An Aussie reporter called Palestinian rocket blasts “symbolic” even though they nearly killed an Israel man.
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel
Last week Israel signed peace agreements with two Arab nations. While a signing ceremony for those agreements was happening at the White House, terrorists in Gaza fired rockets at Israel, and overnight fired 13 more at Israeli towns and cities.
One of those rockets exploded at a shopping mall in the port city of Ashdod, sending several Israelis to the hospital, including Asher Biton, a 62-year-old father of 15, who was almost killed when his body was riddled with shrapnel from the blast.
Rushed to emergency surgery, doctors worked to save his life, and despite being in critical condition at one point, Biton was finally stabilized and \listed in serious condition in intensive care.
Shockingly, ABC Australia reporter Eric Tlozek referred to the rocket attack as “symbolic” and talked about Israel’s “military occupation,” even though Israel withdrew all army presence and forced Jews to leave Gaza in 2005.
Since then, Gaza has been under the brutal rule of the Iran-backed Hamas terror group.
“There were a couple of rockets fired. [This] was largely symbolic. Hamas timed it to show that it opposes the [peace] deal,” Tlozek said in his report.
Those who experienced the horror of the attack described it as anything but “symbolic.”
Avichai Raz was standing near Biton and said the explosion came only five seconds after they heard the sirens. With no shelter nearby, the two followed instructions and lay on the floor, covering their heads. Interviewed in his hospital bed where he was being treated for light wounds, Raz said he thought one of Biton’s arms was severed and saw he was in bad shape from numerous shrapnel wounds in the chest from being closer to the blast.
Ashdod resident Menachem Maudi was in the mall where the rocket hit and rushed to a reinforced safe room when the sirens went off.
Forty Seconds to Reach Shelter
With Ashdod residents having 40 seconds or less to reach shelter once the warning sirens go off, Maudi said a few seconds after they reached the safe room there was a massive boom that shook the entire building.
He found a security guard who had been injured by flying glass. major disaster was narrowly averted because a “miracle from the heavens” saw the rocket explode in a water fountain that absorbed the brunt of the blast, he said.
“If it (the rocket warhead) had been one meter higher, one meter, everything would have looked different with dead and wounded,” Maudi told Ynet TV.
Maudi said that the mall was full of shoppers ahead of the Rosh Hashana holiday and had they not followed civil defense guidelines that Israel practices regularly – and gotten the luck of the rocket hitting the water fountain – there would have been massive bloodshed.