Israeli Residents Cope With Increased Barrage of Palestinian Rockets

Tamar Runyan - Chabad.org

Volunteers with Chabad-Lubavitch of Ashkelon, Israel, deliver toys and boy games to the city's schools after officials banned recess in the wake of Palestinian rocket attacks.

ASHKELON, Israel — Palestinian-fired rockets continued to fall on Israel's southern cities yesterday, even as Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip after a five day operation designed to bring a halt to the incessant attacks.

Israeli Residents Cope With Increased Barrage of Palestinian Rockets

Tamar Runyan – Chabad.org

Volunteers with Chabad-Lubavitch of Ashkelon, Israel, deliver toys and boy games to the city’s schools after officials banned recess in the wake of Palestinian rocket attacks.

ASHKELON, Israel — Palestinian-fired rockets continued to fall on Israel’s southern cities yesterday, even as Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip after a five day operation designed to bring a halt to the incessant attacks.

The coastal city of Ashkelon was the hardest hit in the latest phase of the ongoing war perpetrated by terrorists aiming explosive- and shrapnel-filled rockets at Israel’s population centers. The southern port had escaped relatively unscathed in the months since rocket crews in the Gaza Strip took to firing Kassam rockets, but a barrage last week of Iranian-made Grad rockets broke the city’s calm.

According to Rabbi Tzemach Menachem Mendel Lieberman, co-director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Ashkelon, residents don’t know what to do and children are hysterical.

“This is a very difficult war,” said Lieberman. “People are petrified.”

But despite the chaos ñ which has seen whole classrooms relocated to bomb shelters and families huddled together in bomb-proof safe rooms at night ñ a group of volunteers from the Chabad House still sets out daily to visit Israel Defense Force personnel stationed all around the Gaza Strip. On Sunday, they went to the Erez Crossing at the coastal strip’s northern border to offer spiritual support and camaraderie to troops, many of whom had just hours before been battling with Hamas-led forces on the other side. Several of the soldiers took the opportunity to don tefillin and offer thanks to G-d for their safety.

Article continued (Chabad.org News)