Israel’s counterattacks on the Islamic extremist group Hamas have drawn a lot of sympathetic media coverage about Gaza, from which the Palestinian terrorists launched their initial attacks. Today, Scott Thuman revisits an Israeli town that was nearly destroyed and where some residents have chosen to stay — living in fear.
Oct. 7 — Hamas terrorists crossed from the Gaza Strip into Israel, launching the infamous deadly attack on towns and villages, including the southern city of Sderot, just one mile from the border.
Armed with automatic weapons and rockets, the Iranian-backed terror group attacked and killed civilians in their cars, shot at them in store parking lots, and gunned down members of the local police force.
Today Sderot is nearly empty, the majority of the 30,000 residents living here evacuated by the Israeli military. American-born Stewart Ganulin and his Israeli wife Eti among a few thousand to stay. We spoke to them on Zoom from Sderot to find out why many Israelis have refused to leave their homes.
Stewart Ganulin: But you need to force yourself to go out, and you need to force yourself to do things, and that’s what you do.
For nearly 20 years, the Ganulins have lived in Sderot under constant threat of attack from Hamas rockets — also called Qassams — targeting nearby Israelis in a decades-long war.
Stewart Ganulin: In the past we’ve always dealt with Qassams, but we’ve never dealt with terrorists rallying up and down the street, killing everybody that they could see.
Scott: You lived with the fear of sometimes a singular rocket being launched into your town. Now you’re saying you worry about terrorists in your streets.
Eti Ganulin: I’m scared. I’m scared. You start from everything now because this is different situation.
There were fewer unknowns when we first visited Sderot in 2021, and when a Hamas attack meant seeking shelter in one of hundreds of these windowless cement structures, adorned with scenic murals. Bomb shelters. All 286 of them. On almost every corner. Near each bus stop, school, and business. Even the playgrounds double as a safe space for when rockets fly, which is why Sderot is known as the bomb shelter capital of the world.
Scott: Is this here, in Sderot?
It seems almost everyone had some sort of video like this on their phones of incoming rockets accompanied by sirens and a mad dash to get to a shelter, immediately.
Scott: So if the siren went off, if the alarm went off, you just leave everything and run?
Orel: Yes. You always have the fear that something is going to explode in your house or something.
We also met Efraim Rosenfeld. Life in Sderot, he told us, is measured in seconds.
Efraim Rosenfeld: The siren goes off, and if we are lucky, we have 15 seconds to get to shelter.
But when Hamas attacked Sderot in October, there were no sirens or warnings. Now the small community still here is living in fear.
Stewart Ganulin: You can drive down the street today and see a little white pickup truck. And you look at that truck, and that’s the same color truck that the terrorists were in, and you wonder who’s in that truck. So everybody becomes a suspect.
Eti Ganulin: If I’m going in the dark, and I see someone coming near me, I’m still. I don’t know if it’s terrorist or not. The fear — it’s controlling you.
Scott: How do you live in those circumstances?
Stewart Ganulin: We all suffer from a cumulative traumatic stress disorder because this has been going on for 20-some odd years. There has never been a day that you don’t think about it, a day that the dog barks or a door slams that you don’t jump. And I hate to say it becomes normal — of living, sitting on the edge of your seat.
Scott: Why do you stay?
Eti Ganulin: I said to myself that I’m not going let anyone take me from my home. This is my home, and I’m not supposed to give up at my home.
From that home, Stewart and Eti run a charity called “Hope for Sderot,” founded to help injured locals with food and clothing donations shortly after Hamas first started attacking with rockets in 2008. For this city, that help is more critical now than ever.
Stewart Ganulin: You have 20,000, 30,000 people that are all in the same boat. Nobody has worked for a good month and a half.
Leaving this couple wondering what will happen next.
Scott: What do you see as your future there?
Eti Ganulin: Not wars anymore. This is our dream.
Scott: Stewart, what do you see as the future there for you?
Stewart Ganulin: That’s a really good question. As long as Hamas is there, I don’t see there being peace. I would hope and pray that the people of Gaza could get a government that was level-headed, that loved their children more than they love killing Jews and wanted a future for their kids.
Sharyl: With supposedly about 10% of the population of Sderot left, what happens now do you think with the city? Will people come back, or will it stay just very small?
Scott: Well it’s a good question. When we were there in 2021, the town was still mourning the loss of a 5-year-old boy who had just been killed in the rocket attack. And hundreds of other residents there in Sderot have died the same way. But it is a resilient place. It’s got a pretty decent economy for its size. It’s more affordable than living in a bit city like Tel Aviv. And Stewart and Eti insist that it will come back — eventually.
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Everyone deserves a safe life, Israelis and Palestinians. Right now, more than 6000 Palestinians have been killed in the stated pursuit of safety by the Israelis. This is an affront to rational thought and every moral principal. Only justice for all will bring stability and security to everyone in the Holy Land.
Your perspective is awry. All countries respond to an attack and attempt to destroy the country that tried to destroy it (Pearl Harbor(. 9/11), and civilians are killed in any such war. It is a rare government such as Hamas who uses its own civilians as shields. If you decry the 6000 dead Gazans, condemn Hamas.
