With a day that began with a terrible terrorist attack, killing, so far, only one, but injuring over 35, we mourn the losses of the past year. And while we’re trying to sort this out, two people were injured from a Hizballah drone in an Arab village. In the past week we’ve had 56 new orphans from soldiers who were fathers but were killed in combat. It is all incredibly confusing.
Day of Mourning – 27.10.24 Read Post »
Most of us don’t want to think about it. If we’re not in the front or don’t have captured or displaced friends we try to ignore the situation when there are no rockets. But we always know there are terrible threats around the corner, and any bad news reminds us of that. I see it in the daily behaviour of people, the little slip-ups, the wrong turns, tiny things forgotten.
But with all that – we’re still thinking straight and functioning. We have been roped into a serious war by two major attacks on Israel by Iran – and now we’ve got to stay even-headed.
So we spent the evening helping a grandchild study for a math test of Sunday. Will there be school on sunday? Will there be a test?
In 1973, when the Yom Kippur war broke out, we hid in the shelter. I hadn’t even known that we had one, but there it was, with bunk beds that reminded me of Auschwitz. We didn’t use it after the first day, when there was no immediate danger any more, and we didn’t think any more of it. But in the Gulf War, since it was clear most people didn’t have shelters, we were instructed to tape our windows and hide in a room we could seal off from the gas attack we were threatened with. We spent many long hours in our gas masks in the kitchen, and I wrote a poem a day, like this one:
January 1991
Here is your family
gas mask kit. It will do
good only with
the right gas. Of course,
with the other gas ‑
that infiltrates the skin ‑
you must stay inside
the nearest third story
flat you can seal. You
don’t want to go too high,
however, in case
of conventional
bombs. Because gas
is heavy, it will invade
the lower
floors and shelters.
But if gas and bombs are used together,
you have what we define as
a problem.
The only instructions I remember were that we were told to drink water.
After the “Desert Storm” war in 1991, however, it became clear that shelter was needed, and a law was enacted to mandate security rooms and/or shelters for new buildings. Most people use their “security room” for storage, and they were filled with junk. I tried to get my neighbors to add on a safe room, but no one was interested. Now they’re too old to run down to the shelter and sit in the hall.
Our home was built in 1970 and the one thing the builder did right was make a shelter. Ezi’s father built the home my daughter now lives in in 1947 – no shelter.
more about shelters – 24.10.24 Read Post »
So we’re beginning again. We’re reading the Bible all over again. It always feels new, and like a chance to be born over again. But there’s still me, and you, and the wars that intensify and diminish but never end. If it’s not Beowulf, it’s Grendel, if it’s not Jabberwock, it’s the Jubjub bird. So beginning again spiritually gives you a new way to handle it, maybe. It doesn’t stop Cain from killing Abel, but maybe helps to understand the dangers before us – how our extreme desires can ruin an otherwise perfect world.
Beginning – 10.24.24 Read Post »
In the middle of the evening the siren went off, and we escorted our guests to the shelter. My friend was speechless from terror, and I didn’t succeed in making her situation easier with my silly attempts at humor. It made me realize how lightly I’m taking the sirens, and what a terrible thing they are. As soon as our company left to make their way home (with great trepidation), we turned to the news, and when there was nothing on the Israeli channels we went to CNN. There we saw the situation in north Gaza, the terrible injuries, the damage, the suffering. When the news turned away from the middle east, we switched to France, and saw an interview with a man in Beirut who pointed out that the Israeli government built shelters for its citizens while they were killed on the streets.
I do indeed bless the shelter we visit frequently, and I complain about it all the time. How is it that the floor was not finished and I have to wear shoes when i go down there? The tenants built the shelter in 1970 and didn’t notice then that the contractor had forgotten to even out the concrete floor. The laws to build shelters with apartment buildings came later, and the government never paid for the shelters. Why should the Lebanese or the Gazans build shelters? After all, who would attack them?
We, on the other hand, have always been under attack, and I can remember different stages of my life in different shelters.
This doesn’t justify anything. It just points out some facts.
Gaza is always in my mind. I will always remember walking the streets there, learning about the orchards, my daughter playing with the children… I will always remember how simply I identified with the people there. Those days will never come again.
remember Gaza – 23.10.24 Read Post »
I wake up with a curse, and race out and down the 2 flights of stairs. By the time I get there, the boom sounds.
Nobody feels like talking. We’re all in pajamas and half awake. Yes, we’re functioning, but in no mood to joke around.
Most of our neighbors are either at work or too frail to descend. They have chairs in the hall that most of the people in the country rely on.
And it just occurred to me that some of the people who came down yesterday were gone today – either they left for a safer place or they stayed in bed.
Another wake-up – 23.10.24 Read Post »
if you know the drill, it’s automatic. We wake up to the alarm and are down in the shelter in a minute and a half, just as we hear the boom. This rocket came just at the time in the morning when kids would be off to school and others off to work. But it’s a chol hamoed so many people are on vacation, and only the special schools work. That meant our shelter was full of kids with special needs who were on they way, people half dressed, and sleepy-eyed neighbors who hadn’t woken yet. I looked at them and thought what the people on October 7 must have felt when their towns were invaded with murderers – the confusion, the terror. The reactions of the autistic children to the noise and the strange shelters seemed perfectly normal considering the situation.
automatic reaction – 22.10.24 Read Post »
Something just exploded. I’m lying in my bed reading my mail (for the first time in weeks), and there’s a sudden boom. We don’t move. “What was that?” “I don’t know?” We both know it was an explosion, but we’re not moving.
We’ll find out soon enough. I’ll update you.
okay. it was a rocket. it missed me.
what blew up – 21.10.24 Read Post »
