Under Fire, part 2

Wednesday, 19 July 2006: This blog grew out of an article that I wrote for the Yokneam Forum of Technical Writers (www.elephant.org.il). Since then, friends and family have been asking me for updates. This blog is my lazy way of keeping everyone up-to-date on the situation here without having to write separate emails.

So here we are. It’s day four in the memad (security room). While I am not spending every minute in the memad, I am definitely staying inside. In the last few days, the sirens have been going off fairly frequently; sometimes we have a few seconds of warning, and sometimes we hear the explosions first and then the sirens. Sometimes the ketushot (plural of ketusha) land elsewhere. The army's Northern Command instructs all residents in the north to stay inside, but there are still a few people walking around. That's the Israeli davka ("in spite of it") mentality. The army also requests that people not congregate around impact sites; avideo feed on the news shows of a bunch of people kibbitzing while a policeman tries to remove a ketusha. When he finally succeeds in pulling it loose, they all cheer and applaud. It's our small way of saying, "Bite me!" to Hizbullah.

Meanwhile, Ynet reports, "The United Nations High Representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) Javier Solana said during a press conference with Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni that the UN has no sufficient data to determine whether the Hizbullah can be included in the list of terror organizations. He also added that the issue at hand is legal, not ethical." Great. A friend also notes that J-Date, the online dating service through which Gill and I met, has no mention of the war on their American site. My friend, irate enough to phone them and talk to a manager, gets fobbed off with the lame excuse that they want to avoid politics. Ah, what?!!?

More big strikes in Karmiel. Major fighting on the border. A refet (cow barn) on a moshav near Kiryat Shemona is hit, killing 15 cows. Mooooo! (Nadine, understanding that cows are responsible for many good things, including brie, ice cream, and chocolate pudding, is quite upset.)

Speaking of food, I take inventory of the pantry and fridge, and realize that I can no longer avoid an emergency grocery run. I load my neighbor and friend into the car, and we take off for the big supermarket that is supposed to remain open. I figure that even if the bomb shelter is full, we can hang out in the walk-in freezer! The store is quite empty; it and the drugstore are the only things open in the whole shopping complex, which is normally a bustling commercial hub for the area. We scuttle inside, do our shopping, and dash home again before the sirens start. Rockets may be falling, but God forbid I run out of tuna for Nadine…

I keep working, sometimes until late at night. I still have a seminar to give this week. Heading down to the center of the country should not pose a problem, or so I think until the police and army set up road blocks around Kfar Saba today in response to intelligence about suicide bombings. But the alert is now lifted, and I should be able to get there tomorrow.

I find that while I am not living in fear, there is a certain level of anxiety from waiting for that next big boom. Nadine and I are typical females (even if different species): in the face of stress and crisis, we snack. Half the country had to go on a crash diet after the first Gulf War; after all those endless hours of sitting in bomb shelters, waiting for the all-clear signal, and snacking endlessly on chocolate and junk food, the average weight gain was about five kilos. Parents tried to placate children (roused in the middle of the night from their beds and bundled off to the sealed room) with candies and cakes. A friend of mine repeatedly calmed her little mutt with dog treats, until true Pavlovian conditioning set in: when the dog heard the siren, he ran into the sealed room and started drooling in happy anticipation. This is surely a cost of war that few people have considered.

My father-in-law, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law all call to check up on me. A work colleague of Gill's offers me a room in her house. But so far, I'm staying put. I can't move Nadine (who is truly more terrified of the cleaning lady than of anything that could go on outside). And besides, I've got my computer, we still have water and electricity, and I have every confidence in the IDF. And besides, I’m enough of an Israeli to davka want to stay.