Photo: Anav Silverman, Sderot Media Center

There have been many questions bouncing around in the media this week. Why is Israel at war? Why are there so many Hamas men dead? Why are Hamas firing rockets at Israel? A war of resistance, some say. Israel is holding a siege against Gaza. Palestinians are starving and suffering.

And who is to blame?

Israel of course. At least that is the conclusion that emerges within the headlines of AP and Reuters news reports, European news media, and countless Internet blogs on the current fighting.

For those who seek objective answers to those questions, the unfolding tragedy of Sderot and the western Negev must be taken into account.

There has been a war of terror on Sderot from more than eight years now. During this time period, an estimated 8,000-10,000 Palestinian rockets have been fired at Sderot and the western Negev from the Gaza Strip. There was not one serious long-term military response from Israel to the rocket attacks during that time besides the closing of crossings and checkpoints.

In the meantime, hundreds of Israelis homes and properties have been destroyed, over 700 Israelis wounded, and thousands psychologically traumatized by Palestinian rocket fire. Periodically, schools in Sderot and the western Negev have been forced to close, as normal life cruelly transforms into a marathon of 15 seconds, (the number of seconds one has to escape to shelter when the Tzeva Adom, or Red Color alert is set off by an impending Palestinian rocket).

Sderot and western Negev residents have been forced to sit and endure Palestinian rocket terror to the point that there is now a generation of Sderot children who are showing signs of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as early as age three. (more…)

It was Tuesday, December 30. We had been running in and out of the bomb shelter behind our Sderot Media Center office throughout the day, as Palestinian rockets exploded all around. Usually, when we enter the shelter, it is just us–the SMC office staff–and sometimes a few strangers off the street. This time, when we raced into the shelter, there was a group of Arab construction workers inside who had made it before us.

Ironically, the Arab construction workers were working on building a new bomb shelter nearby. In any case, there were two groups of us, Israelis and Arabs facing each other, when an unarmed Israeli soldier ran into the shelter and stood between us–right in the middle!

The situation was so ridiculous that one of my co-workers burst out saying–”now we can all talk about peace!–we’re all in here together.”

The Arab construction workers looked at us and we looked at them and just burst out laughing. The tension of the day was broken for just a few seconds.

We ended up talking about the rocket attacks and how frightening the day had been. One of the construction workers proudly told us that the bomb shelters would stand against those Palestinian rockets without any problem. “The rocket is nothing compared to this shelter,” he told us in Hebrew.

After we waited for the seconds to be over and the rocket to explode, we said goodbye to our new friends, the Arab construction workers and the quiet Israeli soldier, in a day filled with the terror and absurdities of war.