I came here because my second cousin Polina from my dad's side and her family live here. She is a phys-ed teacher who knows soccer so well she can even lend an opinion on the Swedish Cup. Quite amazing.
Pola as we call her has three kids: Sharon (29), Lior (25) and Sarit (24). Lior is in Los Angeles with wife and no kids. Sharon has a wife and no kids and Sarit has a boyfriend. The boyfriend is Indian Jew which is quite rare but I know there is a community around Bombay albeit tiny.
Sarit told me about the horrors of the katyusha rockets. She told me that the first time a rocket fell, she was in complete shock. Nobody expected Karmiel to be hit as it is surrounded by Arab villages like Majd-al-Krum and Dir-el-Assad. Those villages were hit and there were deaths sadly.
Most of the shelling was not accompanied by an initial siren. Lots of running into the shelter located in the home. Sarit lost weight and hair. It was quite the stressful experience. One occasion she claims to be particularly stressful, was when they took a chance that there would be no bombs and they drove somewhere. The missiles began to rain down and they started driving at 120 km/h until they figured they had gone enough south beyond the rockets' range.
All in all, Karmiel absorbed 171 rockets. Other places were much worse. Kiryat Shemona which is a stone's throw from the Lebanese border, absorbed about 4,000. Safed and Nahariyya were hit quite bad too. Nahariyya had a case where a woman got out on her balcony and was killed by a direct strike.
There could have been a similar situation in Karmiel. I saw a balcony where the missile went right through it and hit the road. Beyond the actual impact of the strike is the fact that a hit generated a spread of hundreds of round ball bearings that could go as far as 100 metres. That particular strike caused damage to all the cars parked in the street that day.
I could not take a good photo of that balcony but I have posted here a few photos of missile damage and piercings caused by the ball bearings.
Note the piercings on the wall caused by ball bearings. Ground zero was about 20 feet from this side of the house.
This photo was taken in another site. A high
school was hit and the windows are still pierced.
However, they were too dark and far away to
take a photo of so I snapped some nearby.
Note the piercings of the ball bearings right
through this steel pole. The pole was 40 feet
away from ground zero where the missile
struck.
Here is a shot taken from the same area. This road sign is still down, not yet fixed now two weeks after the war. I know the sign looks like it is up but it is actually lying on the ground, probably torn from its foundation by the ground shaking upon impact of the rocket. The proof is in the photo below.
Along the way, I saw a house whose roof has not yet been fixed. It has no attic as the roof is completely damaged. I couldn't take a photo of it as I was too far away when I saw it. All in all, quite the eye-opening tour. I feel for the people who had to go through this and I also feel for the innocents of Lebanon. War sucks.
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