Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Under the Kassam Moon

One of the consequences of the Israeli Gaza Disengagment has been the daily Kassam rocket attacks originating from the Gaza Strip into Israel proper. Treppenwitz hits another one out of the park for this truly horrific story of an Israeli mother living under the siege of Sderot:

As she began speaking, you could tell from her tone that she felt she was explaining something that should have been fairly obvious... as though she was telling a child why the sun came up in the morning.

She patiently explained that there wasn't enough room in their 'armored room' * for her entire family. It went without saying, she continued, that she and her husband slept outside the armored room. But they (thank G-d) have a big family, and each evening she struggled with the terrible decision of which children would sleep unprotected in their bedrooms... and whether to spread them out around the house or put all of her 'precious eggs' in one basket.

Like a kick in the gut, it suddenly dawned on me that this poor woman is forced to play a daily shell game with her precious children, knowing that if (G-d forbid) one of the dozens of missiles fired each day lands on her house, she will have to live the rest of her life with the consequences of her unspeakable choice.

I cannot imagine living a life being forced every night to chose which of my children may potentially live or die. I cannot imagine having to look into the eyes of my child and explain that tonight they live by the grace of G-d. Read the full post here.

2 comments:

treppenwitz said...

Thank you for mentioning my post. Your closing paragraph was extremely poignant. I wish I'd written it.

K. Shoshana said...

Your more than welcome. I am a big fan of Treppenwitz and read regularly. Your post personalized the very human cost of living under seige that is so often lost when the media gives the tally of rockets fired in any given day.