|Living in a Country at War Part I
*I had a conversation last week with two co workers, both out of the army just a few months. They spent most of their service on the northern border manning a lookout, watching Hezbollah with high powered binoculars. They told me that they saw with their own eyes how Hezbollah spent the last few years rearming and building bunkers and strengthening their positions and fortifications.
*Both cable children's channels are broadcasting 24 hours a day for all the tens of thousands of children stuck since the beginning of the war in bomb shelters and safe rooms. Hosts of Israeli children's shows broadcast from various bomb shelters across the north.
*Tonight on the news an old women is interviewed in the bomb shelter she has been staying in since the war started. She breaks down and starts crying saying how she can't take it anymore-the explosions, the air raid sirens. She just wants to go back to her apartment and live in peace. Holocaust survivors are interviewed in Haifa, many of them trapped in their apartments, too old and infirm to make it to the bomb shelters when the air raid sirens go off.
*Last week I called my friend Marcel. I had wanted to go visit him and his family for the afternoon, but he said he had received an emergency call up and was now with his reserve unit manning road blocks south of Hebron. They had replaced a front line unit which had been sent to the northern border. He hoped that he would be released by August 10. His unit wasn't supposed to have been called for reserve duty this year, but then Hezbollah attacked on July 12.
*I watch the terrible scenes from Kana, mourning the deaths of all of those innocents, wishing that it hadn't happened, wishing that, despite the fact that katushas were being fired from that village that the attack hadn't been ordered. That there had been some other way. I realize that we are fast losing any moral authority we have the more Lebanese civilian casualties mount. The world has already forgotten who started this war and what kind of organization we are fighting. The world doesn't care that Hezbollah has fired over 2000 missiles directly at our cities and towns. We are taking too long and killing too many civilians.
*Kibbutz Ketura is bursting at the seems with refugees from the north. Friends of ours are hosting a family from Acco and from Carmiel. Up to 10,000 children from the north are being hosted in various summer camps across central and southern Israel. Carmiel, Nahariya and other smaller towns and villages are emptying of residents. It is estimated that at least 250,000 residents of the north have fled out of range of the Katushas.
*Last Wednesday I guided a family tour from the States. They had arrived the Friday before, right in the middle of the war. Their itinerary had been duly changed so that they only visited the central and southern parts of the country. They all said that the hardest part about coming to Israel was talking to all of their friends and family who all thought that they were crazy for coming at this time.
*I had a conversation last week with two co workers, both out of the army just a few months. They spent most of their service on the northern border manning a lookout, watching Hezbollah with high powered binoculars. They told me that they saw with their own eyes how Hezbollah spent the last few years rearming and building bunkers and strengthening their positions and fortifications.
*Both cable children's channels are broadcasting 24 hours a day for all the tens of thousands of children stuck since the beginning of the war in bomb shelters and safe rooms. Hosts of Israeli children's shows broadcast from various bomb shelters across the north.
*Tonight on the news an old women is interviewed in the bomb shelter she has been staying in since the war started. She breaks down and starts crying saying how she can't take it anymore-the explosions, the air raid sirens. She just wants to go back to her apartment and live in peace. Holocaust survivors are interviewed in Haifa, many of them trapped in their apartments, too old and infirm to make it to the bomb shelters when the air raid sirens go off.
*Last week I called my friend Marcel. I had wanted to go visit him and his family for the afternoon, but he said he had received an emergency call up and was now with his reserve unit manning road blocks south of Hebron. They had replaced a front line unit which had been sent to the northern border. He hoped that he would be released by August 10. His unit wasn't supposed to have been called for reserve duty this year, but then Hezbollah attacked on July 12.
*I watch the terrible scenes from Kana, mourning the deaths of all of those innocents, wishing that it hadn't happened, wishing that, despite the fact that katushas were being fired from that village that the attack hadn't been ordered. That there had been some other way. I realize that we are fast losing any moral authority we have the more Lebanese civilian casualties mount. The world has already forgotten who started this war and what kind of organization we are fighting. The world doesn't care that Hezbollah has fired over 2000 missiles directly at our cities and towns. We are taking too long and killing too many civilians.
*Kibbutz Ketura is bursting at the seems with refugees from the north. Friends of ours are hosting a family from Acco and from Carmiel. Up to 10,000 children from the north are being hosted in various summer camps across central and southern Israel. Carmiel, Nahariya and other smaller towns and villages are emptying of residents. It is estimated that at least 250,000 residents of the north have fled out of range of the Katushas.
*Last Wednesday I guided a family tour from the States. They had arrived the Friday before, right in the middle of the war. Their itinerary had been duly changed so that they only visited the central and southern parts of the country. They all said that the hardest part about coming to Israel was talking to all of their friends and family who all thought that they were crazy for coming at this time.
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