One brave little girl, explains what life is like on her Kibbutz near Gaza during rocket attacks:
Hadar Hollander, eleven years old, was stopped on her way from Kibbutz Alumim, two kilometers from Gaza City, because of a difficult exchange with terrorists. The roads were closed by the IDF. “Our home, the Kibbutz, is like a military camp, and there is firing around it,” she tells me.
She does not remember quiet times on the Kibbutz. Her parents were Bnei Akiva Shlichim in Italy, and they moved to the religious Kibbutz of Alumim. She remembers that, when she was in kindergarten, “there was trouble” in the area already.
“We have a green Kibbutz with good people. I know everyone. This is a Kibbutz with a lot of grass, bushes, a beautiful Kibbutz. There is agriculture, there is construction, and there are ninety wonderful families,” she says, describing her beloved home.
And then her mother shows me a movie that Hadar taped when a missile flew over the community. “She sang a song about missiles with her brother [Hadar has four brothers and sisters], she filmed the sky, the moon, and suddenly there was a Code Red siren and the camera moved from side to side, until she was stopped by her little brother who needed to be extracted from the shower, and this is our lie,” says her mother.
“It is no fun at the moment,” says the wonderful Hadar. “All of the activities that are fun have been cancelled. All of the treats that the parents give us aren’t worth it because a calm life is much better. I so want this period to end, and the quiet to come to our community,” she says, when I interview her at Shefayim, where she came for a “breather” with other families from Kibbutz Alumim.
“I can’t see my friends, I can’t go out of the house for too long. We can’t eat pizza together or watch movies together,” Hadar explains to me.
