Hof Ashkelon Is Their Home in the Shadow of Mortars from Gaza

The question comes up every year: Why do you stay in arguably the most dangerous corner of Israel, the settlements adjacent to the Gaza Strip?

It was the turn of eight women, social workers and trauma care first responders from the Hof Ashkelon region, to respond this year to the heart-rending, oft-repeated question that over a two-week period came from students of Westchester Hebrew High School, staff of Westchester Jewish Community Services, Congresswoman Nita Lowey and members of the Westchester families that hosted them for a fortnight.

Fourteen days of touring, eating and shopping their way through New York and Washington, DC, ended Sunday. But that’s not why Shalom Yisrael of Westchester brought them to America. The goal was to help the helpers maintain and refresh their balance in a turbulent part of the world, at perhaps its most hazardous, impulsive and unpredictable point.

The women are no different than the 16,000 other residents of Hof Ashkelon, a region along the Mediterranean coast south of Ashkelon and north of the Gaza Strip. They are mothers of three or four children. One is a grandmother. Social workers and office workers. Their children go to school. Some are in the military. A few are married. No different than any group of women from the 19 communities of Hof Ashkelon (or the 56 previous first responder women of the prior seven years hosted by Shalom Yisrael from the Sha’ar Hanegev and Eshkol districts that also border the Gaza Strip).

Except, when conflict arises others have the freedom to scoop up their families to leave for safer quarters. These women have made a commitment to stay on sacred ground and help others cope with the consequences of terror.

They are not right wing zealots. They want to live in peace with their neighbors. But they will not cede an inch more of territory. Two of them—Esti and Corinne—already had homes taken from them when Israel abandoned their settlements in the Sinai and Gaza in the hope that peace would ensue. Ceding land won’t happen again, not after Hamas turned their former communities into rocket and mortar launch pads.

Hof Ashkelon is a beautiful part of Israel. Its inhabitants are more than just neighbors. They are united in determination to work together to secure a stable environment for their families. Yet, they know when—not really if, just when—the random mortar attack escalates to full scale hostilities their homes and settlements will be uninhabitable because Hamas has inventoried rockets more powerful than before.

They stay for a simple, primal reason. It is their home.

If they give it up, the border region will become the next district down the road, subject to the same intermittent bombardments they sustain, they say. No. The border stays as is.

Everyday life in Hof Ashkelon is different than in the rest of Israel. Showers are shorter—nobody wants to get caught full of suds should an alarm be sounded. Long past the age when they shouldn’t, children wet their beds. While traveling inside cars, seat belts are not worn, windows are left open, radios are turned off—with seven to 15 seconds warning before a mortar can land, one doesn’t want to have to tussle with undoing a seat belt to exit a car and lie down by the roadside with hands wrapped around one’s head, or worry about reverberations from an explosion shattering glass, or miss an alarm because the radio drowned out its warning.

On the other hand, life in Hof Ashkelon is by choice, as is service as a first responder. Before joining the first responder team Inbal had to commit that while other residents might leave during a conflict she would stay. Shalhevet and her family moved from the city of Ashkelon to Zikim, a kibbutz on the coastline less than two miles from the northern border of the Gaza Strip. When her daughter clings to her leg and pleads with her to stay home, Idit must overcome a normal, motherly response. She must leave her home to help others deal with trauma.

It is difficult not to think of these women and their colleagues, Tsipi, Mali and Ronit, as heroes, but that is the last descriptor they would attach to themselves. They are, simply, part of a people trying to live in peace. Their job is but one performed in defense of their homeland.

They arrived back in Israel Monday afternoon. The Shalom Yisrael 2017 program has concluded but funding needs for this year and future programs remain. Please consider making a donation. 

