WHAT KIND OF PERSON CAN SHAMELESSLY PUT CHILDREN’S LIVES IN DANGER?

I REFER to Benita Levin’s article, “Pulling kids out of post-crime fear pit”. It is most useful and ought to have appeared long ago considering the daily crime reports.

I experienced World War II, front-line fighting, the total destruction of the medieval centre of Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe and am a survivor of 2½ years of concentration camps during which 40 members of my close family were murdered.

I also visited the Israeli city of Sderot after the recent war on Gaza which Israel launched after 14 000 rockets and mortar bombs were fired at the country’s civilian settlements and cities. Sderot is situated 4km from Gaza. At that range the time from launch to impact is 15 seconds – 15 seconds in which to scramble your spouse, children and pets to shelter.

We arrived at noon on a working day. There were hardly any people in the streets. We saw air-raid shelters in front of every housing block and double roofs on the schools to minimise impact. Our information was that the bombardments were timed to take place when the children were either on their way to school or going home, that is, not in shelters.

We also visited the only bombproof building in the settlement, the crèche. Having lived for years in Israel, I was able to converse with the infants, joke with them, but that did not hide the emotional signs of trauma on their little faces.

Levin writes of “the pure beauty of innocence, unwavering trust in humanity, shattered in minutes; of the heartbreaking nightmares that have dogged her two children and left her wondering how many thousands of other children are tossing and turning at night, reliving their horrors”.

I am 86, don’t have nightmares or lie tossing and turning in my sleep, but am still under treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. What kind of creatures justify perpetrating such atrocities?

Don Krausz