No other country would allow this to go on. Six years. Thousands of rockets. Daily barrages. Never knowing when you’re going to finally be safe.
A half hour later, two reporters from Tel Aviv arrived. They asked Natasha if she could take them to the places that were hit by Kassams. I asked to go along, and we shortly arrived to the first location – a house which was hit directly. I followed the gaze of the crowds of people outside, and saw that the kassam had completely demolished one side of the house. A man emerged from inside, and we all rushed over to him. I was surprised by how calm he was, until someone shown a light over his face. I had to hold my breath to keep from gasping when I saw his bleeding eyes. Or, what I thought was bleeding – red welts had formed across them, he seemed unable to focus on anything. He stared at nothing for a few moments, and then said seemingly to no one – “If you hear tseva adom, you can go here†and pointed, without averting his blank gaze, to a small cement wall behind him. We were eventually able to gently coax some answers out of him. It was not his house, it was his sister’s. “She was standing in the kitchen†he paused “her body was completely torn by shrapnels…I don’t know how she is.†Natasha probed further about the children. “Three of them were in the basement – baruch hashem – but the fourth, I think he may have been with her. The ambulance took them both away – I don’t know how they are,†he repeated. Another man pulled me aside to show me where a woman had been standing, only a few meters from the house. She had witnessed the entire scene, and had collapsed in shock. He then pointed to a truck parked nearby, with a large hole in the back windshield where a shrapnel had flown through. The shrapnel had missed the woman’s face by mere centimeters.
Six years of bombardments. More than 1,300 missiles were fired after Israel left Gaza.
Perhaps Israel needs a missile-proof buffer zone.