The fourth day of the delegation included a trip to the Southern Israeli town of Sderot, a tour of an Osem food plant, a meeting with Sderot’s municipality and briefing from a trauma treatment specialist.  Finally the delegation visited a power station in Ashkelon with lunch hosted by the Employees Committee of Israeli Electric Company.

Today’s blog is written by Joe McGowen:

Today we visited Sderot in Southern Israel.  Sderot has been attacked by missiles fired from the Gaza Strip over 8,000 times since 2001, causing a horrific toll of death, injury and trauma to the civilian population.

The shop stewards at the Osan food factory showed us the concrete shelters they have to run to during a missile attack.  The citizens of Sderot have only 15 seconds to flee before the missiles hit the town.

Delegates outside Osem food factory in Sderot

The experience of meeting people exposed to the constant strain of missile attacks from Hamas was shocking.  These people can’t live normal lives, their children cannot play outside, their homes and public buildings are covered in concrete.

Everything is governed by the cruel and wholly indiscriminate reality of missile attacks.

There can be no justification for targeting civilians and the people of this brave town have every right to be defended by their democratically elected government.

What is even more disturbing is that Hamas is now developing missiles with the ability to fire over 60 kilometres, which would threaten the main population centres in the heart of Israel.

Just some of the thousands of rockets that have been fired from Gaza

In all the discussions about the tragedy of the war in Gaza in December/January it should be remembered that the conflict would not have happened if Hamas had not so relentlessly spent the last eight years trying to kill Israeli citizens in towns like Sderot.