'The attack has changed me'

Tali Gilberg is mourning the life she used to know.

After growing up in Livingston, New Jersey, the 26-year-old moved four years ago to Kibbutz Erez, a community in southern Israel that was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Today, she grieves for the friends, communities and relationships she relished. And she mourns the dreams she harbored for a peaceful coexistence with her neighbors, residing less than a mile away in Gaza.

Gilberg is among the roughly 240,000 Israelis who have been displaced from their homes by the terror attack and the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which has killed about 20,000 Palestinians.

She is living with friends in a house south of Jerusalem, where she hopes she will have fewer nightmares. Like many of her former neighbors, she is unsure what her future holds.

"The attack has changed me," Gilberg said. "I'm still healing. I still haven't fully accepted that I'm a refugee now. I don't know when I can go back to my home."

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