NEW HAVEN -- Liz Edri, a native of Sderot in southern Israel, lives in a war zone where few people are untouched in some way, she says.

Edri, 24, grew up there -- and over the past eight years, Sderot, just a mile from Gaza, "has become a different place," she told about 25 people Wednesday night in the Tower One/ Tower East housing complex off Church Street downtown.

She was one of three speakers: two native Israelis and a Canadian Jew who has done "aliyah," or emigrated to Israel, and serves in the Israeli Defense Forces.

"For the past eight years, we have suffered from repeated Quassam (rocket) attacks," Edri told people at the event, organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven. "People live in fear."

While people in her community are used to running for cover on short notice, "in the past I believed that nothing could happen to me," she said.

Edri's luck ran out in June 2007, however. She was driving in her car when she heard a siren. "The people who were in the car in front of me stopped, so I needed to do the same and run for a safe place," she said.

But she didn't make it. A Quassam fell behind her and the blast threw her to the ground. The next thing she knew, she woke up in a hospital.

Now, trying to put her life back together, Edri suffers from post-traumatic stress. She has been aided and supported, however, by the Jewish Agency, an organization supported by donations from Jews all over the world. The Jewish Agency gave her immediate help and is paying for her to go back to school to study law.

Ohad Drory, a social worker with the Jewish Agency who also spoke, said their 10-day tour of the U.S. and Canada is partly to raise money. It also is to provide balance to a picture of the war between Israel and Hamas that has tended to show more images of Palestinian suffering than the terror from constant attacks in Israel.

"Israel is very, very bad at PR, unfortunately," he said after the formal program. Drory said that "what we're doing in Sderot is just to ... try to give strength to the citizens to live under these attacks."

While Sderot long has borne the brunt of continuous rocket and mortar attacks that began long before the war, "it's no longer just Sderot," Drory said. Over the past eight years, "more than 10,000 missiles" have been launched from Gaza into Israel, injuring hundreds.

The final speaker was Craig, 24, a native of Canada who was asked by the IDF not to give out his last name or place of birth because he still is an active soldier. Craig decided to emigrate at age 22 after going on a Birthright trip at age 20.

He arrived, initially unable to fluently speak Hebrew, spent a few months on a kibbutz and then joined the IDF and "made a special request to be in a combat unit," he said.

He later was injured in battle, getting shot in the chest, his life saved by a bullet-proof vest.

As a "lone soldier" with no family in Israel, Craig has also been supported along the way by the Jewish Agency, which pays for an apartment, as well as by a support group that visits lone soldiers on holidays.