Page 13 - TORCH Magazine #13 - April 2019

Hearing Iron Dome missiles explode with a crazy boom over your house as they intercept incoming rockets, explosion after explosion, is traumatic.
Seeing my dog, who has been with me for almost my entire life, go crazy when he hears thunder, because for him every noise is a Qassam rocket, is traumatic.
Getting up in the middle of the night, ready to jump out of bed and run, and then realizing that it’s winter and it’s just thunder, and then lying awake for hours in bed because it’s impossible to fall asleep when your heart is pounding so fast, is traumatic.
During Operation Protective Edge, there was a time when I hadn’t been home for two weeks. During that time, I moved from place to place, not knowing what was happening there, in the Gaza envelope, in my home... And then I broke down. I broke down and wanted to go home no matter what. I was
on the verge of tears. I took a bus home. The most important thing for me was to be back there, with my father who had stayed there to protect our home. But it was dangerous there, in the Gaza envelope, in my home, so I left again. In the morning, my father called. Terrorists had emerged from a tunnel a few hundred meters from our kibbutz. That trauma will always remain with me.
This is my life and the life of everyone who lives in the Gaza envelope. It is full of trauma, anxiety, and fear. I know that we deserve for the situation here to be different.