Day: July 9, 2025

DEVASTATION AND RESILIENCE

Visiting South African photojournalist, Ilan Ossendryver, captures in real-time the Measure and the Mood in Israel during Iran’s devastating missile attacks.

By Rolene Marks

South African photojournalist Ilan Ossendryver was stranded in Israel during ‘Operation Rising Lion’. Recognizing the magnitude of the war, Ossendryver grabbed his camera and went to the various sites of impact to record this time in history – and show the destruction on civilian infrastructure caused by the Iranian missiles.

Shattering Symbolism! A glass window cracked by the impact of an Iranian missile attack in Bat Yam on June 15, 2025, leaves a generalized shape of Israel intact. (Photo: Ilan Ossendryver.)

Ossendryver had been due to launch his book, “Israel after October 7” – a collection of photographs documenting the destruction and horror on the Kibbutzim and communities following the attack on 7 October and was staying with family in Givatayim – when suddenly he found himself confronting new devastation. He spoke to the news agency and wire service, JNS about what it was like to be in Israel during the war with Iran and the impact of recording history as a photographer:

“ I have covered many of Israel’s historic events.  Personally, the most difficult was October 7 atrocities. That as a photographer and as a Jew has been the most difficult. All other photo stories – even tough ones to cover such as suicide bombings – the atrocities carried out by Hamas has been the hardest.”

Coastal Chaos. Hardly covered in international news networks, a neighborhood of Israel’s coastal town of Bat Yam was devastated in an Iranian missile attack on June 15, 2025 that killed nine civilians. (Photo: Ilan Ossendryver).

He continues:

“As the air raid sirens blared and we ran to bomb shelters, I like everyone prayed that the missile would not hit us and when the all clear was given, we sighed with relief and thanked G-d… until the next siren.  I was personally afraid and was worried. After spending time in the bomb shelter and getting the all clear, I visited the sites where Iranian ballistic missiles struck with such devastation.”

City Centre. An Iranian missile destroyed parts of a building and a car in central Ramat Gan on June 19, 2025. (Photo: Ilan Ossendryver.)
 

The imperative to document what was happening was paramount to him – especially when the media in his native South Africa gives little, or any, coverage to Israel’s side.

Continuing, Ossendryver told JNS:

“It was still incredible to be here in Israel. This is my second huge war. It reminds me of the scud missiles fired here in 1991 by Iraq; the world doesn’t really understand what is going on, especially in South Africa where you don’t get these reports. Only one side is reported. I am here with my family documenting life in Israel under war.”

Crumbling Complex. Of no military value, a close-up of the devastation caused by an Iranian missile to a residential building in Be’er Sheva, killing four people on the last day of the war, June 24, 2025. (Photo: Ilan Ossendryver.)

Documenting various sites horrendously impacted by the Iranian missiles, Ossendryver says:

“It is actually quite remarkable and even though countries in the West don’t want to admit it, but Israel is defending the West. They keep complaining about it but Israel has to defend itself.”

The damage caused by direct impacts was immense. Buildings and neighborhoods were totally destroyed.  Many of these areas will have to be bulldozed and cleared in order to create new housing developments. “Buildings shops houses, all destroyed but the miracle was that even though there were some deaths, the death toll, considering the state of destruction, was remarkably low,” says Ossendryver.

Lives Shattered! Homes devastated from an Iranian ballistic missile in Rishon LeZion, South of Tel Aviv.  (Photo: Ilan Ossendryver).

Operation Rising Lion, which many are referring to as the “12-Day War” tested the nation’s collective resilience muscle. The Israeli people, still deep in their trauma following 7 October have endured nearly two years marked by loss and war but remain strong.

Messaging the Mullahs. Israeli resilience on display in Tel Aviv. (Photo: Ilan Ossendryver).

Ossendryver was profoundly impacted by his experiences and notes that “the lasting impressions for each of the impact sights was the resilience of the Jewish people, the Israeli people, that didn’t scream hate, that didn’t call for death but said plainly that our hearts are still beating and we shall rebuild.”


Rising from the Rubble. A policeman with two puppies he rescued from the rubble in Bat Yam after an Iranian missile attack on June 15, 2025. (Photo: Ilan Ossendryver).



