Recently Yaron Doron of Israel HaYom interviewed my Israeli cousin Robert Wolf and his family at some length. Here is the link to the article. For those whose Ivrit is not yet up to speed, the English version courtesy of Google Translate & lightly polished by yours truly follows.
Guardian of the house
“We heard and felt the boom. Everything was black and full of dust and we saw that there was no house. Just a big hole.” We shall not be moved from our land “
Israel HaYom – Yaron Doron – 10 October
The Wolf family’s home on Farm 71 in Moshav Mishmeret is taking shape. The foundations are already in place, and many workers are working vigorously. In a few months, a new house will stand here, an almost exact replica of the house that got directly hit by the Hamas rocket fired from the Gaza Strip six months ago.
“Building the house gives us strength against the trauma,” says Robert Wolf. “I come here every morning. Can’t leave.”
Susan, his wife, does not hide her feelings. “Before they started building, I didn’t think about the house at all, only the dogs that were killed. I guess I thought this because we were all alive.”
On March 25, the Wolf family were fast asleep in their home. Robert (61) and Susan (59) were sleeping on the right side of the house, son Daniel (30) falling asleep in front of the TV in the living room on the left side of the house. On this side were also his wife Yael (28) and their two daughters, Mia two and a half years old, and Tamara, less than a year old. In the housing unit in the yard was Daniel’s sister, Leigh (26).
At 5:18 am, an alarm pierced the silence. Daniel was the only one who heard her.
“I watched a football match and fell asleep in the living room,” he recalls. “All other rooms in the house have sealed windows, nothing is heard through them. Nobody would hear. We were all finished.
“I tried to pick up my mom and I couldn’t, because she slid from me with all the blood.” Daniel Wolf // Photo by Eric Sultan
Daniel, a Judo coach by profession, is certain that if he was not a father to the children, he would not have got up even if he heard the alarm. “But now I feel I need to keep them, that I can’t take risks.”
“First I ran to my big daughter, Mia. I woke her up and picked her up. From there I ran to my wife and little daughter and woke them up, then ran to my parents’ unit. From there I ran to the shelter room with my wife and daughters.
“My dad ran out to my sister Leigh’s housing unit to wake her up. My mother didn’t understand what was going on. She was lethargic, walked slowly and was a bit confused. Me, my wife and girls went into the shelter room, but we didn’t close the door because we were waiting for my parents. And my sister.
“Three seconds later we heard and felt the boom. We quickly realized it had fallen on our house. Everything was black and full of dust.”
Susan: “The day before I returned from a visit to my parents in London. That night I told myself I had to book a ticket to London again, because my parents were older, and I wanted to visit them as much as possible. Let them know in the morning, and we went to bed.
“When Daniel came to wake us up and said, ‘Come, alarm,’ I said to myself, ‘Wow, what?’ I was lethargic, I didn’t understand. What?’
“I heard the noise of something approaching. I couldn’t get into the shelter room, and I heard a boom. Suddenly I saw objects from the kitchen flying from the blast and I thought, ‘Too bad, these are my grandmother’s dishes.’ I didn’t understand what was happening, I didn’t realize it was right in my house.
“I didn’t feel hurt, either. I didn’t feel pain. I remember thinking, ‘I’m alive, and I don’t feel anything. Maybe I have no legs and I’ll be crippled, but I’m alive.’ I checked my legs and breathed a sigh, and then I probably fainted.
“The next thing I remember is they put me on a table in the yard, and I hear Daniel say to me, ‘Open your eyes, open your eyes.’ I felt I was having a dream. I was cold and there was blood. Everyone was under pressure, because I didn’t really understand what was happening. ”
Daniel: “When all the dust and smoke sank a little, I came out of the room and saw my mother collapsed on the floor. And I saw that there was no home. Just a big hole. Immediately I ran to give the girls to the neighbors, and went back to my mother. I tried to pick her up and I couldn’t, because she slid with all the blood.
“I carried her on my hands like a bride and ran out to the picnic table in the yard. I put her on the table, and at that moment she opened her eyes and asked ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ Then my dad and sister ran to us, and we started to treat her.
