Israel Matzav

Boy seriously wounded in Sderot Kassam attack; Schools still unprotected

A 17-year old boy has been seriously wounded in the stomach in yet another Kassam attack on Sderot this evening. The attack occurred shortly after 6:10 this evening, about two hours ago. Two other youths were lightly wounded by shrapnel, and a third was suffering from shock. All the wounded were evacuated to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.

Earlier today, a 57-year old woman was killed by a Kassam in Sderot and one of Defense Minister Amir Comrade Peretz's bodyguards, a 24-year old man, lost both of his legs outside the Defense Minister's house. My view is that Peretz's house was targeted in this morning's attack, which would not be the first time that happened. The Post summarizes today's attacks:

All together, 13 Kassam rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza Wednesday morning. Three Kassams were fired at Israel Tuesday overnight.

Parents rushed to schools, half of which were still insufficiently protected against Kassam rockets, and removed their children. The city announced the cancellation of classes on Wednesday.

Eyewitnesses reported an unusually loud explosion at the impact of the rocket, perhaps pointing at additional explosives that Palestinian terrorist groups have succeeded in attaching to the homemade Kassams.

A short while later, the Red Dawn early warning system sounded, followed by two more rockets that slammed into the city. There were no reported casualties. According to reports, the rockets landed near an apartment building and a Sderot cemetery, and struck within a few meters of the wounded residents.

Ironically, Supreme Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch ordered the State to show cause today why it should not be required to reinforce kindergarten classrooms in Sderot. Yes, you guessed it. After talking about it all summer, it still hasn't been done.

"Dozens of kindergartens are unprotected," Beinisch told the state. "It is inconceivable that schools will be closed because of Kassam rockets. The fact is that people's lives are at stake."

Beinisch issued a show-cause order, giving the state two weeks to explain why it has not acted faster to reinforce the kindergartens and schools in Sderot and other communities close to the Gaza Strip and why it believed that its plan for protecting the educational facilities without reinforcing all the classrooms was a good one.

Originally, the government allocated NIS 210 million to beef up the Gaza periphery (an area defined as including all the towns and villages within a seven-kilometer radius of the Gaza Strip.) Some of that sum was earmarked to reinforce all of the kindergartens.

On July 2, 2006, the government allocated an additional NIS 75 million to reinforce 16 elementary and eight secondary schools in the same area.

Now comes an argument that can only be described as Orwellian:

The state's representative, Attorney Ra'anan Giladi, told the court the government's plan was to reinforce some classrooms and certain areas of the school building where the rest of the students could be rushed to in case of a Kassam attack. "A class will be regarded as being protected if it, itself, is a protected area or if there is a protected area nearby which the children can get to as soon as an alarm is sounded," he said.

The response infuriated Batya Kattar, a leader of the Struggle to Restore Security to Sderot. "It's a disgrace," she said. "The state is shooting from the hip. Just three weeks ago, at the beginning of the army's Operation Autumn Clouds in Beit Hanun, Sderot's children were forbidden from studying in unreinforced classrooms or protected zones outside the classroom."

Kattar also blasted the state for trying to create the impression that many of the classrooms had been reinforced. "They have reinforced three classrooms on each floor," she told The Jerusalem Post. "If there are 15 classrooms on a floor of a two-storey school, that means they have reinforced six out of 30 classrooms.

Giladi argued that experts in the security field had determined that it was sufficient to give the students 15 seconds to reach the protected areas from their classrooms because the warning siren sounded 20 seconds before the terrorist rockets struck the town. As for those instances when there was no warning period at all, he added, the children were still in no greater danger than they were on their way to and from school or in their unreinforced homes.

There are up to forty children in a class here, including in Kindergarten (my 4.5 year old has 34 boys in his Kindergarten class, six of whom have the same first name). Can you imagine having to move 40 Kindergarteners anywhere inside of 20 seconds? How ridiculous!

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:22 PM