ENGAGE - For a Secure Israel (EFSI): A First Hand Account of Being Mortar'd

(Pointed out by Yeranen Yaakov)

Please, read the whole thing here (click here). A poignant excerpt below...

Maybe I’m dumb. But I just don’t get it. Why are they still shelling us? The explanation has always been because we’re in their territory. We’ve moved into their homes and they want us to get out, so they try to kill us. But we’re freaken LEAVING. The government has decided to evacuate every single Jew by force from the entire Gaza strip. SO WHY DO THEY STILL WANT TO KILL US? What explanation can be provided now? Since Thursday night, the shelling has not let up. We came home at 2:00 a.m. to find our guests at the kitchen table, pale and frightened. The woman had awakened to the sound of nearby explosions. We explained that it was nothing, that they were always sending mortars, that the roof of the house was reinforced and protected.

Yes, yes, it’s all fine and dandy. All Friday, there were announcements on the community loudspeakers. “Everyone is to stay indoors. Make sure to stay in protected rooms.” Then 45 minutes later, the all-clear “Back to routine,” would be announced, and you would hear explosions around you as they were saying it. Our guests fled to Shirat Hayam, a nearby tiny settlement on the beach; the kids were frightened by the “firecrackers” and the wife just couldn’t get herself together. But I was cool as a cucumber.

I was walking down the street to do laundry, on the phone with Eli who had gone with the mitzvah tank to army bases half an hour away, and a car was behind me broadcasting the “Get Shelter” message. I would have ignored it. But Eli shouted at me to run, run straight to the closest building, the Beis Medrash, next door to my house. I was taking it easy but Eli was freaking out at me, pleading, “I don’t hear you rushing. Hurry, run, please!”

I heard the mortars falling around me. But what’s the big deal? This is life in Gush Katif. I remembered my reaction to the first close mortar I heard, just 3 days ago. Wow, how quickly one gets use to danger. So this is how kids learn to live under fire.

With Eli still begging on the line, I enter the Beis Medrash. I close the door, sit down. I look out the window. I hear an explosion. I see clouds of smoke and debris rising from my house, not ten feet away. Cool as a cucumber.

Later, Eli comes back with the guys and they are all excited. Everyone’s taking pictures, congratulating me. The Rabbi and his wife come over to make sure we’re okay. She kisses me on the cheek, “Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem.” We are all milling about outside, enjoying the warm sun, the crisp breeze. It is such a beautiful day.
...
...And I say, What’s the big deal? So a couple of shingles cracked. These mortars are nothing.

But they're not nothing. Thursday night, a 22 year old woman was sitting outside with her boyfriend. She's dead. He's critically injured.

And why? Why do the Arabs in Chanyunas, a village not half a kilometer from my house, spend their time trying to hurt us? Bile rises in my throat as I think about the liberal response I would give a month ago. They’ve proven us wrong; the shelling now can have no political purpose, no practical aim...