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 Featured prominently in his workshop is a quotation from the
Book of Isaiah: "And they shall beat their swords into
plowshares".
Bob is doing something close to that in his studio in Yated, an
agricultural community near the border where Israel, Gaza and
Egypt meet.
His raw material is rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel
by Palestinian militants from Gaza, just 4 km (2.5 miles) away.
The twisted shrapnel is dropped off at his smithy by police and
Bob, 47, crafts artwork and religious symbols from the metal,
selling his creations in Israel and abroad.
In the run-up to the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, he was busy
crafting a monumental hanukkiyah, a candlestick with nine
branches that is used during the eight-day festival that starts
this year at sundown on Sunday.
Also known as the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah commemorates the
2nd century BC victory of Judah Maccabee and his followers in a
revolt in Judea against armies of the Seleucid Empire.
Light is key to the holiday because, Jewish tradition says, the
Maccabees found only enough ritually pure oil to fuel a
ceremonial lamp in the temple in Jerusalem for one day, but it
burned for eight days.
Bob also makes the seven-branched menorah, a symbol that appears
on the emblem of the State of Israel.
"The idea of turning rockets into menorahs and hanukkiyot is
turning the symbol of death and destruction into a symbol of
light, and hanukkiyah is the symbol of light," Bob said.
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Israel and Gaza militants have fought three wars in the past 10
years, and violence occasionally erupts along the frontier.
This year alone, more than 230 Palestinians have been killed by
Israeli troops and two Israeli soldiers and one Palestinian killed
by Hamas militants either in border protests or conflict.
Israel maintains tight control of the enclave's land, air and sea
borders while the wider Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been
stalled for several years.
But the skies have been empty of rockets and missiles since a
flare-up in mid-November in which more than 400 projectiles were
fired from Gaza and Israel mounted dozens of air strikes.
"We have only between 10 to 15 seconds to run for shelter, so every
millisecond counts, and because of that we are in anxiety," Bob
said.
"When I'm taking the rockets and I cut them and I put them in the
furnace and I'm working with them or with the blow torch and I'm
working, I'm like destroying, annihilating the rockets. So, this is
my therapy."
(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Angus MacSwan)
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