Portlander aids Israeli town pummeled by rockets

By Paul Haist

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In the southern Israel border town of Sderot it’s safer if you don’t fasten the seatbelt in your car.

Tamar Boussi of Portland knows firsthand. Since a year ago she has made six visits to the beleaguered Israeli development town near the Gaza Strip border.

“If there is a code-red alarm, the two seconds it takes to unfasten your seatbelt isn’t good enough,” she said.
   
Code red is the term in Sderot for the siren that warns of a rocket on its way from Gaza. From the time the code-red siren sounds there is about 15 seconds before a rocket from Gaza will land and explode, Boussi explained.

   
“The main thing they tell you is to get down because shrapnel goes up,” she said.
   
Boussi is the president of the Portland chapter of Hadassah, a member of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Community Relations Committee and president of the Portland-Ashkelon (Israel) Sister City Association. She has taken a special interest in helping the people of Sderot.
   
In the seven years that Palestinians have been firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel 10 people have been killed in those attacks in Sderot.
   
“Because there haven’t been hundreds of deaths, people think it’s not serious,” said Boussi.
   
But, having come to know the people of Sderot, Boussi knows it really is serious.
   
“It is the accumulation of terrifying events that build on one another, and don’t let people recover before the next one comes,” she explained.
   
On average, rockets fall on Sderot at the rate of two and a half per day. The most to fall in one day is 20. Some days there are none. On Boussi’s most recent visit in to Sderot in October, three rockets fell on the city of 17,000, down from 24,000 before the rockets started falling.
   
“There have been only 10 deaths in seven years, but about 20 percent of the people there are in long-term treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Boussi.

Life in Sderot isn’t like life in other Israeli towns and cities.
   
“You don’t see people on the streets very much,” said Boussi. Leisurely café life, fun shopping excursions, outdoor gatherings don’t happen in Sderot.
   
Boussi mentioned one 15-year-old girl she met there.
   
“She seemed to think this was normal life. She was more concerned about the little kids,” said Boussi, emphasizing that the lives of 15-year-olds there is very different from the lives of 15-year-olds here.
   
Boussi met another teenage girl whose mother, Chava, leads an association of Sderot parents focusing on helping children and petitioning the Israeli government for assistance.
   
“Chava’s daughter, 14 or 15, is being treated on an ongoing basis. She’s been nearly catatonic since a rocket landed next door (to their home). She’s a beautiful girl, but just not functioning in the world,” said Boussi.
   
And there is not much medical help in Sderot, just a small general clinic for routine ailments and two social workers. The nearest hospital equipped to treat PTSD is Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.
   
“They (the hospital) don’t have the facilities to treat all who need help,” said Boussi.
   
Rocket shields have been built over schools in Sderot, but not for schools for grades four and above, said Boussi, by way of demonstrating what she described as a feeling shared by many in Sderot that the government is not doing enough to help the people there. The shields, she said, cost more than the school buildings.
   
The residents of Sderot can’t just pull up stakes and leave. Those who could leave and were willing to leave already have.
   
To be able to leave Sderot one has to be financially able to abandon their house. There is no market for houses in Sderot.
   
“Those who stay, stay for two reasons,” said Boussi. “They can’t afford to go any place and they are aware that if they left (then) the next town they went to would become the target.”
   
Chava, the mother of the nearly catatonic girl, lost her job when the business she worked for left town. Her husband still works, but life is not easy.
   
“There is nothing extra in Sderot,” said Boussi. “The extra things you would give a child are not there.”
   
Boussi wants people here to understand what is happening there and she wants them to help. She especially wants children here to connect with children there. She envisions a regular Internet connection where children in synagogue schools here can meet and get to know children in Sderot.
   
“The children in Sderot would no longer feel they are alone,” said Boussi. “Our children would have a greater understanding of Jewish lifestyles and the feeling that they can help.”
   
Boussi thought bar/bat-mitzvah-age children here and in Sderot might “pair up to share the experience … and maybe some of our kids could give up some of their gelt to help people there.”
   
Boussi already has taken steps to help children in Sderot. Last summer the local chapter of Hadassah hosted a Children of Sderot Picnic in Lake Oswego to raise money to purchase school supplies and backpacks for Sderot children.
   
Nearly $1,000 was sent to Sderot where the school items were purchased in order to benefit businesses there, as well as the children.
   
She recalled meeting one young Sderot girl who—like many other Sderot children—was very withdrawn, very shy. But when it was explained to the little girl that Boussi was part of the group responsible for the backpack and school supplies, the little girl lit up and came alive.
   
Boussi says adults can help by donating money, volunteering time and telling the story of Sderot.
   
She said she will carry the story of Sderot to the May Apartments Dec. 18 when she shares her Sderot experiences with the Golda Meir Group there.