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Israeli Mother in Rocket Zone: "I Want to Stop Being So Scared Every Moment"

(Ha'aretz) Ruth Sinai - When Tahel Maman, 4, comes home from kindergarten, she crawls under the kitchen table and stays there. It was the girl's way of dealing with the Kassam rockets fired on Sderot by Palestinians in Gaza that have blighted her short life. Tahel jumps at any little noise, so does her 7-year-old brother. When the early-warning system Red Dawn sounds against an incoming rocket, the children freeze on the spot. Their mother hasn't slept well in more than four years, constantly fearful of another rocket. A recent examination of 120 families in Sderot with small children found that in more than half, the parents and/or the children are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At a Sderot high school, every time a rocket lands, students faint. The students are ready at any moment to leap out of their seats and pin themselves to the classroom wall, as they've been taught. Mrs. Maman is not willing to leave. She was born in Sderot and loves the town. "I want to return to a sane life, to what I had before; to stop being so scared every moment, every day, every night," she says.
2006-01-20 00:00:00
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