As the sirens blared, Jules Shalhov couldn’t believe what was flying over him: a rocket was flying overhead, set to land somewhere in Israel, as he raced into his bomb shelter.

“A home got hit in Ramat Gan. Which is like 10 minutes away from where I live,” he said.

Shalhov just graduated college and is moving back to Manhattan. He had been set to leave Israel after a short trip to the country his dad is from.

But at the airport in Tel Aviv came an announcement.

“They announce over the loudspeaker the terminal is closed, the Israeli airspace is closed, please leave,” he said.

Israel had bombed Iran and now, Israel, expecting retaliatory strikes, closed the airspace indefinitely.

“A lot of people in the airport trying to get out all at the same time,” he recalled in a zoom interview with NY1.

And then he was stuck. One day, Shalhov described a drive home from the beach, cut short by sirens.

“We heard explosions behind us,” he said.

So they pulled into a gas station, shuttled into a bomb shelter with dozens of other strangers.

“People were chatting, talking like it was ordinary life for them,” he said.

But not for him. And not for for Benjamin Eshaghian.

“In New York it is very easy to see issues going on in Israel, and international, and you can just swipe up out of social media and they disappear, but this time it was real and you felt them,” he said, hours after returning to Long Island. 

Eshaghian said this was his first trip to Israel through the organization Birthright.

The first week of the trip was normal. Then, the conflict with Iran changed everything.

“I would wake up to my friend shaking my arm like, ‘They they sent more missiles,’” he said.

Eshaghian said his group was holed up in its hotel in Jerusalem for days beyond what their trip was supposed to be.

As Birthright worked to find a way for them to get out of the country, he said they’d sleep during the day to prepare for the seemingly routine 3 a.m. sirens.

“Once or twice the building did shake which was a little scary,” he said.

Eshaghian was stuck in Israel for four days, before Birthright got his trip, and many others, on a cruise ship to Cyprus. That led to a flight to Greece. But it took days for that to happen.  

He landed at JFK Thursday morning.

“The emotions were very overwhelming just because it had taken so long to get home and we didn’t know when it was going to happen,” he said, describing the moment he saw his family at the airport for the first time.

Shalov's journey out of Israel was hectic, too, he said. He spent days trying to get onto a boat to Cyprus, but he was working alone — not with the help of a national organization.

He said he called every single company he could find, and that prices were astronomical.

Eventually he found a captain willing to take him, and he split the cost with a family looking to leave Israel as well.

He said it was basically a sailboat, and the journey to Cyprus took about 30 hours.

He took videos at night that showed rockets being launched towards Israel that flew over them.

Shalhov is now in Portugal, with friends on a trip to celebrate their college graduations.

But he said the experience in Israel has left him shaken.

“I’m still in Israel mode so, like, we’re in a hotel. There’s a train running outside. I realized I was flinching,” he said.

He realizes he's luckier than other tourists, who remain stuck in Israel.

Shalhov said 40 people, mainly Americans, have reached out to him after seeing him post about his journey on social media, asking how he got out because they could not find a way to leave Israel.

A spokesperson for Rep. Nicole Malliotakis confirmed five constituents had reached out to her office and that they are working with the State Department "to give guidance and information on evacuation procedures and routes."