“I didn’t know in what condition she was, because there was blood everywhere. When the paramedics arrived, I went to see that my wife and girls were fine, and then one of the neighbors shouted, ‘Wounded baby, wounded baby.’ The patients. ”
“I wanted to wake Leigh, but there was some problem with the front door of her housing unit, and I couldn’t open,” Robert recalls. We were hit by the missile.
“At the last minute I opened the door and woke Leigh, and then I heard a loud noise followed by a huge boom, and I saw the whole house in the air. It was the hardest moment of my life. I was sure no one would survive it. The family came to me, it was a nightmare.
“Leigh went out, and I ran to the house. I saw Daniel come out, and he was all covered in dust. I saw that the house was gone, but it didn’t interest me. I ran in and found Susan on the floor.
“I didn’t have time to think, but when I saw that they were alive, my heart jumped. Daniel picked up Susan, and all his hands were full of blood. He kept telling her, ‘Stay with us, stay with us.’
“One of the neighbors helped him, and they put Susan on a table in the yard. Then more people came, and doctors came, until then I didn’t know how many doctors lived nearby. One of them started talking to her and checking her. Then the ambulances arrived. And it was crazy. ”
Daniel was also convinced that his family had been killed. “After the rocket fell, there were a few seconds in which my wife and I looked at each other. She was all gray from the dust. I looked at Mia, and I saw she was fine.
Then I said to myself, ‘My whole family is gone.’ I was sure that Dad, Mum and Leigh were dead, because they didn’t make it to the shelter room. One of the horrifying things I remember was that I was treading on some kind of hair. I was sure I was stepping on my mother’s head.
“Only later, when I returned to the house, did I see that these were broom hairs. That’s the worst scenario you can think of. You are afraid to go outside, so as not to see body parts.”
Robert: “I thought Daniel was dead, and he thought I was dead.
The Wolf family home had almost completely collapsed. Daniel’s wife, Yael, and baby Tamara were slightly injured by the shrapnel. Susan was moderately injured by shrapnel in her back and legs, and shrapnel that hit her head, very close to her main artery.
Robert: “I tell you a million percent that Daniel saved the family. He and the shelter room. If he hadn’t get up and woken them all up and they hadn’t run to the shelter room, nobody would be here. Our bedroom collapsed, and the whole part of the house where Daniel lived collapsed. The roof collapsed, tiles fell on the bed.
Family members were rushed to Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba. “Each of us had ten doctors, because once there is such a case, all the teams are called,” Robert continues. “I thought, it wasn’t a hundred people injured, only seven, thank God. Except for Susan, everyone was lightly injured. At the hospital, they said they didn’t treat shrapnel in the head and passed Susan to Beilinson.
“I only saw Susan in the evening, and she said an amazing thing to me, which I will never forget in my life. Many homes in the moshav do not have a shelter room. This is a phrase that is so typically Susan.
Susan: “I had surgery to remove the shrapnel and a lot of tests. They left the shrapnel near the main artery, because it was too dangerous to get it out. After I was released, I came to visit every few days.
Robert: “If the shrapnel had struck a bit lower and hit the artery, it would have been a completely different story.”
He himself was not injured. “There were lots of things, shingles and windows flying around, but the only thing that hit me was a bear. My granddaughter’s bear. It tells the whole story, all the luck we had.”
“That you went to call Leigh is what saved you,” Susan tells him.
“Right,” he replies. “And if her door had opened immediately, we would both have run into the house, straight into the missile.”
He pauses for a minute and picks his words. “I’ve defined myself as a secular religious man, more than once today. Something kept us going. I don’t know what or who. I keep saying what happened was not a tragedy. It was a complete mess, but not a tragedy, because we’re all here.”
“There was a lot of luck here,” adds Daniel. “Lucky I woke up, lucky I was able to move everyone, lucky there was a tiled ceiling and no concrete. The police investigator said if there had been a concrete ceiling, everything would have fallen on us. There was a lot of luck.”
Robert: “It wasn’t until we all sat down and talked, did we understand what happened there. Everyone had a role in this story. Yael, for example, rescued Tamara. She held her in front of her and got the shrapnel in the back. In years to come, that will be a souvenir for her.”
