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A show of solidarity with Israel

Merrick rabbi recounts harrowing trip during Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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The warning siren suddenly blared, and Rabbi Charles Klein, spiritual leader of the Merrick Jewish Centre, knew precisely what to do. Run.

The siren, he said, “gave us 20 seconds to find a shelter.”

Five seconds earlier, a Hamas rocket had pierced Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, which is capable of shooting down 90 percent of the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. Ten percent of Hamas rockets, however, make it through, as one did in late August, while Klein was touring Ashkelon, a city of 117,000 eight miles north of Gaza. Klein found shelter and survived the attack unscathed, but that moment of terror, he said, will remain with him for life.

The rabbi, 63, went to Israel for three days amid the most recent round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which erupted July 8 and ended Aug. 26. He joined U.S. Rep. Peter King, a Republican from Seaford, who is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Intelligence; former New York Gov. David Paterson; and a delegation from the New York Board of Rabbis.

The Merrick Jewish Centre, on Fox Boulevard in south Merrick, takes in congregants from Merrick and Bellmore.

Terror rains down from the sky
During the 50 days of intense fighting, Hamas and its allies fired some 4,500 rockets at Israel, and Israeli troops, supported by drone airpower, shelled and decimated whole sections of Gaza, a densely populated strip of dusty land one-tenth the size of Long Island.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back virtually to when Israel was declared an independent nation in 1948. Formed in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas carried out terrorist acts in Israel, including suicide bombings, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza, effectively ending its nearly four-decade occupation of the territory that had begun with the Six-Day War. That same year, Hamas won an overwhelming majority in the Palestinian parliament, defeating the more moderate Fatah Party.

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