By Marney Blom
The people of Israel’s southern Negev are once again on high alert. More than 800 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza this year – an average of over two rockets per day – and there is good cause to believe that Israel has not seen the end of it.
Since 2006 I have had the opportunity to witness both the ravages of war and the aftermath of terrorism in Israel. In the process, however, I have observed something remarkable: a high proportion of incidents in which an incoming missile has failed to deliver its ultimate aim – death or injury to the Israelis. In a number of cases, it was as if an unseen force had shielded the people, or they were simply not present when the attack took place.
Recall my report from Be’er Sheva in August 2011.
“I am in Be’er Sheva standing on the top of a school. Earlier this morning Hamas fired a rocket that hit the school. Now fortunately the mayor of Be’er Sheva cancelled an orientation that was to take place here this morning. So there were no students in the school and there were no casualties.”
A few kilometers away from Be’er Sheva’s Toviahu High School, another miracle of timing took place when deadly shrapnel from an incoming missile sprayed the house of Meir Dmri. It was the Sabbath. A day the Dmri family is routinely home. But no one was there that day. No one was injured.
“And he has a son who left the house literally ten minutes before the bomb fell,” said an Israeli interpreter translating for Dmri.
In 2008, I traveled with a group of journalists to the southern coastal town of Ashkelon to report the recent upsurge of rockets from the Gaza Strip. While we were being briefed by the local police authority – it happened. A deadly Grad rocket was headed our way and we were urged to move quickly to the protected area underground.
The rocket, however, landed several blocks away – straight through the roof of a private residence, but no one was injured. No one was home. As the dust settled, my colleagues and I ran to the site of the incident. There we observed first responders and neighbours outside the home where the latest Hamas projectile had landed.
Across the street a resilient neighbour brushed away the broken glass from her shattered window – the result of the sheer force of the explosion.
When asked for an on-camera interview she agreed. “I [have been] worried since Saturday morning,” she said. “[The threat of bombs] is scary.”
Although shaken, not one person in the Ashkelon neighbourhood was harmed. And once again, I had witnessed another failed Hamas attempt to kill Israelis.
In the past six years of reporting war and acts of terrorism in Israel it has been my experience, that where there are stories of conflict there are numerous stories of protection and failed attacks when people were simply not present when the rock
ets landed. Miracles of timing.
Marney Blom is news director for the Acts News Network.
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