In spite of the current cease fire rockets continue to fall on Israel from terrorists in the Gaza strip. When you read that a rocket landed and did no damage that is not a true and correct assessment. With every ‘Tseva Adom” alarm that sounds old emotional wounds are reopened and that adrenalin rush of fear races through your body one more time. For some the nightmare of “Tseva Adom” and the results of the accompanying rocket never ends..
I recently went to visit my friend Koby. I have known him for almost four years now. The first time I met him was in April 2008 at a BBQ. He was instrumental in the early days of Hope For Sderot as we got thing going and off the ground.
He knew the where’s and why’s to getting things started and knew what those who were injured by Kassam rockets were going through, you see he was a victim of a Kassam rocket attack himself.
He walks today with the aid of a cane and is able to get out and about. His legs take him where he needs to go but there are scars that will never go away and long lasting effect that plague him even to this day.
On January 6, 2006 Koby was at work. He was sent to pick up some documents at a IDF base near the Karni crossing. While he was there he heard an explosion which had hit the building next to where he was. He reasoned that there might be other rockets on the way and left the building he was in for the bomb shelter.
He was right there was a second Kassam. He doesn’t remember a lot from that point on but he does remember flying through the air and hitting a parked car. He remembers telling the medics “I can’t feel my legs”. He was rushed to a make shift medical center at the base.
He was put on a helicopter and flown to a trauma hospital in Beer’ Sheva where he would under go the first ten of his 26 surgeries as a result of this terrorist attack. Six years later he still faces two or three more to remove shrapnel from his body. He spent 18 months in the hospital as they tried to reconstruct his legs, remove shrapnel from his lungs, hands back and neck.
By all medical standards Koby should have died that day but as what you may call fate, Koby calls divine intervention, it just so happened that on that day at that IDF base there was a medical training seminar and every king of medical doctor you could ever want was there to help get him “packaged” for his flight to the hospital.
From that day on his life would never be the same. When he finally was released from the hospital, eighteen months later, he came home in a wheelchair. His days as a truck driver were over; the days of playing with his kids were over as well. No more hikes, going to the beach or playing soccer with his kids.
Even while he was in the hospital the bills started to add up, oh not from his injury but from a life style he, his wife and family could afford when he was bring in between 9,000 and 12,000 shekels a month. It took a while to jump through the hoops and to remove all the red tape so he might receive disability payments from the state and that just added to the problems.
When all was said and done the state gave him a disability pension of 5000 shekels a month, half of what he was able to make when he was working. Not being able to work now two years since his injury, a mountain of debt, walking with crutches and more surgery still ahead, it took its toll on his marriage and it ended in divorce.
Now the 5000 shekels a month became 2000 because of child support that is taken out of his pentsion automaticly each month. The mountain of bill went into what they call a “Basket” here in Israel where,
they take a certain amount each month to repay your debit. At 200 shekels a month he will have to live to be 312 to pay the debt off. Four months ago the state said there was some mistake in what they gave him in the beginning of his disability pension and he has been notified that his monthly pension amount will now be 1000 less until it is all paid back. That leaves him with about 800 shekels a month to live on.
As we talked yesterday he told me he is scared and has no where to turn for help. Apparently here in Israel you can wind up in jail for not paying your debts and that is all he can see happening to him now. As a father he feels useless and a failure, to his girlfriend he feel less than a man, unable to give her anything, not even a night out on the town.
His self esteem is none existent. He asked me if we could help. Koby knows all to well that Hope For Sderot does not have a nest egg of money we sit on but that we have been and are blessed by YAH as he provides all that we need each month and as every situation arises.
I told Koby the very thing I had him tell those people that came to us in the early years “We won’t make any promises but will see what we can do”; He understood that. I told him I would write a story and send it out as a news letter and post it on the web and we would see what would happen, which I have now done. We will now wait and see what happens.
The situation Koby is in, is not because he took up drinking, drug, gambling or was a bad steward of his money. He was your everyday Israeli who went to work to provide for his familey when he became a victim of a senseless terrorist attack that took his life even though he is not dead crippled his body and set him in a tail spin where he says he is awful close to crashing and burning and NONE of it was of his own doing!
I don’t know what good will come out of this story about Koby but YAH does. Maybe He will touch your heart to help, maybe He will touch the heart of a group of people or a synagogue or a church to come together to help Koby, maybe it will be the person you share this story with that He will use. Maybe it will be a combiation of all the above. To help click here. To contact us about koby click here.
In His Love,
His Stewart,
Stewart Ganulin
Director
Hope For Sderot
www.hopeforsderot.com
[email protected]
USA: 530-918-4929 / Sderot: 054-725-8976