Let us remember the people people who Israel defends when it acts against the Terrorstinians in Gaza.

Larissa Yaakobov stands before me sobbing. Her young daughter and nine-year-old son look on helpless. “I can’t do it anymore,” she says in broken Hebrew, “I can’t live here.” “Here” is Sderot, an Israeli border community adjacent to the Gaza Strip where Larissa has lived since she emigrated from Russia fifteen years ago. Larissa ’s son does not say a word. He hasn’t said much, she tells me, since the two watched a Qassam rocket slam into a woman a few feet away killing her instantly.

Less than twenty four hours before Israel unleashed its air-force on the Gaza Strip, I sat with four families in Sderot who have been injured and traumatized by Hamas rocket fire. In the hours before Israel ’s incursion, the mood was tense—even by Sderot standards. The streets were barren; everyone is bracing for new waves of rockets.

Sderot has no shortage of children’s playgrounds—twisty blue and yellow slides, swings and handle-bars. But children are no where to be seen. I do see plenty of bomb shelters. Every bus-stop in Sderot has been turned into a lime-colored enforced shelter with a single shrapnel-proof window. I enter one of these rooms to see what it is like inside. A car screeches to a halt and the driver dashes out to join me in the shelter. He is panicked and out of breath. Seeing me enter the shelter, he mistakenly thought a rocket was headed our way. I apologize sheepishly for the confusion as he returns to his car and speeds away.

I scan the looming gray clouds above for any indication of incoming rockets or mortars. A single fish-shaped white balloon sitting high off in the distance is my sole source of comfort. It is the Israeli armyÂ’s preferred method of identifying incoming rockets. It triggers an alarm which gives residents a few seconds to find shelter. I cannot shake the feeling that at any moment a rocket will fall from the sky and strike me directly. I note the location of every bomb shelter along the way in case I must make a mad dash to safety.

This feeling of unremitting and ubiquitous terror is the norm in a community of 20,000 residents.

Remember -- these are people in a town that is indisputably a part of Israel. After all, it is part of the pre-1967 territory of the Jewish state. It was missile barrages against Sderot and other Israeli towns near Hamas-controlled Gaza that led to the blockade of Gaza -- and despite the cease-fire that began six months ago, the attacks from Gaza continued. Homes and schools are regularly hit by the unguided missiles lobbed across the border between Israel and the Terrorstinian Anarchy. Yet somehow the world community expects Israel to continue to "take it" rather than act to root out the terrorist threat from within Hamas-controlled territory.

Pray for the people of Sderot, who have endured eight years of aggression from within Gaza -- and for the success of the military operations designed to protect them and their fellow Israelis from Hamas-sponsored terror attacks.

Posted by: Greg at 09:12 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 546 words, total size 4 kb.