Under Fire, part 35

A cancelled concert: No real surprise that the police call off tonight's Shlomo Artzi and Shalom Hanoch concert in Caesaria. All those people in an open-air theater, with no where to hide from a rocket?! Definitely not a good idea, especially after Hadera (just slightly east of Caesaria) was hit last night.

Our first siren goes off this morning around 8:30; we have several hours of relative quiet. Gill takes advantage of it by tackling the overgrown jasmine in the garden, and trimming back the passion fruit. I revel in being able to finish a workout without having to run to the meimad.

But by noon, the background booms of rocket barrages falling on Ma'alot force us to stay inside. Within an hour, the siren starts going off every few minutes; sometimes, there are only a few seconds between the siren ending and starting up again.

More local tragedies: one of the people killed in yesterday's hits across the road was a young woman (mid-20s). She used her body as a shield to protect two small children, and saved them from the shrapnel. All of this makes the booms that much scarier.


Karmiel gets bashed: we take a few heavy hits. Every phone call directly after a barrage starts with, "Was that by you?" The hilly topography of the area makes it hard to know where exactly strikes are (unless they are quite close). Hits that terrify friends in other neighborhoods just sound like loud booms to us, and visa versa. When I comment to my father-in-law about how exhausting the noise is, he tells me about his army service with an artillery unit. "I used to be able to lie down next to the guns and sleep," he says, as if I am some sort of a wimp. "It may be a bit easier when the booms are outgoing, rather than incoming," I suggest dryly.


Amnesty International visits:

Here are a few of them looking at some damage in Karmiel. Viewing impact sites is definitely popular here; several of the Akko fatalities occur when people are caught out in the open, watching the fireman and police cope with the results of a previous strike. Yet the urge to look remains overwhelming. I go past the impact site next to our mail box, only to discover that the crews have already filled in the gaping crater in the road before I could get a picture. A friend of mine passes a house that took a direct a few days ago, and sees owner and a few policemen standing inside. "Want to look?" asks a policeman. My friend pops inside for a few minutes and looks at the damage with the house's owner. Of course, the sirens go off while she is inside. "And this is a place that has already taken two direct hits!" she tells me. She waits out the siren inside an already smashed house, and wonders if her curiosity will be her undoing.

Bracha makes it big-time: My friend Bracha is now reading excerpts of her blog on IBA's (Israel Broadcasting Association) English radio news. Click the English news link on the left, and you can listen to new updates every few hours. Bracha's blog readings are at the end of each broadcast. The whole Reka site is a good source of news in many languages, as it is designed for new immigrants.

Reach out and touch someone: a good friend from the Boston area calls to check up on me. It is wonderful to hear her voice. It makes me look forward to more normal times when we can meet and share ideas at a technical communication conference.