Paul Calvert talks to dedicated humanitarian, Stuart Gonliun, about his aid work helping victims of terror in Sderot.



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Paul: How do you know that the rockets are coming in?

Stuart: We have an alarm and then a very nice lady who says "Tzeva Adom! Tzeva Adom!" which is "colour red". You then have 15 seconds to find shelter. Which is better than where you are in Jerusalem. The bus goes boom; the terrorists start stabbing people - you get no warning. At least I get 15 seconds warning.

Paul: Do you have to run to the bomb shelter?

Stuart: Most of the time we have enough time to get to a bomb shelter or to some safe place, maybe under some stairs, some place that's facing east cos the rockets come from the west. Most of the time you have enough time to hide.

Paul: In your flat, do you sometimes hear a boom when a rocket's come?

Hope For Sderot

Stuart: You sure do. You hear the Iron Dome when it launches to take them out. You hear them taking off. The first time that happened I thought 'what in the world is that?' It sounded like the rocket going through my living room.

Paul: Tell us about the Iron Dome. What is it?

Stuart: It's a system they built. To me its mind boggling how they can detect in a matter of seconds when a rocket is launched from Gaza, once it recognises its coming I have 15 seconds to hide. Iron Dome can tell you where it's coming from, where it's going to land, whether or not it's going to launch a rocket or to explode it in the air. It's incredible to me, all in a matter of maybe nano seconds.

Paul: Amazing technology. Does everybody hear know someone who's been affected by the rockets?

Stuart: Absolutely. My wife's brother was injured; her other brother had kassams outside of the house; one had three kassams in his house over the years. She was just getting out of a car that exploded when it got hit by a kassam. My best friend Kobi, he should have been dead, honestly, the major injuries he sustained. Yes, everybody knows somebody, a family member, a friend who's been injured.

Paul: Hope for Sderot, what sort of projects do you run?

Stuart: We have a list of 450 families that we feed every month. We try to help them during Pesach, to get the special things they need because a lot of the people here don't have the money. For many years I've heard people say 'I hate the holidays' because of the expense. So when you can help them even if it's a hundred shekels, it's better than nothing. To hate the holidays is just sad to me.

Paul: Is there no business here in Sderot and is that why there's no work and a lot of poverty?

Stuart: There is work, but when the kassams started falling, the people that could leave town left. It's just unfortunate that they took the jobs with them, cos they were the business people. There are a lot of low-paying jobs, 25 shekels an hour. If you think about it a shawarma costs 25 shekels; a pizza costs you 20 shekels. A chicken costs around 35 shekels. So it takes you almost an hour and a half of hard labour to earn a chicken. There are a lot of working poor people.