When Rockets Are Falling

This blog post may be just one more excuse not to be interpreting the long neglected powerpoints from my research methodology class, but since my main distractions are facebook and email, and most people are writing to me asking how the situation is here, I feel inspired to write this.

Last shabbat as my roommate and I were walking home from shabbat lunch she said to me that she was worried that when Israel finally attacked Gaza, our friends might be called up to serve. I didn't think so much about it at the time. I wasn't so aware of what the plans really were for when Israel was going to attack, and the only friends that came to mind were the ones in basic training who won't be seeing action for awhile. That evening we found out that while we had that conversation, Israel had begun the attack. It seems silly stating it this way, but since then three of my facebook friends have been called up to reserve duty. I found out this information from their statuses and have read the comments of encouragement from other friends. I guess I forgot that those "old guys" I have as friends served in the army way back when they made aliyah and are now as eligible as any other Israeli to serve in this new war effort.

On a day to day level nothing has changed. If I didn't look at a newspaper (or babysit for the children of a reporter who listens to the headlines at home on the hour) I might never know anything is going on. I guess I am aware of a higher security threat as I board buses and go grocery shopping, but the stores are running as usual and I still need to go out and buy my vegetables despite what is going on an hour away. This past week we were all thankful for another few days of rain and I traveled to Tel Aviv to welcome three friends on aliyah. This is a map from something a friend posted.

Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and the road from one to the other, are about equidistant from the range of the rockets that have been fired into Israel. Tel Aviv might even be a little closer. I barely gave this a thought as I traveled across the tiny width of the country. It might as well be thousands of miles away.

But it so obviously isn't. Rockets have hit Be'er Sheva. I have friends in school there, and now a friend on reserve duty there. I saw that one has relocated to Jerusalem for now because the siren in her neighborhood wasn't working. One happens to be in the US at the moment. Not that it matters in terms of school-- all schools in range have been closed until further notice. On the second day of school closures a rocket fell directly into a high school classroom. Just take a look at the map above. Israel is a small place. My neighbor from one street over is probably less than two hours away from here, but he's in a war zone.

This semester I'm taking a class called Introduction to Trauma. I felt it was important to learn about trauma if I was going to be working with people in Israel, and it was especially important to learn about it from an Israeli perspective. There are times in class I feel like a complete outsider. I can't relate to being down the street from a bus being blown up or holding my breath until my brother came back from army duty. It almost makes me paranoid of what people I know might be experiencing and how my friends in reserve duty will feel when they are released, or how it effects my many friends just beginning their army service. I wrote something similar after the attack on Mercaz HaRav-- "This is what it feels like to be Israeli."

From my perspective I feel nothing political about the situation. I know that something had to be done about the situation in Sderot and felt very unsure and uneasy about what could be done. I will do as much research as I can before voting in the next prime minister election, but I know that yelling and complaining about anything isn't about to make a difference. I don't want to hear about whether Israel is right or wrong and whether or not it's fair that so many soldiers are risking their lives in Gaza right now. Gilad Shalit has been in Hamas custody for over a thousand days and it's only hit home now that I have friends on the battlefield.

We're all Israelis here. By definition we'll never get tired of yelling and screaming and complaining. But if you want to know what it's like here at the end of the day, we're all just waiting. This won't end tomorrow. I know I'll see more status updates that more friends are being called for reserve duty. So now I'm going to finally force myself to scan through old powerpoints and kick myself to start writing my paper. Later today I'll go babysit for the reporter's children and watch the news there ("Look Daddy! Airplanes!") and tomorrow I'll go to school and sit with both my Jewish and Arab classmates and we'll all be sitting there waiting and thinking how much we hope everyone comes home safely.