers on the front lines and the families torn apart by Hamas' terror.
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"I feel nervous, afraid, like an adrenaline rush, but also committed to being of use while I'm here," he said.
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He originally made the trip to Israel for his niece's bat mitzvah, which was canceled due to the attacks, but his family was having a makeshift ceremony.
Manny described some of the atrocities, saying that he changed where he was staying in Tel Aviv to an apartment where a wife's cousin was killed along with her husband. That left 10-month-old twins in their house along the Gaza border.
In terms of getting home to the US, he is not sure when that will happen. He had a flight back but learned on the ABC7 broadcast that flights were being canceled.