‘A great miracle’: Israeli mother describes harrowing escape from direct hit on house by Gaza rocket

Israeli mother describes family’s narrow escape from direct rocket hit on house as ‘Great miracle’.

By Benjamin Kerstein, The Algemeiner

A mother from the southern Israeli city of Netivot is calling her family’s narrow escape from a direct hit on their house by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip a “miracle.”

Batsheva Hadad’s home suffered extensive damage from a rocket strike on Tuesday — a day on which more than 150 rockets were fired from Hamas-ruled Gaza into Israel after the IDF assassinated a top Islamic Jihad commander.

However, in the few seconds between the activation of the warning siren and the impact of the rocket, Batsheva succeeded in getting her family into a fortified room, saving all their lives.

“It’s a great miracle, I have no words,” Batsheva told Israel’s Channel 13.

“Thanks to the holy one, blessed be he,” she said. “It wasn’t a given that we would get to the shelter in time, that we would close the door in time. Although there was property damage, thank God no lives were lost.”

Batsheva believes she had a premonition of the attack, connected to the loss of her daughter to a terminal disease earlier this year.

“Unfortunately, five months ago I lost my daughter, Michal, from a serious illness,” she said. “Last night I had a very bad feeling, I cried non-stop.”

Batsheva’s daughter, Livna, also described the attack, saying, “There was a siren and then we ran to the shelter. We heard a loud boom, and when we came out we saw the whole house destroyed.”

“My mom really took it hard,” she noted. “Inside the house the whole ceiling collapsed.”