Ruth Fazio,
You’re an ANTI-Semite,
explained below :
Margaret Brennan, TV talk-show host of CBS’ Face the Nation,
BLURTED this truth, which up-ends those charging anyone
with ANTI-SEMITISM :
Questioning an interviewee,
who spoke of ANTI-Semites
challenging Israel’s war
against Hamas :
“Well, everyone knows Palestinians are SEMITES, too.”
“Well, everyone knows Palestinians are SEMITES, too.”
“Well, everyone knows Palestinians are SEMITES, too.”
[[ Has . . . BOLDLY . . . brave
Brennan been fired, yet ? ]]
1)—ESTROGENIC and I.Q.-lowering FLUORIDE in your water;
2)—iodine removed from bread products in 1973, then
brain-numbing BROMINE took its place;
3)—engorgement of mind-/body-damaging SUGAR;
4)—lead pipes under cities putting that toxin in homes;
5)—savage drumbeats in all Rock music, keeping you REPTILIAN;
6)—depleted ( essential ) minerals absent from cropland soils;
7)—dumbed-down curricula throughout public school systems
( everyone gets an A-grade and non-earned trophy—to be F A I R ;
8)—affirmative-RACISM/-Sexism denying white men
meritocratic positiins they’ve EARNED (( deadly policy
in the armed forces )), and effecting their SUICIDE
(( highest among white teen boys and adult white men ));
—ALL contribute to your
inability to understand
“Cognitive Dissonance,”
in calling pro-Palestinian
folks : “Anti-Semite.”
Similarly, to dare to call
anyone “RACIST” is
devoid of sound logic
—because EVERYONE
is RACIST !, except those
LYING hypocrites among
LIBERTINE Leftists !.
-Rick
Ruth Fazio,
You’re an ANTI-Semite,
explained below :
Margaret Brennan, TV talk-show host of CBS’ Face the Nation,
BLURTED this truth, which up-ends those charging anyone
with ANTI-SEMITISM :
Questioning an interviewee,
who spoke of ANTI-Semites
challenging Israel’s war
against Hamas :
“Well, everyone knows Palestinians are SEMITES, too.”
“Well, everyone knows Palestinians are SEMITES, too.”
“Well, everyone knows Palestinians are SEMITES, too.”
[[ Has . . . BOLDLY . . . brave
Brennan been fired, yet ? ]]
1)—ESTROGENIC and I.Q.-lowering FLUORIDE in your water;
2)—iodine removed from bread products in 1973, then
brain-numbing BROMINE took its place;
3)—engorgement of mind-/body-damaging SUGAR;
4)—lead pipes under cities putting that toxin in homes;
5)—savage drumbeats in all Rock music, keeping you REPTILIAN;
6)—depleted ( essential ) minerals absent from cropland soils;
7)—dumbed-down curricula throughout public school systems
( everyone gets an A-grade and non-earned trophy—to be F A I R ;
8)—affirmative-RACISM/-Sexism denying white men
meritocratic positiins they’ve EARNED (( deadly policy
in the armed forces )), and effecting their SUICIDE
(( highest among white teen boys and adult white men ));
—ALL contribute to your
inability to understand
“Cognitive Dissonance,”
in calling pro-Palestinian
folks : “Anti-Semite.”
Similarly, to dare to call
anyone “RACIST” is
devoid of sound logic
—because EVERYONE
is RACIST !, except those
LYING hypocrites among
LIBERTINE Leftists !.
-Rick
Your perspective is awry. All countries respond to an attack and attempt to destroy the country that tried to destroy it (Pearl Harbor(. 9/11), and civilians are killed in any such war. It is a rare government such as Hamas who uses its own civilians as shields. If you decry the 6000 dead Gazans, condemn Hamas.
Everyone deserves a safe life, Israelis and Palestinians. Right now, more than 6000 Palestinians have been killed in the stated pursuit of safety by the Israelis. This is an affront to rational thought and every moral principal. Only justice for all will bring stability and security to everyone in the Holy Land.
Israel leadership allowed the attack to happen. they were told it was coming. and withdrew soldiers from that area.
israeli’s ciivilians were the bait.
netanyahu and his globalists needed a good excuse to go in and flatten gaza. there is something like 5 billion lbs of natural gas off the coast of gaza. israeli globalists want it, and they also want to build a canal. Gazan people are in the way of achieving those goals.
unfortunately the jewish people have been brainwashed by many techniques, the confirmatiin bias makes things blend into a make believe reality, a program. that is how the elite, posing as jews themselves are able to control them.
Israel leadership allowed the attack to happen. they were told it was coming. and withdrew soldiers from that area.
israeli’s ciivilians were the bait.
netanyahu and his globalists needed a good excuse to go in and flatten gaza. there is something like 5 billion lbs of natural gas off the coast of gaza. israeli globalists want it, and they also want to build a canal. Gazan people are in the way of achieving those goals.
unfortunately the jewish people have been brainwashed by many techniques, the confirmatiin bias makes things blend into a make believe reality, a program. that is how the elite, posing as jews themselves are able to control them.