Send your tax deductible donation to:

Shalom Yisrael

c/o Murray Forseter

11 Brad Lane

White Plains, NY 10605

The links below are to previous posts about visits sponsored by Shalom Yisrael and Gilda’s and my visit in 2011 to the Sha’ar Hanegev region along the northeastern edge of the Gaza Strip: 

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2016/05/along-border-with-gaza-life-is-anything.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2015/05/living-with-tension-along-troubled.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2014/05/ordinary-lives-lived-by-extraordinary.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2013/05/building-community-in-eshkol.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2012/05/rocket-women.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/07/gazing-over-gaza.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/05/well-deserved-rest-relaxation.html

Living With Tension Along a Troubled Border

They are flying Sunday night back to their homes 6,000 miles away, both literally and figuratively, home from the two-week respite they have enjoyed in America to their tension-filled existence living next to people who would like nothing better than to see them and their families breathe no more.

They will be returning to Israel, to kibbutzim and moshavim in the Eshkol region adjacent to the Gaza Strip where every day includes the unknown. Will a rocket be fired at them? Will terrorists emerge from an as yet undiscovered tunnel? And, the newest concern, will a sniper snuff out a life from a distant, camouflaged perch?

Each year for the past six, Westchester-based Shalom Yisrael has brought to America eight women engaged in first responder trauma care activities from the settlements near Gaza (for 23 prior years wounded veterans of the Israeli Defense Force and injured civilians were guests of the program). As with the previous five groups, this year’s crop of valiant women possess no extraordinary powers. Except, maybe, a determination to withstand the pressure and tension of living in a free-fire war zone simply because…it is their home. They are no more stoic about it than the residents of the canyons around Los Angeles who endure mudslides and fires only to rebuild. Or those along our shorelines who clean up after hurricanes ravage the coastlines they love. Or the hearty Plains people of tornado alley who emerge from underground shelters to resurrect their lives. It is their homes, and though Mother Nature might be the bane of most American disasters, fellow human beings traumatize the Israelis.

A two-year-old study on post traumatic stress disorder, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that Israelis, in general, recover from catastrophic events much quicker and easier than other nationalities, most likely because every day they are confronted by terror, or, at the very least, the thought of terror. If so, then the Shalom Yisrael guests would be at the top of the charts.

Fifteen seconds. If they are fortunate that is how long they have to seek shelter once an alarm sounds, if it sounds at all, before a deadly rocket lands. Some can run to government-funded safe rooms in their homes. Others, those living more than four and a half kilometers from Gaza, have safe rooms only if they paid for them on their own, at a cost of roughly $10,000. In those areas, the only government-provided security is a shelter for kindergarten children.

The Eshkol district, home to some 14,000 residents in 32 communities, important to Israel as the provider of 60% of the country’s produce, has suffered more rocket attacks than any other region. The vaunted Iron Dome defense system cannot protect them. They are too close to Gaza. Eshkol shares a 24-mile border with the Gaza Strip and a seven-mile border with Egypt.

And yet, like those before them, this year’s Shalom Yisrael guests would welcome a return to the pre-Hamas status of Gaza, a time when commerce and people flowed more freely across the border, when Palestinians worked in their fields, when they visited the beaches along the Mediterranean. They are less strident than the Israeli government and its leadership. 

It’s warm in the Middle East. As the climate heats up so often do cross-border tensions. Shortly after the 2014 Israeli women returned to their communities along the Gaza Strip all hell broke loose. Missiles and rockets dropped from the sky. From beneath the dirt of their farmlands terrorists emerged from tunnels. Among the visitors from Eshkol this year was the widow of one of the last two Israelis to die in the 2014 conflict, casualties of a rocket barrage one hour before the cease fire was to go into effect. Pain is still evident within her. But she perseveres. As does Israel. 

The links below are to previous posts about visits sponsored by Shalom Yisrael and Gilda’s and my visit in 2011 to the Sha’ar Hanegev region along the northern edge of the Gaza Strip: 

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2014/05/ordinary-lives-lived-by-extraordinary.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2013/05/building-community-in-eshkol.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2012/05/rocket-women.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/07/gazing-over-gaza.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/05/well-deserved-rest-relaxation.html 

Building Community in Eshkol

So I asked the woman, what was the news back home? What were the people feeling about the latest incidents?

