As Israel and Gaza exchanged rocket fire, Sarah Weil spoke to me via Skype, in her Jerusalem apartment... just an hour away from explosions, sirens, gunfire.“Today alone I read there were 120 rockets fired from Gaza on Southern cities,” Sarah said.
Hundreds of rockets have pounded the region since the start of the conflict a week ago.
Sarah moved to Jerusalem six years ago to study Jewish law.
“After the first couple days of suffering in this terrible anxiety, nausea and constant worry- I just picked myself up and said, Sarah, you got to move on with life. You have to go to class-work, you have to do the things you are committed to doing and you can't let this ruin your life,” she said.
But life has been interrupted.
“I think that this war has been I guess kind of a test for me to see what my moral compass looks like. You know--what I think about things... how I assess right and wrong,” she said.
Sarah was born and raised in Fresno where she was an avid tennis and basketball player... a team player at Edison high school.
Her parents still live in Fresno, and while they’re concerned, they’re supportive.
“It's hard. It's very difficult as a parent to have a child in a war zone but that's what she wanted to do and that's where her life is and I respect that,” said Sarah’s dad Stuart Weil.
In fact, she told dad she's honored to be in Israel during this crisis.
“Hopefully from all of this, we all do a lot of internal work and we'll become good people, and the world some how becomes a better place to live,” Sarah said.
