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Haifa Diary: The Postmodern War
Blown to bits in my name.
The sirens wailed at 5:27 a.m. . . . that damned siren is one effective alarm clock! Groggily making our way to the shelter, we waited for the sirens to stop. There is no all-clear signal as there was in the Gulf War back in 1991, when we donned claustrophobic gas masks at each alarm; the siren just stops and we go about our business, which in this case meant trying to fall back asleep. Fat chance.
The rest of the day was quiet, with only one other rocket alert. We really have not been talking a lot with other people over the past several days. No one is going to work, and we are all seeking safety in our homes. In effect, there is no shared experience here, only a very great many individual, disconnected experiences.
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While I write this in the comfort of my apartment, I know full well that at this moment (I can hear the warplanes overhead) people are being blown to bits in Beirut in my name, and soldiers who could be my children are fighting and dying to keep me safe from people who have been trying to kill me all week. I know that Hezbollah targets civilians (people just like me), and I know that our army does not -- but I also know that there is no such thing as a "surgically precise" airstrike.
My heart cries out to stop the death and pain in Lebanon, but I do not speak. Hezbollah started a war and could end it. Imagine what would happen if they said: "We are releasing the two kidnapped soldiers and stopping the Katyushas." Israel in a matter of minutes would suspend operations in Lebanon. Every Lebanese child killed by a Jewish bomb dies because Nasrallah refuses to make that announcement.
What would Israel do if Hezbollah disarmed? Stop the bombing and turn its back on Lebanon. What would Hezbollah do if we disarmed? I leave that to your imagination.
The Israeli view of the world has room for Lebanon, for Jordan, for Egypt, and even, for the majority of Israelis, for a free and independent Palestine. The Hezbollah, the Hamas, the Iranian view of the world has no room for Israel.
FRIDAY
The closest one yet.
We awoke naturally, no sirens, to discouraging news: Nasrallah alive, several IDF casualties overnight, more dead and wounded in Lebanon, two helicopters collide and crash. Israel is a small country; even if we do not know any of our casualties personally, we certainly know people who know them.
Rivka tells me that she read in one of the papers that the army reservist who activates the national alarm net is named Oren. Thankfully, there have been no messages from Oren since midday yesterday, and we certainly hope it stays that way!
Well, that was a vain hope. We were eating when the alarms sounded, and off we went. . . . Loud booms, including one after the alarm stopped.
Caught something so typically Israeli on TV later: in front of the central post office, two people arguing loudly -- a man saying we have to stay the course and a woman condemning our bombings in Lebanon.
From what we can see on TV, at least one of the rockets landed smack in the middle of Haifa's Jewish-Arab business district, Hadar. The other rocket hit a building less than a kilometer from our home. Closest hit yet.