Silly me. I thought Batia would tell me about reaction to the air strikes by Israel in Syria and the rise in tensions along Israel's borders. Instead, the news of the day, she told me, on the lips of all, was the report that one of the unmarried news anchors of Channel 1 was pregnant. As if that wasn't enough of a blockbuster, an anchor of Channel 2 was involved in a traffic accident. No word on her condition.

Life goes on. Amid the bombs and rockets, life goes on.

Batia was one of eight women brought to the United States by Shalom Yisrael to enjoy two weeks of rest and relaxation  from the daily stress of living and working in the Eshkol Regional Council in Israel, the most frequently attacked district of their country. Situated along the southern portion of the Gaza Strip, hugging the border with Egypt, the Eshkol area is home to some 13,000 residents. It was a mostly peaceful 1,000 square miles when the women chose to live there, not out of any Zionistic fervor but because Eshkol was beautiful and away from the hustle and bustle of city life in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. 

All that changed in 2005 after Israel withdrew from Gaza. After Hamas brutally ousted Fatah, mortar after mortar attack ensued. It was from the Eshkol region that the soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and held for five years in the Gaza Strip until released in 2011. The incursion into Israel last year by terrorists who stole two armored Egyptian vehicles occurred in the Eshkol region. Last November, when 1,200 rockets landed in all of Israel, 463 fell in Eshkol.

Some of the communities in Eshkol are so close to the border there isn’t time for an alarm to sound. Only the percussion of an exploding rocket or mortar startles residents into defensive activity. It is then that Batia and her colleagues spring into action as first responder trauma care providers. That’s not their primary jobs. Normally, they are social workers and psychologists in schools and welfare agencies, administering to the needs of the area’s population. When explosions break the tranquility of the day—a rocket landed Wednesday—they are transformed into first responder trauma care providers. 

By necessity, their discipline has been mostly self taught. As I wrote last year, when eight other first responders visited as part of the Shalom Yisrael program, the 32 communities of Eshkol (14 kibbutzim, 13 moshavim and five residential communities) are vulnerable in space and time. If their homes are within four and a half kilometers (2.7 miles) of the border they have been outfitted by the government with “safe rooms” built to withstand a direct hit. In communities more than four and a half kilometers from Gaza, no safe rooms are retrofitted to existing homes. The only government funded security is a shelter for kindergarten children. If they are lucky, they have, perhaps, 15 seconds to seek cover. 

Still, life goes on, as close to normal as the Israelis will permit. Tamar, a mother of three boys, 10, 5 and 3, and a 13 year old daughter, demonstrates her resiliency and determination by refusing to give in to fear. She purposely drives the road near the Gaza Strip rather than a route further away from danger. She will not allow the terrorists to alter her lifestyle. 

During their two week stay in New York and Washington, DC, which ended on Mother’s Day, the women visited many cultural and historic sites. And, of course, they shopped. But perhaps their most unique experience involved an aspect of Judaism they had never encountered. They are secular, for the most part, even to the edges of agnosticism because of the smothering influence the religious right has on the Israeli way of life. Their host families brought them to their respective synagogues on Saturdays, where they experienced prayer services far more inclusive and welcoming than any they knew of in Israel. Several received a joint aliyah, an honor of being called up to the Torah. And the Friday before they left they joined a demonstration in Madison Square in Manhattan in support of Women of the Wall, the Israeli group trying to gain equality for women at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Again, they received recognition from the New York community.

Community. Even though Eshkol is bombarded more than any other region, it doesn’t get the foreign press Sderot generates from attacks at the northern edge of Gaza. At times, the residents of Eshkol can feel isolated, alone. But two weeks of sharing and nurturing from heretofore strangers, two weeks of freedom from terror, recharged their internal batteries and revealed to them that their values were shared by a community across the ocean. Life can go on, knowing they are not alone.