Life on the Border with the Gaza Strip
Rolling Despite Rockets
In the wee hours of Friday morning, I woke up at 2:45. As I was getting dressed, I could hear the explosions of the IDF retaliation in the Gaza Strip: responces to the Hamas rocket attacks a few hours earlier.
We left Nirim at 03:20 in order to meet up at the starting spot for our sunrise phototrip, to document another sunrise in the Western Negev. I asked M to drive, so that I would be able to keep tabs on the situation through my Whatsapp groups and photograph Iron Dome in action, should we see it enroute.
Rather than take the usual route along Road 232, which hugs the Gaza Strip, we decided to detour from it when we could – not that we would be out of rocket range, but it did take us a bit further away, out of the closer mortar range. As we drove we got word of Red Alerts on our neighbors on Kibbutz Nir Oz, Magen and Moshav Ein Habsor. We arrived at the gates of Kibbutz Ruchama just in time to see Iron Dome racing through the skies, chasing down rockets that had been shot towards Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Nir Am and Mefalsim.
What followed that tension, was the perfect antidote to stress: a phototrip with my amazing teachers at Hasifa School of Photography. I’m sharing the beauty of the Western Negev sunrise, here.
Why didn’t I stay home? Why didn’t we cancel? Because that’s how we roll here on the border with the Gaza Strip; like the rolling hills in the Badlands of Ruchama.
Because if I had stayed home, I would have been letting terror win.
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