Melanie Preston

After 11 months and 27 days of relentless struggle in a very difficult language, an even more challenging culture, a bureaucratic system that makes little sense even to those born here - all in the most expensive country on the planet - a young guy who lives in my building decided not to charge me the 150 shekels ($50) we'd agreed on to go and get me a clothes dryer from across town and carry it into my apartment.

Because just like in the early days when your grandparents came here from all over and built these communities that bring you so much pride - that is us, now. The world is squeezing us out - we felt it out there - the hatred of us and the hatred of you and the hatred of this tiny but incredible little country, the land of which is taking the impact of ballistic missiles - and we came - and we are staying.

There were 100 party goers whose fate did not become death and did not become enslavement - and that is because they crossed paths with a 24-year-old man named Ran Gvili - a man who was lying at home injured that morning when the worst attack in modern Israel's history broke out.