About the photoprapher:

Ilan Ossendryver has been a photojournalist for over 25 years covering international news events such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Gulf War, the war in Lebanon, the Israeli Jordanian peace agreement, and the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin. He photographed at Hosni Mubarak’s palace in Cairo where the late Yitzhak Rabin met Yasser Arafat for the first time. He also documented life under Apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela. He has covered two American presidents, seven Israeli prime ministers, as well as many well-known people from Leonard Bernstein, Pavarotti, FW De Klerk, Michael Jackson and Gorbachev.
Illan’s photographs have appeared in many international newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Forbes, Der Spiegel, South China Morning Post, The Times of London, The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Yedioth Acharanot, Maariv and The Star of Johannesburg. He is currently the resident photographer of the Johannesburg based Jewish Life Magazine and the South African Jewish Report.






While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

FROM DEVASTATED HOMES TO HOTEL HOSPITALITY

As Iran’s ballistic missiles pummel Israel’s urban areas turning residents into evacuees, Israel’s hotels  – despite tourist decline –  meet the challenge.

By Motti Verses

(This article first appeared in The Jerusalem Post)

Friday morning in Be’er Sheva this June, 51-year-old Sima Elimeleh huddled with her husband Avi and their daughters in their apartment’s safe room as air raid sirens echoed throughout the city.

It’s Personal. “We were determined to do everything we could for those who had lost their homes and their sense of safety,” said Sima Elimeleh, GM at the Leonardo Negev hotel of Fattal group in Be’er Sheva. (Photo: Ohad Abrahimi)

Heightening the family’s anxiety was the previous day’s ballistic missile strike from Iran scoring a direct hit on the nearby Soroka Medical Center, that provides medical services to approximately one million residents of the South. Then, when the news broke that another missile had hit their normally quiet neighborhood causing severe damage to numerous buildings, and local residents reeling from shock began to assessing the destruction, Elimeleh, the General Manager of the Leonardo Negev Hotel, quickly shifted gears. Asking her husband to manage preparations for their family’s Shabbat (Friday night) dinner, Elimelah Whats App’ed her hotel management team to report immediately to the hotel. Despite being only three months in her new position, she acted like a seasoned professional and arrived there within ten minutes. Her team wasn’t far behind.

Hit on a Hospital. Damage at the Soroka hospital in Be’er Sheba following a direct hit from an Iranian missile barrage on June 19, 2025. (Credit: Israel Fire and Rescue Services)

Within an hour, the hotel had transformed. Guest rooms were readied, public spaces organized, refreshments laid out, and even a kindergarten was established. “We at Fattal Hotels have experience hosting 20,000 evacuees since October 7,” Elimelah explains. “But when it’s your own hometown, people you know, whose children go to school with yours, it hits differently – it’s personal. I felt a sense of mission. We were determined to do everything we could for those who had lost their homes and their sense of safety.”

Minutes before the ceasefire was announced of the ‘12 Day War’, Be’er Sheva suffered another deadly attack, claiming four lives. A second wave of evacuees soon arrived at Elimeleh’s hotel. By nightfall, 500 civilians were housed there. Many are expected to remain for at least a month.

Serving the People. The Fattal Hotels that have been hosting Israeli evacuees since October 7, 2023, were back in “business” when its Leonardo Negev hotel in Be’er Sheva welcomed evacuees following the devastating missile attacks from Iran that also hit the local Soroko hospital.(Photo: Aya Ben-Ezri)

The events of October 7 and the ensuing war with Hamas displaced over 200,000 Israelis, particularly from communities near Gaza and later from the north. Many were sheltered in hotels and short-term rentals. What began as temporary arrangements soon extended into months, testing the limits of logistics, finances, and emotional resilience.

Hoteliers found themselves in dual roles: offering standard hospitality services while simultaneously meeting humanitarian needs. Guest rooms were repurposed for long-term stays. Support services, mental health care, educational programming, childcare was coordinated in part by the government.

The hard-earned experience from those months proved invaluable when Iranian missile strikes targeted Israeli cities this June. Since the outbreak of Israel’s military campaign with Iran, the country’s tourism industry has faced a dramatic downturn. Regional tensions, heightened travel advisories, flight cancellations and general insecurity have nearly brought international tourism to a standstill. Even domestic tourism, especially in the north and along the southern coast has evaporated. In this vacuum, many hotels saw housing evacuees as both a moral imperative and a practical solution.

