Katyusha rockets hits northern Israel.

The alarm woke me up this morning. We felt the ground shaking as the rockets landed and turned the TV on to find out where about it was. They call our area “close to Ashdod” and the reporters have stopped giving street names when rockets hit buildings so that this information shall not get to Hamas. We do not want to help them being more clever as they point the launchers at us .
What’s new today is that 4 Katyusha rockets were fired this morning from Lebanon. Israel has a “friend” up there who is the head of one of the other Iran supported terrorist organizations in the area. His name is Hassan Nasrallah and his organization is Hizbullah. He was on TV yesterday threatening Israel saying that if the Israeli Army enters into Lebanese territory they will be met by “Hizbullah surprises” that will make the war in 2007 look like a picnic . Nasrallah does not take responsibility for the rockets fired this morning.
One of the rockets hit a home for elderly people. Severe damage was made to the building but nobody got seriously wounded.

The bombing of Hamas strongholds in Gaza continues. The people in the southern part of Rafiah , the town next to the Egyptian border, were warned yesterday that the area will be attacked by air.
It is important for people to know that the Israeli army gets much of the information of Hamas’ whereabouts from Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. These are people who are sick and tired of the cynical use of civilians by both Fatah and Hamas . Many Palestinians speak Hebrew fluently and have good relations with Israelis. They are well aware of the fact that the border to Israel has been closed for them, and together with it their possibilities for work, because of a few fanatics. These fanatics are terrorizing Israelis as well as their own people.Fundamental Moslem have forced a more religious lifestyle upon lots of secular Moslems who simply wish to live in peace and to take care of their families.
I remember Mo’een, a very nice man from Gaza who did a lot of work on our house. He had been working in Gan Yavne from age 14 and had lots of good friends here. We started building after the outbreak of the second Intifada ( Arab uprising ) in 2000 . As all my tourist groups had been cancelled due to the situation I was out of work and could be with the workers at our house. That made Mo’een my “boss” and me his “assistant” . He enjoyed very much working with me because the whole situation was odd me being a woman doing “mens work”. He used to joke a lot about that.
Our work days were from 08.00 am till 05.00 pm every day for several months (…and afterwards as we had money to continue new projects ) and we had a lot to talk about : We both had small children and were busy trying to help them get a good future. My husband worked long hours away from home just like Mo’een and returned home “more dead than alive” every evening. ( Mo’een had to get up at 4am every morning in order to get through the security check at the border . To get back into Gaza was less time consuming. )
I had a break around lunch time in order to receive my children as they finished kinder garden and school and to prepare food for all of us. I remember the first time I asked Mo’een what he would like to drink with his lunch. He suggested a bottle of cold beer, while laughing. ( Moslems do not use drinks containing alcohol ) I told him that beer definitely was an option and he grabbed the opportunity to order one. I will never forget the expression on his face when he sat down to eat his lunch holding the bottle of beer. It was to him like a demonstration for freedom. When he was together with other Arabs he would ask for Coke.
Mo’een told me that he was not religious in particular, but that his wife had to dress like a religious women to protect her from having acid sprinkled on her face and legs from Islamists within Gaza.
During the years we were busy building our house I got to know many workers from Gaza. My “ boss” Mo’een was the one that I got to know the best. During these days they, and him in particular, are heavy upon our hearts and minds….

Elin Elkouby