On August 1, 2006, as we drove to Sderot, we passed a nearby kibbutz. I looked out the window and saw a sign that said “Kibbutz Be’eri,” and I was flooded by memories: I spent the summer of 1965 on that kibbutz. It was still there!
Back then we were part of a group of Americans there to help out in what was a progressive experiment in communal living, in a state only 18 years old, in a small community three miles from
We used to get up at 5 a.m. each morning and get on trucks to go out in the fields and bale hay, then pitch it onto the trucks, and finally climb back onto the bales at 7:30 a.m. to sleep on the ride back to the communal dining hall for breakfast. Every day the breakfast was the same: cucumbers and tomatoes.
Last year, the Kassam rocket attacks from
Kibbutz Be’eri has also lost about eight acres of wheat, and according to estimates, other kibbutzim and rural communities in the area have lost several dozen acres in the fires.
According to Haim Yalin from Kibbutz Be’eri, the fires caused more than just financial damage. "It needs to be made clear that the profit on wheat is very small, and that we cultivate it mostly for Zionist purposes.
"We don’t want to be dependent on import from other countries, and therefore despite the hard work and the meager profit, we continue to grow wheat here. This is the Zionist principle on which we were raised, and we will continue doing so, as a message to our children that life here goes on."
Yesterday, Israel National News reported that:
Two children were lightly injured Wednesday afternoon when the enemy in northern
The rocket landed in the yard of a house in the community, which is located within the Eshkol Regional Council.
The girls were taken for treatment at the Soroka medical center, and their mother went into emotional shock.
At Boker tov, Boulder!, the invaluable Yael notes that, in another nearby Kassam attack yesterday, the impact of the rocket shattered the window of an 83-year-old woman asleep in her home, causing shards to fall on her body:
I can’t explain to you any more that this woman is your mother or your grandmother, or that the children are your children. I’ve done it for years and by now you either get it or you don’t, and most people don’t.
I’m not interested in waking people up anymore. If you can sleep through the mental image of an 83-year-old woman lying in bed covered with broken glass, then f— you. It’s Kristallnacht, only different.
An 83-year-old woman. Two girls, aged 3 and 12. An entire kibbutz living in fear. An entire city in Sderot under daily rocket attack. In the Jewish state.