israeli politics

waiting 25.10.24

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?

waiting Read Post »

israeli politics

More about Shelters - 24.10.24

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:

CIVIL DEFENSE

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 »

israeli politics

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 »

israeli politics

Remember Gaza - 23.10.24

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 »

israeli politics

Another Wake-up - 23.10.24

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 »

israeli politics

automatic reaction - 22.10.24

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 »

israeli politics

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 »

israeli politics

sick, sorry - 21.20.24

It’s embarassing to be sick at a time like this – when there are holidays and there is so much to do, and so much going on. But sick I am. It began last week some time when I saw that I was having trouble getting through the park I love so much, a simple park that you could ride through with your tricycle. And then I blamed the olive trees – that are just yielding beautiful fruit. I wrote about them years ago:

Allergic to olive trees,

I cannot imagine

life without

these ancient friends

twisting their histories

whispering various truths

dropping their fruit

in my hungry

ambivalent lap

But it isn’t just the trees. I sat at my kitchen table today for half an hour wondering how I would get up. All my vital signs seem to be okay but when Ezi suggested that I go to the doctor I said, “What? And have him break his five year record of not touching me?” I think I’ll take an allergy pill instead.

I’ll let you know.

Reserve General Ahasan Diksa is been eulogized all day today, and what they say about him overwhelms me – it isn’t about his courage, although he was courageous, it isn’t about his leadership capabilities, although he was a leader – but it is about his character as a human being and his warmth. I once heard him talking to his men about not losing their sense of morality.

I hope that the reincarnation the Druze believe in brings us a new generation of people like Ahasan Diksa.

sick, sorry – 21.20.24 Read Post »