DRS MIZRACHI MISSION UPDATE #9

I mentioned to Rabbi Kaminetsky on the bus that what I have found most amazing about this mission is the range of experiences and emotions that we are seeing and feeling.

Just yesterday we were bowling with children whose fathers were in miluim...and this afternoon...well this afternoon was quite different. 

After our tour of Sderot, we traveled to נתיב העשרה, the closest ישוב in Israel to the Gaza border. 
We were privileged to be led around the ישוב by Micha, a member of the community's security team. 

What we saw and heard there left a searing impression on our collective memories. 


We gathered at the point at which Hamas terrorists paraglide straight into this town from the skies, deadsest on killing as many people as possible.
We stepped into a bomb shelter, where one of the terrorists emptied his nine bullet clip into an innocent elderly woman who was attempting to take cover.
We witnessed the scene of a house completely demolished and burned out by a missile which completely incinerated its residents to the point where not a single trace of them is left. 

We walked through this gorgeous community full of playgrounds and lemon trees, now totally empty and deserted. 
We recited a Kel Malei at the yishuv's cemetery of where seventeen of its former residents now lay to rest.
We were left to use our imaginations to follow the story of what happenned in Netiv, while accepting that even our best imaginations couldn't replay the horrors that actually occurred there. 
In particular our seniors were moved to see that some of the teenagers murdered were born in the same year as them.

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