JERUSALEM, Israel — Shari Robins is a professional tour guide in Jerusalem. She's lived there nearly 40 years and raised two daughters, with the youngest now serving in the Israeli Military.
She is also the first cousin of 3News Senior Health Correspondent Monica Robins.
Shari is not a politician or a military analyst; she's a mom and a resident living in a country at war. As a tour guide, she knows the history of the region, and she's experienced terrorist threats, military actions, and fragile peace for decades.
But what happened on Oct. 7 was unlike anything she'd seen before.
"Oct. 7 really is going to always be remembered as the day where more Jews were killed in any single day since the time of the Holocaust," she lamented. "Some Americans are saying this is Israel's 9/11. ... Well, if you want to actually translate [population] numbers, that would be the equivalent of 44,000 Americans."
Watch the full interview below:
She also expressed dismay at what she sees as unfair criticism of Israel's need to respond to Hamas' attacks, something that was not necessarily present following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon more than two decades ago.
"This is not our 9/11, and the reason for that is no one ever questioned the United States going after the perpetrators, and we are being challenged," she said. "This is ultimate evil."
Despite the brutality from Hamas, Shari still has sympathy for Palestinian civilians in Gaza, thousands of whom have now died as Israel bombs the Gaza Strip and prepares for a ground offensive.
"I would like to see Americans, Israelis, Jews, the entire world protesting together to say, 'Free Gaza from Hamas. Free the Palestinians of Hamas,'" she explained. "Because they are not representing all Palestinians, and those innocent Palestinian lives? That hurts me, too."
Shari adds that President Joe Biden's visit and the subsequent U.S. support has been incredibly uplifting, but she hopes people understand this issue is not political. To her, its purely about hate and destroying Israel and the Jewish people, and she fears it will not stop there.
