Israeli Communities Face Threats from Land, Sea, Air

KIBBUTZ ZIKIM, Israel -- Israelis living near the Gaza border face terror threats from air, land and sea. Living in danger for more than a decade, they rarely get to tell their story. Kibbutz Zikim is one of those border communities.

When Palestinian terrorists emerged onto an Israeli beach last month, Ilana Mor and other residents of Kibbutz Zikim looked on in fear.

"I was terrified," she told CBN News. "It's like you see [an] action movie, but then you understand this is your house."
 
As seen in an IDF video, Israeli forces killed the terrorists before they could attack.

"When we came home and we see it in the television, it was really, really terrifying," Mor continued. "It's like they come out from [the] beach [a] few meters from home. They come for one reason -- to kill."

Ilana Mor points to the beach where heavily armed Palestinian terrorists emerged out of the water a few hundred yards away from her home.

The infiltration took place on sand dunes just a few hundred meters (yards) from the kibbutz. But that's not the only danger. Hamas rockets threaten 75 percent of the population, including Mor and her neighbors at Kibbutz Zikim.  In less than a month, Hamas launched more than 3,300 of them on southern Israel.

Israelis here have just 15 seconds to run to the shelter after the Tzeva Adom, or Red Alert, sounds. And it's been warning of incoming rockets for more than a decade.

"It's very stressful, exhausting," Mor explained. "You want your peace, you want your quiet, you want to keep your life, but there is someone else that [is] choosing for us."
              
Israelis have survived these strikes thanks, in part, to precautions like home security rooms and making an entire preschool a fortified bomb shelter as they've done at Kibbutz Zikim.

Mor knows that danger well -- two times rockets hit her home and another attack wounded her son, Jordan, eight years ago.
 
"They were playing outside and there was [a] Tzeva Adom and they didn't have enough time to run to the house….so they lie on the ground and put the hands [up over their heads]…and then it's [shrapnel] coming [in his] back," she said. "For years he didn't want to come out of the house."
 
Now, even more chilling is the discovery of dozens of tunnels leading into Israel for the purpose of kidnapping and killing Israelis.

"They come out from everywhere, all these holes in the ground, and you see them coming out," she said. "It's two kilometers more and they are in my house."
 
Mor says the Palestinian people are caught in the middle between Hamas and Israel. But the media isn't portraying the whole story.

"I cannot blame the Palestinians, but I can blame all the others who see just one side," she said. "All over the world people [are] talking about us -- that we are murdering them and killing them and everything…where is the side that people [are] sitting and shooting from the[ir] places?" she asked.
 
Despite these dangers and challenges, Mor, along with thousands of other Israelis, chooses to stay put.

"I don't leave Israel because I like Israel and this is my place," she said. "So wherever I go, it can happen. So this is my house. This is my family. So we are for each other, and we are together here. It's no way [that] we [would] go."