The coastal city of Ashkelon, population 130,000, was hit particularly hard on Sunday. In one attack, a rocket slammed into a four-story building, penetrating through the roof of the stairwell, and continuing on, leaving a large gaping hole in the floor of one apartment, and in the ceiling of the apartment below. Two people sustained injuries from the attack and five suffered shock. The rundown apartment building is home to Russian and Ethiopian immigrants as well as native Israelis.

For Alex Leibowitz and his wife Olga, parents of four, the rocket attack could have had much more serious consequences had it not been for their dog, Louisa.

Alex was home, not feeling well, on Sunday, while his wife had left to work in the morning. At one point, their dog began barking incessantly. “Louisa just kept on nervously barking non-stop and I couldn’t listen to it any longer, so l went back to the bedroom,” explained Alex.

Because of the barking, Alex did not hear the rocket warning siren and remained in his bedroom. Shortly after, a rocket fired from Gaza struck his apartment building, slicing into his apartment door and penetrating his floor, leaving a trail of debris, shrapnel and shattered glass in its path.

A rocket left a gaping hole in the floor of the Leibovitzs’ Ashkelon apartment. Photo: Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency

“It was a miracle. Had I gone down the stairwell, having heard the siren, the rocket would have caught me,” said Alex. Residents of Ashkelon have only 30 seconds to get to shelter once the sirens sound.

“It was as if our dog had some kind of sixth sense to know that a rocket was on its way,” added Olga, his wife. “Louisa’s barking kept my husband alive.”

Although the front end of their apartment has been badly devastated, the couple feels very fortunate.

“We have such a good dog,” said Olga, patting Louisa’s head as she now sat calmly on the porch. “We are lucky people today,” she added as she surveyed the large hole in her living room floor. “This could have been a much worse situation.”

Gaza rockets continued to pound Israel on Sunday, with more than 100 striking residential communities and cities, wounding nine people including a rescue service worker, who sustained moderate head injuries from a mortar fired from Gaza at Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council. Five others were wounded when a Grad rocket struck a vehicle in Ofakim including a couple and their two-year-old daughter. Cars, homes, and buildings were damaged in the rocket strikes and countless people experienced shock and trauma from the attacks.

The Cabinet on Sunday unanimously approved an allocation of NIS 7.6 million in order to complete the financing of building protected daycare centers in communities with 0-7 kilometers from the Gaza Strip.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Our advance preparations and the speed with which we are meeting citizens’ needs have proven themselves time and again. This decision is the continuation of previous Government decisions in the framework of which billions of shekels have been allocated to protecting residences and educational institutions and to strengthening the resilience of citizens in the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip.”

8:52 AM There are 3 confirmed dead in the rocket strike in Kiryat Melachi, and a baby is injured, in moderate condition.

The rocket hit the 4th story of an apartment building.

IDF reporter is under rocket fire in Kiryat Melchi, as she is reporting live from the scene

Rockets falling in Kiryat Melachi and Kiryat Gat.

The Bahá’í Shrine in Haifa has been voted Israel’s most beautiful building by 40,000 readers of Yedioth Ahronoth.

The poll was conducted by the architecture channel of the paper’s lifestyle portal, Xnet.

The Holon Design Museum came in second, the old Technion building third, Jerusalem’s Mamilla Avenue fourth,  the Ashdod Performing Arts Center fifth, Jerusalem’s King David Hotel sixth, Tel Aviv’s Azrieli towers seventh, the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem eight, the new wing of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art ninth, and the Bialik House in Tel Aviv tenth.

A construction worker building the security fence along the Gaza border was lightly injured in an attack Thursday evening.

The man was injured from a nearby explosion.

It was originally thought that it was from a mortar that had exploded nearby, but Palestinians have been talking about an IED they placed alongside the fence, and it is now believed that it might indeed have been that.

A week ago we sat waiting out the storm when the lights flickered and went out. One moment we were sitting in a lit room, the television flashing picture and sound, the internet feeding news, and then we were in the dark.

And then, unexpectedly, after almost a week, they did.

The lights have gone out in America now. They may come back. They may not. It’s up to us. No one is going to come help us do it. Other countries have America. We have ourselves.

Readers will notice that my blog, Sultan Knish, did not predict any Romney landslides. It did not engage in empty cheers or promise that he would win half the country and restore moral leadership. That’s not what this site is about. This site is about the hard truths and now as we sit in the dark, let’s pass out some of those around the room.

