I was getting used to it – 9500 rockets have fallen on us in the course of a month – in a space of 8,550.2 mi² – but most of them on Tel Aviv, Rishon leZion, Ashkelon, and Ashdod. They aim for highly populated areas.
So every day our little area would get about 2-3 rockets – usually from the afternoon and evening. That usually left us pretty much frozen to the news. But today there were no rockets – yet. Now I don’t know what to do.
where’s my rocket? – nov 9, 2023 Read Post »
In Habima Square they placed 240 empty beds for the hostages, to remind us of their existence. In fact, there are reminders everywhere – posters on columns, on walls, on the backs of motorcyclists, wherever there is space. We’re responsible for each citizen, and we take this responsibility seriously.
My grandson goes down south to pick vegetables left by dead farmers. My daughter does counseling for survivors of the massacre, my other grandson sorts clothing people have donated for the refugees. Every family has volunteers.
Only our government has been busy squirreling away more allotments for yeshivot instead of providing for survivors.
240 hostages – where do they sleep? Nov 9, 2023 Read Post »
.https://michaeldickel.info/2023/11/08/weeks-after-the-massacre/
poems – nov 9, 2023 Read Post »
Every morning the announcement comes of what has been destroyed the night before. Sometimes it’s
Every morning the announcement comes of what has been destroyed the night before. Sometimes it’s a little old folks’ apartment in Ashkelon, sometimes it’s an elegant house, sometimes a part of a hospital, something the yard of a school. But almost every time, people are not hurt because there have been shelters built into the buildings, or people have been evacuated from the building. Don’t blame Hamas for the small casualties here. They have been arranged years ago – and not with cement donated by foreign countries that wound up being used for Hamas tunnels.
morning – oct 8, 2023 Read Post »
When the hospital in Gaza was bombed on October 24, it took the Gazans minutes to blame Israel and to number the dead at 500. Soon after it became clear that it was a misfired Jihad rocket that hit the parking lot of the hospital and that the number was more like 50.
So who can you believe? I see pictures of kids lining up for water…. but then some of the pictures of injuries and fallen buildings I’ve seen before, and often in other places. there is a disconnect between the photos in the papers and the subtitles.
So what I can vouch for is the number of times I’ve heard a siren in my neighborhood tonight, the number of booms I’ve heard, or the number of times the building has shook, and the evening is still young.
wish i knew – nov 7, 2023 Read Post »
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The 240 hostages in Gaza, the stories of survivors, the vegetables harvested by volunteers – I want to tell you about it all – but I can only show you a tiny piece of it.
I suddenly fell apart at a memorial in the military cemetery this afternoon – after buying so many vegetables from the south I had no energy to put away, and visiting the exhibits of families of hostages. I looked at all the graves of soldiers and saw there was room for so many more….
what is left – nov 6, 2023 Read Post »
It has been impossible for me to begin to confront the atrocities committed last month. A live baby put into an oven and slowly baked. The image won’t leave me, and I try to avoid the other hundred of horrors that outdo every horror I’ve been told about the holocaust. How do you overcome that brutality and believe in the possibilities of humanity?
On another part of my disappearance, I have become an expert in predicting the moment before a rocket. I announce it a minute before the sirens begin, and continue whatever I was doing until the frightening sirens and the booms that accompany them. And sometimes in the morning I tell Ezi what time they will come.
But it takes all my energy. It is like being a medium…
where have i been? – nov 5, 2023 Read Post »
We’re still counting bodies,missing people. One month after the hostages – babies to old people – we are not sure who is a hostage or whose body has been thrown away. The hundreds who were saved from the party are beginning to talk now. So many people – Jews and Arabs – went back and forth with their cars, carrying people to safety. Only now have we time to pay attention to these drivers, these escapees, some of whom are ashamed that they survived the massacre. Only now are the rescuers beginning to tell of the violence, the parts of bodies they left behind…
how could anyone in the world approve of the butchering of people? And how could these murderers be allowed to stay alive?
counting bodies, collecting phones – nov 5 Read Post »
