By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Fifteen seconds. That’s the time frame residents in the Israeli town of Sderot live by. When the alarm sounds, they have 15 seconds to run, jump from their cars, whisk away babies, or crawl out of bed and scramble to bomb shelters before a rocket hits. For seven years, this is how the city of 20,000 alongside the border of the Gaza strip has lived — or, in some cases, died: under the threat of Kassam rockets regularly launched onto the other side of the border wall.
One question that Yafa Arberboy, who came to Seattle in March as a guest of the StandWithUs Israel advocacy organization, received from nearly everyone she spoke to was: If the people live through this hell day in and day out, why do they stay?
“I don’t want to sit in this chair a year from now and [have] you ask, ‘Why don’t I leave Tel Aviv?’” Arberboy said. “We have been waiting 2,000 years to have Israel, and we don’t want anyone to kick us out.”
Arberboy works in the Sderot office of the Israeli nonprofit Paamonim, which was originally founded to provide struggling Israelis with small loans at little or no interest. It is funded entirely by donations, most of which come from within Israel.
In April, 2007, however, Arberboy approached Uriel Lederberg, Paamonim’s chairman, about changing the Sderot office’s mission.
“We decided to establish a project in Sderot to help families who have financial crises because of rockets,” she said.
The program is administered almost entirely by volunteers, who go into recipients’ homes and counsel the residents on financial issues. The organization also provides free legal assistance related to the bombings and connects people who want or need psychiatric help to resources that can work with them.
The families that Arberboy and her volunteers counsel ask for money and assistance, but none, she said, have ever said they wanted to leave. Still, staying for the long haul means enduring a lifestyle that most anyone would not consider normal.
“Two months ago there were 50-60 Kassams a day,” said Arberboy. “Really, there is no normalcy in Sderot. This is a tragedy for children, for families.
“All the Kassam children, ([that’s] what I call them), are the future of Israel. Maybe 10 years from now someone will do a study of living in close quarters,” she added. “A child has to listen to the radio to see if there’s school today, and then whether to walk or to ride the bus.”
At least one study has been done to document effects of the shelling: According to a 2006 six-year study from the Tel Hai College, 33 percent of the city’s children suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
One boy Arberboy described, when he walks down the street, “has to think every step where the shelters are,” and runs from one to the next in the event of a rocket strike.
Many suffer physical injuries not from the bombs themselves, but from having to escape them. Such injuries Arberboy has seen have included lost teeth and broken eyeglasses from diving into the shelters. And then there’s the aftershock.
“Hamas knows, after the boom you have to get out” of the shelter, Arberboy said, so they wait a few minutes after the first one, and then launch a second one.
Keeping safe from falling bombs means compromising safety and comfort in other areas as well. Drivers, once they cross into town, Arberboy said, are not supposed to wear seatbelts, since unbuckling takes a precious chunk of that 15-second warning. Residents must always keep the windows in their homes open — even in cold winters such as the one that has just passed — so they can hear the alarms. And with the average salary in the city at less than $1,000 per month — and with higher-than-expected heating and grocery bills — the expenses are taking their toll as well.
The Israeli government has stepped in with assistance, but that helps mostly with rebuilding homes damaged by the shelling. Since late last year, large organizations such as the Jewish Agency for Israel have begun pouring money into the city as well. But cleaning up the emotional damage is a different story.
“The government does its job if the house is broken,” Arberboy said. But “there are children in Sderot who haven’t seen a playground since they were born. They have never played outside.”
Only recently has the plight of Sderot’s residents become better-known outside of its immediate environs. Last May, Russian-Israeli billionaire Arcady Gaydamak bussed hundreds of residents to hotels in Beer Sheva and Eilat for several days, but that effort was short-lived.
In March, presidential candidate Sen. John McCain visited Sderot on a Mideast fact-finding trip.
“That is not a way for people to live,” McCain told the JTA news service during his tour of Sderot. “No nation in the world can be attacked incessantly and have its population killed and intimidated without responding. That’s one of the first obligations of government, to provide security for its citizens.”
An incursion into Gaza weeks before McCain’s visit, following a rocket attack on Ashkelon, brought worldwide condemnation and did not result in a lessening of the frequency or quantity of Kassam rockets sent into Sderot.
McCain said the violence “brings more into focus the absolute requirement to pursue the peace process.”
Though many families have permanently left, Arberboy said the families she has met with have been resolute in their desire to stay.
“Not even one family has told me, ‘Yafa, please help me to leave Sderot.’ This is our life.”
Paamonim accepts donations at 866-435-2200. All donations are tax deductible. For further information, visit www.paamonim.com.