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An Israeli student crouches under his desk as he attempts to safely study for his Bible exam after a Kassam rocket hit his high school. By Allison Kaplan Sommer, PJM Tel Aviv editor Folks who live in the city of Sderot in southern Israel know full well that they are being used as pawns in a deadly game of chicken by Hamas. They don't like it one bit.

As Kassam rockets from Gaza rained on them relentlessly this week, so did the stories of pain, terror and fear coming from a population that is sick and tired of living the lives of a ducks in a carnival game, not knowing when a rocket might be randomly hurled at them or a loved one.

Yesterday morning it happened at a high school just outside the city.

“It was like being in a Hitchcock movie,” said Rinat Malkes, who got closer to the story than she had planned this morning when the Kassam fell in the middle of an empty classroom of the Shaar HaNegev school as she was standing out front, just yards away. “It was absolute and total chaos. People were hysterical. Fifteen and sixteen year old girls screaming and crying, their teachers were trying to calm them down.”

What is it like to be right there when it happens? “You get the fear of God in you. There was no siren, no warning, nothing. Just a huge boom, and everyone begins running in all directions to find shelter.”

When the rocket hit, Malkes, a blogger and Brazilian journalist was in Sderot, like most of the foreign press, to cover the story of the Israeli Defense Ministry bussing citizens out of the city who couldn’t handle the stress and danger anymore - mostly children and their mothers, and the elderly.

“People there are just so angry and they have no hope, they see no solution in sight. I asked one man how he is dealing with it and he said “I just pray to God because I see the government is completely useless. You have to understand that it’s a very poor city to begin with, people have to work. So there is a huge problem there with the children. They feel that their kids aren’t protected in the schools - and certainly not on their way to and from schools. But they have to work and the children are also scared to stay home alone, afraid to be alone in a rocket attack. It’s just awful.”

Schools were closed for most of the week in Sderot, as more than 60 rockets fell, injuring nine people. The only reason the school Malkes visited had been open was because high school seniors were preparing for and taking the all-important matriculation exams. Miraculously, the 9th grade classroom in which the rocket fell was empty.

Once the rocket lands, she said, “you look at it and it is so small and provincial and basic a weapon, it’s hard to believe they are disrupting life this way. But they are.”
They are certainly disrupting the life of the Olmert government, as it struggles between the wisest choices militarily, diplomatically, and politically.

On the diplomatic front, logic would dictate that it would be beneficial for the Israeli military to do as little as possible against the Kassam attacks.

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