HELP US HELP ISRAEL: Rockets from Gaza keep raining down on innocent Israelis with no end in sight

Israeli parents and children living in Sderot and Ashkelon on the southern border with Gaza are being pounded day after day, with no apparent end in sight. The Israeli military has made several attacks on Hamas positions and incursions into Gaza, but the rockets, missiles and mortars just keep coming. The Joshua Fund has been sending relief supplies to both cities, but we need to do much more. Among the current urgent needs of Barzilai Medical Center:

* Operating Room Lamp cost: $20,000

* Mobile X-Ray Machine cost: $40,000

* Ultrasonograph for Delivery Room cost: $50,000

* Echocardiograph cost: $60,000

* Breast Ultrasonograph cost: $ 70,000

* Ventilators and Respirators cost: $85,000 each

Please pray that we can raise these and other funds quickly so we help these brave doctors and nurses with the equipment they so urgently need to care for the 500,000 Israeli who live near the border of Gaza. Please also pray that the Lord would continue to open doors for The Joshua Fund to provide food, clothing and others critical supplies to those Israelis suffering in this horrific missile zone. To help financially, please click here.

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Latest headline from Ynet News: "Qassam strikes Sderot house; no injuries. House sustains direct hit, several people suffer from shock. Seven rockets fired at Israel from northern Gaza since Thursday morning.".....Excerpts from the story: "Elisheva Turjeman, the owner of the house hit, found it difficult to talk after the shuddering experience. 'We were at home with the children, there was a very loud explosion, and the entire house was hit,' she told Ynet. 'We managed to get to the secured room and take shelter. It was a real miracle. I still can't believe we escaped it unharmed....'We heard a very loud explosion, and I immediately understood that the house was directly hit,' one of the residents on the street told Ynet. 'Our houses all shook and the windowpanes were damaged.'"

Latest headline from the (UK) Independent: "Ashkelon, the new target for Hamas missiles".....Excerpts from the story: "Israeli surfing shop owner Elan Biton was standing in the car park chatting to friends as he waited for his wife and three children after an afternoon at Ashkelon's marina when he heard two distant but unmistakeable booms. A few seconds later, he heard a whoosh followed by a very much louder explosion a mere 10 metres away. It was only as he started to head down to the water's edge, dazed, to look for his family that he noticed the small hole in his lower stomach. It dawned on Mr Biton that he had been hit by shrapnel from another of the Grad rockets which had helped to trigger last weekend's bloody incursion into Gaza. Lying in his bed in a private room in Ashkelon's modern 500-bed Barzilai hospital yesterday, and attached to an antibiotic drip, Mr Biton, 36, did not mince his words about what needed to be done to stop the rockets. 'I don't think there is a political solution. I can't know that I will leave this hospital and not be hit by another rocket,' he said. Was he talking about a full-scale invasion of Gaza? 'Yes. You cannot talk to Hamas and then think everything is going to be OK. It needs massive power to deal with it.' Ashkelon, a growing city of 120,000 people with its 12km of sandy Mediterranean beaches, gardens and tree-lined boulevards, seems a far cry from the low-income Israeli development town of Sderot, which has borne the brunt of repeated Qassam rocket attacks which have claimed 13 lives in Israel since 2004....But the city has suddenly become of major strategic concern to Israeli politicians since it moved into the front line as a result of the 15 Grads – the smallest form of Soviet-designed Katyusha rocket but notably more accurate and powerful than the Qassam – launched from Gaza since Israel killed five Hamas militants last Wednesday."