Sderot residents tell local audience of toll of daily rocket attacks
Mor Yehudai, left, and Itai Avitan flank Robert Socolof, regional
director of the Jewish Agency for Israel, as they address the Women's
Department of UJC MetroWest NJ June 14. Photo by Robert Wiener
Mor Yehudai was serving at an army base in Israel two years ago when she received a call from her 15-year-old sister in Sderot.
"She called to tell me that she's scared to sleep at home," said Yehudai, one of two Sderot residents traveling to Jewish communities coast-to-coast to tell their stories of life in the beleaguered town. "I said, ‘What are you talking about? It's our home. Why are you scared?'
"She said, ‘No, you don't know, but missiles have been falling in our neighborhood all week, and I'm scared that a missile might fall on our house.'
"I told her, ‘You're being crazy. Go to sleep.'"
But her sister persisted and, unbeknownst to Yehudai, convinced her parents to move their family that night to an older sister's home in Beersheva.
At 7 a.m. the next morning, Yehudai received a call from a newsman who told her a missile had hit their home a few minutes earlier. "I hung up the phone and thought, ‘This is too crazy to be happening,'" said Yehudai.
She and fellow Sderot resident Itai Avitan spoke on June 14 on the Aidekman campus in Whippany, at the annual meeting of the Women's Department of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey.
Their visit to the United States is sponsored by a partnership of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the World Zionist Organization. Its purpose is to show a human side to the security situation in Sderot. The southern town has faced a barrage of Kassam rocket attacks from Palestinian militants in Gaza, just across the border.
When Yehudai spoke of the attack on her house, her audience gasped.
"I turned on the TV and saw in the news my house totally destroyed," the 21-year-old continued. "I thought, ‘If my parents and my sister are not at home, this cannot be too good.'"
When neither of her parents answered the phone, she said, "immediately I thought the worst has happened. Twenty minutes later I got a call from my older sister. She tells me, ‘Everything is fine.' My parents and my sister had slept at her house."
The army gave Yehudai emergency leave.
"When I got home, I looked at the house and everything was almost totally destroyed. I thought, ‘Oh, my God. What if my parents and sister had slept here?' I would not have a family today."
Like Yehudai, 23-year-old Avitan is a lifelong resident of Sderot. But rather than telling what he called "horror stories," he said that it was "the small things in life that created the big changes" in his life and that of his hometown.
Avitan, a college student majoring in graphic arts, said he and his neighbors have to line their bathroom floor with towels so they do not slip and fall when they race out of the shower to take shelter 15 seconds after an alarm sounds.
"A neighbor of mine broke her back when she slipped," he said. "She was holding her baby."
Avitan said that people drive with their car windows open, despite the heat, and keep the radio off, lest they miss an alarm. At home, they no longer listen to loud music.
"I cannot recall the last time my mother had an argument with my brother about the volume of the music he hears," he said.
Despite the siege, in an interview with NJ Jewish News following his speech, Avitan said he is staying put.
"I've lived there for 23 years," he said "Why should we move? This is our home. This is the place I love. If everyone moved out, the missiles would be launched toward Ashkelon, then toward Ashdod, then toward Tel Aviv, and then toward Jerusalem."
Yehudai spoke of the crumbling economy in the already struggling development town.
"Small businesses are getting financial help because the economy is in a very, very bad way," said Yehudai, the daughter of a car mechanic. "Nobody is going out. We don't leave the house unless we have to. We don't go out for coffee. We don't go out shopping. The businesses in Sderot are basically crumbling."
With the assistance of UJC MetroWest NJ and other Jewish federations, the Jewish Agency for Israel has provided programs that allow children to leave Sderot for a few days to attend camp. "That helps them a lot," said Avitan. "It is refreshing for them.
In addition, money from American Jews is helping the people of Sderot beef up security systems and protect their damaged economy.
"For the past several years, the Jewish Agency has been giving $1,000 micro-loans to businesses," said Robert Socolof, the Jewish Agency regional director who is accompanying the two young people on their two-week, six-state speaking tour.
"No bank with any fiduciary responsibility would continue to handle loans to the guy with the dry goods store who could get blown up tomorrow," he explained. "It doesn't make sense from a business standpoint, but what can you do? You have to support the people in this town."
Although the missile attacks have plagued their lives for the past seven years, "there are children in Sderot who know nothing else," said Avitan. "I don't want to think they will grow up in an environment of hate."
Despite his residence in a city under siege, he still has compassion for many of the Palestinians a short distance away in Gaza.
"Living under occupation is not the easiest thing to do. That I can understand," he said. "But they attack civilians. The majority of the attacks are between 6 and 9 a.m., when adults go to work and children go to school. The idea behind them is to maximize injuries. There are no military bases in my hometown. The attacks are against civilians."
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