Daniel: “Yael got shrapnel in her legs and back. I remember weeks later she would go to the shower and peel things off her body. Telling me, ‘I found another part.’ It’s crazy. Just today she went through hip ultrasound to make sure no more shrapnel.
“With Tamara, we went through a frightening period. For a month, every week she had photos and tests to her head because she had a sliver they pulled out behind her ear.
“Mia, the big one, was more hurt psychically, she needed a lot of help later. At first she didn’t really understand what happened, was in total shock and upset with me. She had to try to make sense of it.”
Two of the family dogs were killed in the blast. “There were five dogs in the house that night,” Robert says, “and it could very well be that the two living creatures who died were snatched up instead of Susan, Daniel, Yael and the girls, and basically rescued them.”
Susan: “Tony, the dog Daniel loved so much, died. He just followed – and got hurt.”
Daniel has since adopted another dog and named him Rocket, after the missile that hit the house.
Robert and Susan were born in England. Their accent easily betrays them. Robert, an avid Zionist, came to Israel in 1978 at the age of 19 to serve in the IDF as a lone soldier. “I came here to make a living in Kibbutz Geva, and eventually I stayed,” he says. “I was in the army for three and a half years, in Nahal, and returned to England because my father passed away, where I met Susan at a party, she was 23 at the time, and I was 25 years old.
“We got married in England and then we immigrated together, in the early 1980s. We’ve been married for 36 years.”
“He had to convince me to come to Israel,” Susan smiles. “I’d been here a few times on vacations and I really liked it, but I never thought of living here. Already on our first date Robert said he would not live anywhere else, only in Israel.”
Robert: “I assured her that Israel is safer for Jews than England. It’s a little hard to prove it today, after what happened to us, but I still believe it. Susan is the heroine of the whole story. She didn’t want to come to Israel, I made her come. And today you can’t get her to leave.”
When they arrived in Israel, Robert and Susan were housed in an absorption center in Ramat Aviv. “Awful place, a lot of people got stuck there for years and couldn’t get out,” she says. “We ran away after a few months and rented an apartment in Ramat Hasharon.”
In 1984, eldest daughter Talia (35) was born, who now lives in Tel Mond. From Ramat Hasharon, the family moved to Raanana, and then decided to return to England. There Jonathan (31) and Daniel (30) were born. After three years they returned to Israel, to Raanana.
“Immigration is not done all at once,” laughs Robert. “But since 1989 we have been here forever. Leigh was already born in Israel.”
They moved house 18 years ago. “We never thought we would leave Raanana,” says Susan, “We had a beautiful house, and Raanana is a nice place. But we kept dreaming about a farm in the moshav. The friends didn’t understand why we left Raanana.”
Robert: “It took us two years to build our dream home. We never thought we would have to build it again.”
He works as a manufacturer in the glass industry, and she works in Raanana. They have five grandchildren. The fifth, Lena, was born to Talia two weeks after the missile hit. Susan, who was still very weak, insisted on accompanying her daughter at birth.
Robert: “Two weeks after we had a rocket dropped on the house, we got a new life. It’s amazing. The greatest feeling in the world.”
Susan: “It’s symbolic.”
Robert: “Immediately after the missile hit, we went to stay at Talia’s in Tel Mond, it’s ten minutes from where we are. She was then pregnant.
Susan: “We lived in her house for a few weeks, it was very difficult. None of us could sleep at night. We kept talking about what happened and we were with each other. Then she arranged for us to rent two apartments above her.”
How did family members react in London when they heard about everything that had happened?
Susan: “My nephew is a news announcer at a radio station in London. On the same day he was working, and while reading the news, he received a message from the family that the house that was hit was our home and announced that he could not continue.
“I had no choice but to call and tell the family, because everything was on the Internet. I was scared of my parents’ reaction because they were over 80. That evening I talked to them on the phone and told them everything was fine, even though I felt terrible. I didn’t want them to worry. Because they are far away, they didn’t really understand what happened. ”
Robert: “Susan’s parents came to Israel a week after the missile fell and asked to see what happened to the house. Her father looked and said, ‘It reminds me of Blitz’ (Nazi Germany’s bombing of England during World War II; JD). He was calm because he knew we were all alive.
