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In Sderot, Every Day with No Siren Is a Gift

(Times of Israel) Merav Blum - It's been almost two years since I enrolled at Sapir College in Sderot near the Gaza border. For the previous four years, following the war in 2014, it had been quiet. The area was booming, with hundreds of Israelis moving in. A few months ago, that all changed. Weekly demonstrations broke out along the border and rockets started falling. The city streets began to stink of smoke from the fire kites being sent our way. Last year I mentored a local teenage girl and asked her how she's been coping with the situation. She shrugged. "It's no biggie for me, definitely better than when we lived in Ashkelon and didn't have a safe room in the house and had to go sleep in the stairwell. Now my dad and brothers come to my room in the reinforced shelter, and it's really not so bad. Kind of like a big family sleepover." Her nonchalant attitude broke my heart. This is her reality. Sometimes I feel that I may have made a mistake choosing to live in Sderot, because of the anxiety it causes me. Yet I've never been one to quit anything. I'm going to see it through and stick it out, whatever toll that takes. There are thousands more like me. We are the reason our country still thrives, because we don't leave, no matter how scared we are. Because we know how to weigh the enormous benefits of life in the periphery against the equally enormous challenges.
2018-08-17 00:00:00
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