Source: Ynet, by Matan Tzuri|Published: 02.11.20 , 18:09
Parents whose young sons and daughters face daily barrages of rockets and balloon bombs send letter to UNICEF, condemning its ‘unforgivable’ silence in the face of terror attacks on Israeli children
Incessant spates of rocket fire, balloon bombs, and a high level of stress have become a painful routine for the thousands of families in the Israeli communities neighboring the Gaza Strip.
The mothers are weary of the situation and in their desire to protect the children from impossible conditions – where a balloon and a soccer ball no longer mean fun but do mean mortal danger – they feel frustrated and helpless.
Some have more than once found themselves feeling a sense of guilt over their impotence as their children confront difficult situations almost every day.
Each of the mothers sees the politics differently, but their demand is unanimous: They want to raise their children in sane surroundings.
“Life here revolves around constant stress,” says Zohar Sadan, a 39-year-old mother of three from Kibbutz Erez.
“The entire language we speak with our children has changed. The same questions keep coming up at home: ‘Was that an explosion?’ ‘What was that?’ One time it’s a balloon bomb, the next it’s a rocket. If there’s a siren in the evening, we already know that our army will retaliate at night and we certainly won’t be able to sleep. Our children are growing up in a world that’s unhinged.”
“I’m sure there is a direct link between our security situation and the coming elections,” she says. “At the moment nothing is happening, because everyone is busy with the elections and over here, we’re at bottom priority. But we’re determined to change the situation, to enable our children to grow up into a better and safer future.”
Yochi Zakai, a 35-year-old mother of five from Sderot who is in her ninth month of pregnancy, says: “We’re like sitting ducks. We’re always just coping. If the government has a plan to reach an arrangement [with Hamas], then they should reach it and they should say so.”
“If they plan to go to war, then they should say so too and they should go to war. But they should do something and not leave us in this situation,” she says.
“The last thing I want is war, but we’re in a nightmare period and we have to get out of it. I show my children all the resilience I can, but it doesn’t always work. I won’t let us be ignored any longer.”
Source: Ynet