“In this story I discovered two things. One – that there is nothing more important than family. And the other – you are not connected to the home, you are connected to your land. To Eretz Israel. That’s what matters.”
Now they have to deal with the scars. “You can’t go through that without trauma,” says Robert. “We can laugh about it, but in fact, we were in for a nightmare. At 5 in the morning you sleep in your home, in the quietest place in the country, and suddenly you wake up to another story, to something illogical.
“In the first few days I couldn’t sleep at all. I would go out for a walk with the surviving dogs and think what I should do if there was an alarm now, how to pick up the dog and run to the shelter room. When I heard a motorcycle outside, I immediately thought it was an alarm.
“Not long ago a friend of mine from England came to visit. We went to Ein Kerem, and he showed me very nice houses there, and in my head I saw the houses explode. It feels real. I still have flashbacks from the blast, and I remember those moments where I thought I had no family.”
Susan: “Talia has anxieties, even though she wasn’t with us. When she heard the alarm, she went into a shelter in her house, but realized our house was hit by the missile and thought we were all gone. She tried to call us all the time, until Robert answered her and said, ‘The house is gone, we’re all on the way to the hospital.”
Robert: “If you have the support of family and friends, it helps. And we had. The friends didn’t leave us, once the missile fell. They helped us with everything – even the equipment and everything needed. Just friends, there were also other people who helped.”
We conduct the interview around an indoor picnic table, in a well-kept garden. “We always come to care for the garden,” says Susan. “This is our work together, over the years. Here are all the trees of Israel – lemon, strawberry, olive, clementines, grapefruit.”
Fragments of shingles still remained on the roof over the table. Robert: “34 homes nearby were hit by the missile. Our roof was scattered in all directions, and you see shingles in all kinds of places.
Ever thought a missile could fall here?
Robert: “We didn’t think anything like that. I asked at the time why Iron Dome did not intercept the missile. Iron Dome needs improvement. ”
Hamas then claimed that the missile had been launched by mistake.
“The only thing that is a mistake is Hamas,” Robert says firmly. “What do I care if the missile is accidentally launched? It’s still terror.”
Susan: “Maybe they wanted to hurt Netanya after all.”
After this event, some in the south said that it was good that even the center would feel what was going on.
Robert: “I understand them 100 percent. It’s not they who shot us, and what’s happening there is criminal. I know you can’t do hocus pocus and things will change, but something needs to be done.
“There are 12-year-olds out there who don’t know anything else. Nobody is happy that someone else has been hurt, but I can understand their feeling.”
Susan: “I don’t know how they live like this, when they are constantly being shot. It’s horrible. It feels unfair that we have received support and a lot of media attention, and they deal with it every day, without getting a solution. It’s their everyday reality. Fully understand their thinking. ”
Construction of the new home began two months ago. Every day, more than ten workers and laborers arrive at the site. The skeleton is already in advanced stages, and work is expected to be completed by next summer. “We’ll be home soon,” says Robert excitedly.
Susan: “For the upcoming Sukkot holiday, we intend to set up a Sukkah courtyard. This is our favorite holiday, and this year we decided to invite people here.”
Robert is not satisfied just with the sukkah and announces that he will also celebrate the upcoming Independence Day in the yard, “even if the house is not ready by then.” He hung the Israeli flag on the entrance gate to the courtyard the second he left the hospital.
“I am strongly Zionist, I live here. This is our land, this is our people and this is our country. No one will move us from here. I am crazy about the country, I like the idea of Jews living in their country.
“Hanging the flag is a statement. It’s like giving the middle finger to Hamas. Tell them, what did you get out of it? We are not moving anywhere. In fact, they achieved nothing. They did personal damage, but nothing more.
“I’m stubborn, and I don’t think anyone can beat us. With all our mess, nobody can defeat us. I felt I wanted to shout it, and the flag is the shout. We waited for this flag for two thousand years, and no one can take it.”
CoopersColumn 