TZFAT, ISRAEL—The screams of the 9-year-old girl as she pushed through the door immediately grabbed everyone’s attention. No amount of reassuring from her mother could truly comfort her. Wrapped inside her mother’s arms, the trembling child was too overwhelmed to comprehend the war going on around her.

As an adult I felt oddly safe, despite the siren blaring in the distance. My adult mind was able to rationalize that the odds of being hit by a Katyusha rocket were actually infinitesimal. And I knew that inside the window-less center of the hospital, I really wasn’t even at risk of flying shards of glass.

While a child might not think in terms of “odds,” she didn’t need to go far to witness justification for her fears. Since last Thursday, more than 100 local residents have come through the front door, some with severe physical injuries, others suffering from severe emotional trauma.

Just last night, a Hezbollah-launched Katyusha rocket smashed into the side of the building. Thankfully, it hit concrete, meaning there was no explosion inside the hospital. But since Katyushas spray shrapnel upward in a cone formation, the blast knocked out windows across the hospital.

Walking through the children’s wing the day after, it was clear that a miracle had occurred there. Even after a cleaning crew had done its work, glass was everywhere, including little shards wedged in the computer keyboard where kids normally are glued for hours at a time, day after day. But since the rocket hit after 10 p.m., no children were in the playroom.

Another child, though, was not as lucky. Recovering from spleen surgery one floor above the children’s wing, 13-year-old Koby was watching TV at the time of the blast. Glass rained down on him, and he was gashed in the back of his head.

Further from the blast but on the same floor as the children’s wing, 52-year-old Yakov Avoudboul was thrown out of his bed and across the room. This, though, was far less devastating than the rocket that exploded just one meter from him on Friday. An assistant chef at the hospital, Avoudboul was called in on the second day of sustained attacks to prepare meals for the increasing number of patients. Within moments of stepping out his front door, the rocket came within a whisker of killing him instantly. Continued...