One person well-positioned to manage this challenge is Romi Gorodisky, Deputy General Manager of the Israel Hotel Association. Known as a behind-the-scenes powerhouse, Gorodisky has led crisis responses since 1996, when the IDF launched ‘Operation Grapes of Wrath’ against Hezbollah. On October 7, she helped establish a command center to oversee hotel placements for evacuees from both the Gaza and northern borders. When ‘Operation Rising Lion’ against Iran began, she launched a new center. “In the Iron Swords operation, launched following the October 7, 2023 massacre, everything was centrally coordinated via the National Evacuation, Care, and Casualties Authority (EWC); this time, the responsibility shifted to municipalities,” she says. 

While the previous efforts focused on peripheral communities, this round of war effected Israel’s urban centers. “Of the 15,000 evacuees, 10,000 were placed in hotels,” she explains. “The rest stayed with friends or family. We worked with municipalities to place people close to their original neighborhoods, preserving familiar environments and community continuity,” she says. Her team’s real-time ops room and inventory system – another possible Israeli innovation –  allowed for rapid, efficient placement of evacuees. Their proven-under-pressure methodology may well serve as a model for crisis management globally. It would also do the industry good by being studied at hotel schools.

New Home. Danny Sadeh (right), Yoav Yaari and Tyson the dog became literally overnight evacuees when an Iranian ballistic missile struck a building near their apartment in Tel Aviv causing widespread damage. (Photo: Danny Sadeh)

Among the displaced is 72-year-old Danny Sadeh, a former tourism correspondent for the Israeli daily, Yedioth Aharonot, who has reviewed hotels worldwide and locally for 20 years. He was evacuated just hours after a missile struck a building near his Tel Aviv apartment. “I found myself with my partner in a 14-square-meter room at the Brown Bobo Hotel, along with 100 other civilians,” he recounts. “The room is small, but the food is excellent and the staff is incredibly supportive.” Sadeh, who has stayed in over 250 hotels in 40 countries, says this stay is unlike any other. “This is the first time I’ve had to bring my dog. Running to the basement during sirens, especially when the elevators are full, isn’t pleasant. Much of our time is spent on paperwork related to our damaged apartment. This is not a hotel stay I ever imagined.”


Home away from Home.  Following the destruction of their home from an Iranian missile, the Brown Bobo urban hotel in Tel Aviv provides for evacuees this guest room. (Photo: Max Kovalsky)

So how are hoteliers in metropolitan Tel Aviv responding to this unexpected influx of guests?  Dr. Eran Ketter, Head of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Kinneret Academic College, offers some perspective:

“From January to April 2025, Tel Aviv hotels saw only 45% occupancy, due to the sluggish return of international tourism. The arrival of evacuees has improved this, offering hotels a much-needed revenue stream, at least temporarily.”

Rescuing Kids. Security and rescue personnel at the scene where an Iranian ballistic missile hit in Tel Aviv, June 22, 2025. (Photo: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.)

Still, challenges remain. Many Tel Avivian evacuees will struggle to find alternate housing  in a city where real estate values are comparable to major global hubs like Paris and New York. “However, the hospitality industry has adapted. In 2024, many hotels experimented with hybrid models, hosting evacuees alongside regular guests. While this brings operational challenges and concerns about guest experience, most people seem to understand the unique reality we’re living in. To avoid friction, larger hotel chains may designate specific properties for evacuees while reserving others for tourists. Flexibility will be key,’’ concludes Ketter.

Meeting Changing Needs. With war impacting negatively on international tourism, Israel’s “hospitality industry has adapted,” says Dr. Eran Ketter, Head of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Kinneret Academic College. (Photo:Tal Hefetz)

Ask any Israeli hotelier, and they’ll tell you:

“We long for peace and the day when tourism resumes in full force. Until then, we will continue to serve evacuees quietly, professionally, and with compassion.”



Feature picture: These were once Israeli Homes! Apartment complex in Tel Aviv following a direct missile strike launched from Iran on Sunday, June 22, 2025. (Photo: AP/Oded Balilty).



About the writer:

The writer, Motti Verses, is a Travel Flash Tips publisher. His travel stories are published on THE TIMES OF ISRAEL  https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/motti-verses/. And his hospitality analysis reviews on THE JERUSALEM POST, are available on his Linkedin page LinkedIn Israelhttps://il.linkedin.com › motti-verse…Motti Verses – Publisher and Chief Editor – TRAVEL FLASH TIPSAnd his hospitality analysis reviews on THE JERUSALEM POST, are available on his Linkedin page LinkedIn Israelhttps://il.linkedin.com › motti-verse…Motti Verses – Publisher and Chief Editor – TRAVEL FLASH TIPS.





While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).