Day 20: Sunday 31st July 2016

Our day began with a 7.15am wake up and after a delicious breakfast we drove to the town of Sderot. The first stop in the town was Sderot Media Center where our guide for the town, Costa, told us why Sderot is such a prime target for rockets from Gaza and how the Iron Dome system does not cover the area since it is situated so close to the border with the Gaza Strip. We saw the media center's many security cameras for surveillance of the whole area and watched two short clips showing how the people of the town live and how they react after hearing a 'Tzeva Adom' alarm, meaning a rocket is oncoming. 

Next we hopped on the bus and after seeing the huge number of bomb shelters each within 100 metres of each other, we reached a police station where we saw a display of 200 of the 30,000 rockets fired from Gaza to Sderot, including a piece of a missile from the Iron Dome. After this, we visited the famous playground containing two bomb shelters in the shape of snakes, painted in bright colours to keep up the playful nature of the park. Whilst Costa was talking to us, he suddenly began counting down from 15 whilst we ran to the shelters, so that we could properly understand how short the time after hearing the alarm really is. 

Next we drove to a hill viewpoint which we climbed and from there we had an incredible view of the border with Gaza.

After this tour of the town we visited a Yeshiva and climbed to the roof where the view was also breathtaking. We could see the added bomb shelters on each building and we had a talk from one of the members of the Yeshiva about life in Sderot and the Yeshiva.

We then had lunch and drove to Shvil Hasalat (The Salad Trail) where our guide Karen told us about all the fruit and vegetables grown on the moshav and afterwards we picked a range of fruits from tomatoes and cucumbers to herbs and edible flowers. We thought the tomatoes were particularly delicious, especially the 'chocolate' variety! After picking our vegetables, Karen 

showed us the pigeon coop on the trail and we released some pigeons before getting back on the coach.

We went back to Kibbutz Ein Zurim where our madrichim ran a programme for us, we then had Sikkum and went to bed ready for a busy day ahead.

By Elana Almagor