My nephew, Edan Schiller, a film student at the Sapir College in Sderot, Israel had a narrow escape today. He'd been standing in a parking lot waiting for a lift. Two minutes later, a missile fired from Gaza hit that same place and killed a man. It was one of 40 missiles fired at the town today.

Edan is not easily shaken out of his customary laid-back attitude to life but this day was quite scary even for him. Several times, classes were interrupted when the missile alert sounded and the entire student body, as well as everyone else in the town, scrambled to get to the shelters. One time he was out on the street when the alarm sounded. He had only a few seconds to take cover.

The world really has to take this situation more seriously. On one hand, Israel is condemned for keeping the Gazans "imprisoned" in their territory. When they attack those responsible for the rockets, they are criticized for that too. When they take non-violent steps, such as cutting down the electricity supply, they are criticized for that as well.

Much of the world evidently feels they should just sit there and take it.

How long would any European country or the United States just sit there when scores of rockets are fired at its civilian population day after day?

Some background:

More than 800 rockets and mortar shells have been fired from Gaza into Israel this year. That amounts to more than a third of the 2,300 fired at Israel during all of 2007. Since Aug. 2005, when Israel withdrew all of its citizens and military from the Gaza Strip in hopes of paving the way for an independent Palestinian state, terrorists in Gaza have fired more than 4,500 rockets and mortars at Israel. There has been a significant increase in the number of rocket and mortar attacks launched from Gaza since Hamas took control of the area in a bloody siege against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction in June 2007.