TAMPA, Fla. — In the war's third day, Israel was still finding bodies from Hamas' stunning weekend attack into southern Israeli towns. Rescue workers found 100 bodies in the tiny farming community of Beeri — around 10% of its population — after a long hostage standoff with gunmen. In Gaza, tens of thousands fled their homes as relentless airstrikes leveled buildings.
Tampa-based organizations are sharing their thoughts on the war after seeing how many lives were lost in the last few days.
"You realize the level of slaughter, you just looked at the level of the Barbary that went on, you realize that this was something that was substantially significant," Jonathan Ellis, Tampa Jewish Community Relations Council chairman said.
Right now, an international rescue organization, Project Dynamo, is headed to Israel.
"There are hundreds of Americans that are stuck in the middle of this war in Israel," Bryan Stern, the organization's leader, said.
The donor-funded veteran-led group has rescued hundreds of Americans from across the world in the last two years, including Maui, Ukraine and Sudan.
It's getting more and more difficult to travel to Israel from the U.S., making rescue efforts like Project Dynamo's all the more difficult. Bryan Stern is facing a 28-hour travel day and four connecting flights.
Once he gets to Israel, his team will set up a command post and begin their work.
"We set up a command control spot so we can coordinate with our team back here in America," Stern explained.
Project Dynamo says its singular focus is helping Americans.
"There's Americans that are hostages. There are Americans who are stuck in the Palestinian territories, most of those where they're doing humanitarian work of some sort. And then you have people stuck in between the territories, which is worse, the missiles landing," Stern said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says this is a war on human rights.
"I think my reaction is the same as anyone that's looking at this with reason that we want the violence to stop," CAIR Executive Director Abdullah Jaber said. "And the only way to do that is to value every life the same, we cannot take sides and value one side more than the other."
Jaber pointed to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed this year, saying the divide being shown shouldn't be the focus.
"I think the stereotypes are many," he said. "One is that this is a Muslim issue or an Arab issue. It's not – it's a human rights issue. And anyone, again, that's looking at this with reason will see that the central cause for this, the recent violence that we're noticing, in the Middle East, but more specifically in Israel, is a result of the long-existing illegal occupation of the Palestinian people and their land by the Israeli government."
In Tampa, there has been increased security at all synagogues and Jewish community centers. Ellis says this war has all Jewish Americans on edge.
"Those things, you can't process that you just look at it, and you say, the level of savageness, and barbarity that's taking place by people, in whatever name, it is just as is a fundamental disconnect with how anybody one could want to do it, or want to plan it, or why or what you're actually accomplishing," Ellis said. "It's just incomprehensible."
Malique Rankin is a general assignment reporter with 10 Tampa Bay. You can email her story ideas at mrankin@10tampabay.com and follow her Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.