We can blame Chris Christie, Sandy or Romney’s last debate performance. But let’s look at the actual election.

Romney outlasted the primaries because he was the most electable. Two blue state politicians, as bland and inoffensive as possible, ran on the economy, not on war or social issues, and managed to convince many Democrats that they could fix the economy. He got a white turnout to match that of Ronald Reagan and crowded rallies. And none of it was enough.

Romney had an excellent machine. But Obama had the bigger machine that was more than a collection of SuperPACs. It was the urban political machine, with its suburban tentacles, fed by taxpayer money and integrated into every budget. The time when it could be beaten the old way may be passing.

The people who came out to worship Obama stayed home. Romney’s rallies drew big crowds. But when all was said and done, the lines of people who feed off the political machine were there, and the handlers of the machine cast their multiple votes and carried off their manifold frauds because their own private economy depended on it.

Every time people ask me why the left has such a grip on this country, my answer is because they worked for it. It’s the answer that most people don’t want to hear, but it’s true. The left has been planning this for a while. They have been playing the long game, building the infrastructure and indoctrinating generations. And to beat them, we will have to do the same thing.

The right is 40 years behind the left and it remains a disorganized collection of potentials seeking a compass point. The “right” that got behind Mitt Romney consists of millionaires who want fewer regulations and easier imports from China, of social conservatives who are mainly ignored, except when voter turnout becomes an issue, libertarians who want more freedoms, and the non-ideological small business middle class and the struggling working class sensing their country and way of life slipping away from them.

Those groups could be welded together into a movement every bit as tribal and protective of its interests, capable of engaging in collective action on behalf of its own interests, as the urban machine vote. And that may already be happening with the Tea Party. But the counter-revolution of the bourgeoisie isn’t here yet. And there’s plenty of work to do to make it a reality.

The Republican establishment had its shot, twice. It put up moderate non-objectionable candidates. And it lost. It has no policies, beyond keeping the system going, and it has no ideas and no agenda, besides winning. It is a decadent political class fused with an even more decadent pundit class that views elections like these as a game, not as a life-and-death matter. It makes up lies and tells them to its base and hopes that the base will then forgive and forget being lied to and used one more time.

It’s not done, by any stretch of the imagination. Right now, Christie is patting himself on the back and drawing up a list of advisers for a 2016 run. And a dozen equally loathsome personalities are doing the same thing. And they may even get their way. But that doesn’t really matter. This is a long game and to win it, we have to think long term.

The National Union (HaIchud HaLeumi) released the following short statement following President Barack Obama’s reelection: “Obama’s re-election gives a tailwind boost to the Israeli left-wing. The upcoming Israeli elections will be about building a national coalition that will help Netanyahu withstand the pressures put upon him. A Jewish coalition that is strengthened by the new knitted-kipa merger of the National Union and the Bayit HaYehudi parties, versus a weak, left-wing coalition with Lapid and Deri.”

A Manhattan office building that houses the Jewish Daily Forward may be closed for several months due to flood damage sustained from Hurricane Sandy.

Citing an unnamed disaster recovery company official involved with the building, where the newspaper has an office on the eighth floor, The New York Times reported Monday that 125 Maiden Lane may remain closed for months while transformers, boilers and other equipment are replaced.

Forward publisher Samuel Norich reportedly said he heard from building management that 8 million gallons of water were pumped from the basement of the building.

“We had prepared for an emergency,” Norich told The New York Times. “The emergency we had prepared for was an act of terrorism, not this.”

Forward reporters who had power at home worked remotely throughout the hurricane and into the weekend, and managed to publish its Yiddish and English paper the weekend after the storm.

Makom Hadash, an office sharing-initiative led by the Jewish environmental group Hazon, has leased space in the Forward’s office since 2010. The initiative’s partner organizations, which also are affected by the building’s closure, include Limmud NY, Moving Traditions, Storahtelling, Nehirim, B3: The Jewish Boomer Platform and the Jewish Greening Fellowship, an initiative of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center.

JTA, whose New York-based employees have been operating remotely since shortly before Labor Day, is expecting additional delays in moving into its new Manhattan office on West 30th Street.

Several synagogues, Jewish day schools and other Jewish organizations sustained serious flood damage when Hurricane Sandy swept through the greater New York area on Oct. 29.

Among the organizations that sustained damage to their facilities from direct flooding were the Russian American Jewish Experience (RAJE), the Mazel Day School and the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island, all in Brooklyn, as well as the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach on Long Island.