Author and columnist L. Todd Wood, in Israel, told
Newsmax TV about his close encounter on Thursday morning with a Hamas rocket that exploded in a village he was visiting near the Gaza border.
"I was being escorted to a nice Jewish yeshiva there when the klaxons went off," Wood told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner in a phone call later on Thursday from the relative safety of Tel Aviv. "I didn't have time to get anywhere, so I just laid flat on the ground and had a Qassam rocket explode about 50 yards away."
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Wood, author of
"Currency," is in Israel as the country
wages war against Hamas, the militant Palestinian group using Gaza to launch rockets into Israel and dig secret assault tunnels under the border.
The Israeli Defense Force's Iron Dome anti-missile defense system intercepts many of the randomly targeted projectiles before they detonate in populated areas. But as Wood's experience on Thursday morning a mile from the Gaza border demonstrated, the shield is not impregnable.
"The Iron Dome shot about 15 shots, but one of them got through," he said. "Not a good experience, to say the least. It landed in the middle of multiple housing units, in a grandmother's backyard with her grandchildren playing around. Miraculously, no one was killed, but it was not a good morning."
Todd said the world — focused by media reportage on the civilian death toll among Palestinians, including dozens killed in hospitals and schools — is not seeing
what Israelis endure in the conflict.
"This one village alone outside of Gaza last year took 2,500 rockets," said Wood. "They get about 40 a day. People are killed routinely. This one, the blast went through about three houses. And these people want the world to know what's going on here."
Wood said that in his conversations with Israelis, he is finding sadness over the
casualties suffered by IDF troops and, at the same time, resolve to support their campaign.
"This has been more deaths on the Israeli side than they're used to," he said. "But they want to live in freedom without being worried about being shot, killed, rocketed, mortared, whatever."
He said one Israeli woman told him, "Look, death is bad on both sides" and added, "If Hamas wanted peace there would be peace tomorrow."
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