Soldier loses leg in rocket attack

Nov. 30, 2008

Just a month ago I was in southern Israel visiting a kibbutz, Nahal Oz, which borders the Gaza Strip. Standing by the tree line, which shields the kibbutz homes from direct line of sight from Gaza, I could clearly see Palestinian apartment buildings and minarets. In this photo of Yankale Cohen, kibbutz manager, the Gaza skyline is visible in the distance.

Miraculously, this farming community had been free of human tragedy since rocket attacks began in 2000. However, the rockets have cost the kibbutz 15 percent of its arable land due to its proximity to the border, the military's ban on pesticide planes and the justifiable fear of the workers to get within sniper range.

That all changed on Friday night though when a mortar shell landed near a military post on the kibbutz and injured eight soldiers. One, 21-year-old Noam Nakash, lost his right leg. Shelling from the Gaza Strip continued through the weekend.

In light of these events, here is an updated take on an old story. I was at Nahal Oz in June, before the cease-fire was reached, and again just a month ago with a film crew.

Post Traumatic Stress

While most rockets have missed Israeli homes, the trauma of each launch is finding its way into the lives of many Israelis in the Gaza border region right along with the shrapnel.

“Fifty percent of the people are suffering from trauma, usually called post traumatic, but it’s not ‘post’ yet,” said Chen Abrahams, a social worker. “It has been like this for eight years.”

Abrahams lives at Kibbutz Kfar Aza where a neighbor was killed earlier this year in plain sight of many residents. As a social worker in Sderot, Abrahams sees many cases of trauma to varying degrees, but says that every child has its own manifestation of anxiety.

And she is not immune either: Her 8-year-old son sleeps in bed with Abrahams and her husband and has been doing so for months now. “You can imagine what that does to the relationship between me and my husband,” she said.

Parents also grapple with issues like whether to let their children play outside, or sometimes, even whether to go to school. Schools have begun to make a game out of running to the shelter since sirens go off frequently.

The Red Alert system gives a 15-second warning to residents when a rocket has been launched. But that doesn’t help everyone.

“Deaf people don’t hear the alert,” noted Chezy Deutsch, director of international relations for the army’s Home Front Command.

Deutsch and his team go door to door mapping out residents with specific needs. They distribute beepers to the deaf and advise caretakers on how to move the elderly and immobile in case of an emergency.

According to a research document published by the Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War, 90 percent of residents have seen or heard a rocket hit, while 65.3 percent personally knew someone hurt in an attack. Almost half of Sderot residents know someone who had been killed in an attack and 74.2 percent of children in Sderot from ages 7 to 12 suffer from phobias.

"It's possible to see a growing deterioration in the coping mechanism of Sderot residents," Dr. Roni Berger told the Israeli website Ynet. "Today, with the renewed rocket fire, I predict a lot more problems than in the past."

On top of that, the feeling of abandonment is rampant. Sderot Mayor-elect David Buskila slammed the government for abandoning Jewish communities in the Gaza belt area.

"I heard the defense minister's equation of 10 rockets a month. This is outrageous. I could accept that equation if it was eight rockets on Sderot, and two rockets on Tel Aviv – and would like to see if he could make peace with that equation," Buskila added.

Productivity Suffers

Many businesses in southern Israel are losing productivity not just to property damage, but more to the constant rocket alerts that send workers scurrying for cover.

“There is an alarm five to 10 times a day,” said Ronnie Levine, vice president of marketing for Erez Industries, a textile and plastic manufacturer at Kibbutz Erez near the Gaza border. “The workers leave the machine, run outside for shelter and when they come back, either the machine is not working” or they spend time trying to find out if their family members are okay.

“Eighty-five percent of their mind is not on the machine,” Levine estimated, accounting for a 30 percent loss in business over three years.

Prior to the Gaza evacuation, Erez employed Palestinian workers and still pays the salaries of two who worked there 20 years.

At Nirlat paint factory, employees can see right across the barren field to Gaza. “They are constantly observing us,” said manager Yehuda Kaplan. Nirlat has absorbed a couple of direct hits from rockets and mortars. After each, workers have taken one to two days off before they dared return.

Further north, 10 percent of the land at Kibbutz Nahal Oz can no longer be cultivated because it is in sniper range. “Our main problem right now is to convince workers to go out in the fields,” said agricultural manager Yankela Cohen.

Cohen, 73, is no stranger to these hazards. In the 1950s the kibbutz was founded as a joint military-agricultural venture and the workers dodged Egyptian fire. Now the kibbutz is prohibited from using a plane to spray pesticide within 1.5 miles (2.5 km.) of the Gaza border, for fear that it could be shot down, and pests are feasting on their crops.

“There are direct and indirect losses,” Cohen said. “There is no way to continue like this. We are going to lose the whole Negev. We are losing the future."