Living with Rockets: Sderot in spades - a city of hearts

I spent the day in Sderot yesterday -- a city of 25,000 very frightened people. Many throughout Israel, and even abroad, are doing whatever they can to support this beleaguered city, and I had the opportunity to escort a family from New Jersey who came to Sderot to deliver stuffed animals to young children in pre-schools in the city. I had been in Sderot quite a few times in the past year, and while I was able to sympathize with the people there -- and even admire them greatly -- I was never able to identify with the fear. Yesterday, that all changed.

Our first stop was the home of Nati and Nana Engel. Nati suffered critical injury in a Kassam attack in June 2006. As his recovery has progressed, his wife Nana has become OneFamily's fulltime volunteer coordinator in Sderot. She knows everyone in town, has personal experience in what each victim's family must contend with, and is easily one of the most resourceful and matter-of-fact people I have ever met. As we came into her cozy and well-kept home -- 50 meters from where a rocket landed just three weeks ago -- she told us that there had been two rockets already that morning, and that one of them had hit the house of a young couple and their 7-month old daughter. They didn't know if anyone had been hurt.

After Nati told the visitors of his experiences and Nana explained how she works closely with OneFamily to help the families in the community, we traveled to the Ofe Kor meat packing plant. On November 21, 2006, a Kassam rocket slammed into the plant, killing one employee who had been rushing his co-workers into a protected room. He was the only one who didn't manage to get inside before the explosion. The manager of the plant hosted us for lunch, and during the meal, he told us that the house that had been hit belongs to his niece. The baby had been sleeping in a ground-floor room and was not hurt, but they took her to the hospital for a hearing test to make sure that her hearing had not been damaged in the explosion.

He then escorted us to the house itself. We arrived at the same time as a camera crew from Channel 2 in New York, in Israel to cover President Bush's visit. The reporter interviewed several of our guests, since they are from the New York area. We were able to witness the damage caused by the missile, which in this case, was thankfully not major.

We then traveled to a preschool nearby to deliver the toys to the children. The visitors spoke with each of the excited children, and were able to hear from this group of 3-year-olds what they think when they hear the "Code Red" alarm, and what they do to protect themselves. "I am courageous, look at my muscles," shouted one boy, while posing for the visitors.

"So what do you think of the 'Code Red'," he was asked.

"You know," he answered, pointing upwards. "On top of this roof there are monsters. I'm going to go and throw them all into a cage and get them out of here."

"And when you hear the alarm?"

"Then I run into the other room like this," he said, jumping over the doorstep into the protected room of the preschool.

The preschool teacher, Zehava, told us that it is often very difficult for them after an alarm. The children are not yet equipped to handle the tension, and the teachers are constantly trying to find new ways to alleviate their fears.

"But we are afraid too," she said. "My brother's house was hit almost a year ago, and he was badly burned. I live across the street from him, and I saw the fire. He is getting better now, but you never know where the next one will hit or who will be affected."

When we asked who her brother is, and she told us his name, we realized that not only is OneFamily already helping him with financial support and encouragement, but in fact, he was our planned next stop. As we walked into Yaniv's home, he greeted us warmly and invited us to have a cold drink while he related his story.

He had been upstairs in his home when the alarm sounded. His wife and infant daughter rushed down into the protected room, but Yaniv didn't make it that quickly. The rocket hit the front garden of the home, severely damaging the front wall, blowing in the front door, and spraying shrapnel all over the area. One piece of shrapnel hit a heating gas canister outside the house causing the gas to escape. Another piece rolled along the stonework at the front doorstep, causing sparks. The leaking gas exploded into the house, completely destroying what was left of the front wall, causing serious damage to the inside of the front of the house, and seriously burning Yaniv as he came running down the stairs. "I heard my wife screaming, and I thought she was still in the living room, so I kept running downstairs to help her. If I had gone back up, I might not have been hurt at all."

Yaniv followed the sounds of the screams and realized that they were already in the safe room. When he came in, the house and the room were full of smoke, and his wife was lying on top of the baby covering her. Yaniv opened the window and smashed his elbow through the shades so that they could escape the room. "I didn't realize then that my elbow had been severely burned," he says.

He got his wife and daughter out of the house and then climbed out himself. "My shirt tore on the edge of the window, and that's when my wife realized how badly I had been burned."

But still he did not stop. He dragged his wife and daughter over several fences until they reached the cross street down the block, where they encountered the security forces. "They told me to look at myself, and that's when I realized the damage that had been done."

Through a miraculous and almost heroic recovery, Yaniv has been able to regain almost the full use of his arm and leg, and says that his belief in Divine Providence has been strengthened greatly. "Everything that happens is for the good. Today, I have decided to walk with my head up and to overcome my injuries. I have lost a lot, but I have gained much more. And when people see me, and they think that after all I have gone through I can still hold my head high, smile, laugh, and enjoy life,
that gives other people the strength to hold their heads a little higher also."

From Yaniv's house, we went to the Sderot police station, where we were shown racks upon racks of spent Kassam shells. There are literally hundreds of shells sitting there on display, each one of them labeled with the date and place where it landed. And these are just from the past 15 months or so. The rest have already been removed to storage.

While we were looking at the shells, including the one that had hit the house that morning, we heard the repeated cry of "Code Red" from loudspeakers throughout the city.

We all ran inside for cover. Several of the visitors immediately took out Tehillim -- books of Psalms -- and started uttering prayers for the safety of the people in the city. After about 20 seconds, the all clear was sounded, and we started to relax a little. The prayers continued, and several of us began watching how the police officers at the duty desk handled the emergency. One officer was controlling the incoming information, repeating out loud everything she heard, while another was directing officers, ambulance crews and firefighters to the scene of the rocket strike a few blocks away. At one point, one of them shouted the address, and we quickly realized that the preschool teacher's house had been hit. We had spoken to her barely two hours earlier, and then visited her brother across the street from her house. We had been right there half an hour ago, and now emergency crews were converging on the same spot.

We immediately called Yaniv to see if he was okay. He told us that he was fine. He was shaking, but he was okay. His sister's house across the street had been hit, but the missile again did thankfully little damage. It blew off some of the roof shingles, but nothing else it seemed, and Zehava had not yet come home. No one was hurt. But Zehava had described it best earlier in the day. "You never know where the next one will hit or who will be affected." And today, she has to allay the fears of the two dozen children in her care.

We began to breathe a sigh of relief when the alarm sounded again. Three more missiles had been fired at Sderot. Several more police officers went running for their cars and left, not even knowing where they were going, but knowing they had to get there fast. One of them radioed into the dispatcher for directions.

"Turn right on Yechezkel street, go past Shula's house, then turn left, go past Itzik's house, and then take the right after the carpenter's house. That's the street, number 18."

For a minute, I just stood there. Then I started laughing. As I explained to our visitors what the dispatcher had just said, they smiled as well. The police officers in the room just looked at us.

With all of the fear and the constant tension, Sderot is a city where everyone knows everyone else. It is a place where it is easier to give directions by pointing out people's houses than by using street names. It is a city where someone like Nana Engel can visit Yaniv or Zehava and they know that whatever she says is from the heart and is only meant to help. And it is a city where the idea that we are all One Family is the principal way of life.

Yehuda Poch is Director of Communications for the OneFamily Fund -- the central organization providing comprehensive assistance to victims of terrorism. More information can be found at www.OneFamilyFund.org