Mr Wolf, originally from London, vows to rebuild 'right in the same place and we’ll enjoy it for another 50 years'
March 27, 2019 18:11
The patriarch of a British-Israeli family whose home north of Tel Aviv was destroyed by a rocket fired from Gaza, launched from more than 50 miles away, has said he still feels safe in the Jewish State, even though there is “no such thing as a safe place in Israel”.
Robert Wolf, who made aliyah 30 years ago with his wife Susan, vowed to rebuild their home in Mishmeret, in central Israel, after the strike in the early hours of Monday morning.
Mrs Wolf and the couple’s four-month-old granddaughter Tamara are recovering from shrapnel wounds to their heads. Tamara’s mother, Yael, suffered shrapnel wounds to her back after shielding her child from the blast.
Mr Wolf, 60, said: “We’re all alive, we’re all well and we’re going to live through it. People keep saying to me, ‘You’re lucky people’. And I keep saying that we would be even luckier if it had missed.
“But c’est la vie. We’ll build our house again. It will be a lovely house, right in the same place and we’ll enjoy it for another 50 years.”
Mr Wolf credited his 31-year-old son, Daniel, with saving the family after he alerted them to the air-attack siren at 5.20am. He had fallen asleep in the living room while watching the highlights of a recent Arsenal match.
Speaking to the JC earlier this week, Daniel Wolf said: “There was a boom, then quiet and dust everywhere and then screaming. It was terrible. I got my wife and daughters out and then saw my mother lying there and I could see she was bleeding.
“I picked her up and just talked her until the ambulances arrived and took us all to hospital.”
Sarah Wolf, a teacher at a school four miles away in Raanana, had been on the way to the shelter from the kitchen when the rocket fell.
She was due to be discharged from hospital in Kfar Saba, but doctors were weighing up whether to surgically remove shrapnel from her head. The family’s two dogs — a German Shepherd named Tony and Shimshon, a Retriever — died while shielding her.
Robert Wolf insisted he still felt safe in the Jewish State: “I’ve been in Israel 38 years. I’ve been in Eilat when missiles came over from Egypt. There is no such thing as a safe place in Israel, and anyone who thinks there is, is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
“Once you’ve made aliyah, even if you live in a nice place, terror can get you. The enemy can get you. But we’re not going anywhere. We’re here because this is our country.”
Mr Wolf, who works in construction, insisted he “holds nothing against the Arab people, who themselves are prisoners in a sh*thole that they’ve built for themselves in Gaza”, instead focusing his ire on Mr Netanyahu.
He said: “Bibi Netanyahu has had ten years to deal with these problems. In my opinion, it’s time to change.”
Originally from Portsmouth, he first made aliyah aged 19 as part of a programme of sponsored kibbutz work.
He is the great-grandson of Lucien Wolf – a prominent journalist, diplomat, historian and advocate of Jewish assimilation in Britain, as opposed to political Zionism.
One of the family’s British relatives, LBC presenter Simon Conway, read news of the bombing early on Monday morning, before he learned it was the Wolfs’ home that had been destroyed.
Mr Conway, who is Mrs Wolf’s nephew, said he had to continue reading the news that morning until cover could be arranged, as he "couldn’t continue at work because of the shock of it".
“I was lost for words when I heard it was their house. It was like a nightmare just hearing about it, so I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for them,” he said.
"It's just a miracle that no one was killed.”
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