Camping…With Katyushas

July 30, 2006 - 12:02 AM by Allison

With a war coming smack in the middle of summer vacation, many Israeli parents have to make tough choices between safety and summer fun. Brian Blum shares his inner debate:

For weeks, 12-year-old Merav has been buzzing about summer camp. On Friday, she heads off for her first overnight camping experience – two weeks at the “Kayitz b’Kibbutz” program at Kibbutz Shluchot, just south of Beit Shean in the Jordan Valley.

Much of Merav’s excitement has been about what to bring. She’s spent hours and not an insignificant number of her parents’ shekels buying new gear – pajamas and a new bathing suit, a better sleeping bag, two disposable cameras, bug spray, suntan lotion, snacks for the bus ride, and many more items I’ve long since lost count of.

She has busily consulted with her friend Shayna, who was a camper the year before, on everything from what to expect on Shabbat to the type of boys she might meet. Together they have looked at pictures posted by the camp on its Web site. By this point, she knows just about all she can before actually getting there.

Except for one thing, which we haven’t had the heart to tell her. We’re not sure she should go.

You see, her camp is a two-hour drive north of Jerusalem. Which puts it potentially in Katyusha range of southern Lebanon.

As the war with Hezbollah enters its third week, there seems little indication the missile barrage that has blanketed the north of Israel will let up any time soon. As of Wednesday, an estimated 1,402 missiles have been fired by Hezbollah – with Wednesday being the worst day of all with 119 rockets landing in Israel. Four people were injured, one seriously.

The day before, on Tuesday, some 90 missiles were launched, killing a 15-year-old girl. The Northern District Police’s spokesperson reported a total of 19 Israeli civilians have been killed and 1,262 wounded – including 46 who are still hospitalized. Officials in the local authorities estimate that 30-50 percent of northern residents have left their homes over the past week.

Thus far, in Jerusalem we’ve felt mostly isolated from the fighting, watching the news just like our worried family members back in the “old country.” Whether it’s because we’re out of range of the majority of the terror arsenal, or due to the (misplaced?) assumption that Hezbollah would never fire on Jerusalem with its many Muslim holy sites, we have felt safe here in Israel’s capital. We’ve eaten in our regular cafes, attended jazz and wine festivals and gone about “business as usual.”

But Kibbutz Shluchot, where our daughter’s camp is situated, is not all that far away from Tiberias, the vacation resort on the Sea of Galilee that has been relentlessly targeted. And although no Katyushas have fallen that far south yet, they have landed in Afula, slightly to the west and nearly as deep into Israel.

And Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that his group’s “surprises” are not over. The ambush of elite Israeli army forces in Bint Jbail early Wednesday morning that left eight Golani troops dead and another 22 wounded was just one of a string of unexpected setbacks for Israel in the 16 days this war has raged.

On Wednesday, in a televised statement, Nasrallah fumed that Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon would not stop Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel and that the conflict was moving “to the stage of beyond Haifa.” Fuad Dirani, a Hezbollah commander, went one step further and called for the residents of Netanya to evacuate their homes because “soon the range of our rockets will reach 100 kilometers (62 miles) into Israel.” After everything else we’ve experienced, we have no reason not to believe them.

This week, the “Kayitz b’Kibbutz” staff informed worried parents that the camp was taking all precautions, including rerouting day trips that normally include bicycling in the Hula Valley (a few miles from the Lebanese border), a trip to the Banias waterfalls and an outing at the “Luna Gal” water park (in the aforementioned Tiberias).

The kibbutz has bomb shelters and the campers can be expected to be instructed in their use. Which only intensifies the dilemma: The tang of guilt my wife Jody and I have over sending our daughter two hours closer to the front is not the type of worry most parents have when sending their children off to overnight camp for the first time. Less bittersweet and more bitter lemon.

We’re not the only ones grappling with questions about coming closer to the “action.” On Tuesday, I received an email from my cousins Richard and Dori who live in Toronto. They are supposed to arrive in Israel next week with two of their children. Their plan was to tour the north and Jerusalem before heading south for a few days relaxation in Eilat. Clearly, the vacation in Haifa and the Galilee would have to be cancelled. But what about the rest of the trip?

“We have been agonizing as to whether to come now or not,” Richard told me. Their daughter,, Cindy, is worried about the possibility of Tel Aviv getting hit by rockets. “She is saying that even Israelis are telling people not to visit now. It’s not like me to cancel out. But do you think we would be taking unnecessary risks by coming now?”

How do you answer a letter like that? On the one hand, I can tell him all about our “normal” life in Jerusalem. I could say that it’s not necessarily any safer in Canada. A gang of terrorists was recently arrested for plotting to storm Canada’s parliament and behead officials, including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

But could Tel Aviv (and Jerusalem) be targeted? Of course, we are at war.

And then there’s Marla. Three years ago, our cousin Marla Bennett from San Diego was also agonizing whether to return to her Jewish studies program in Israel after spending a month student teaching in the U.S. This was in February 2002, at the height of the suicide bombing campaign, just prior to the horrific March that concluded with the Pesach massacre at the Park Hotel and the launch of Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield.

She, too, sought our counsel. Four months later, she was murdered in the terror attack at Hebrew University on July 31, 2002. So what right do we have to advise anyone about anything when it comes to visiting Israel in time of war?

But giving in to fear also means giving up and giving a victory to our enemies. We received an email this week from the embattled town of Safed in the Upper Galilee. The son of a friend of ours who lives there was driving into the woods as he does every Friday to meditate before the Sabbath. As he got into his car, he encountered an old man who was hitchhiking. The man was going in the opposite direction but when the son tried to refuse, the man had already got into the car and there was no arguing with him.

The man then insisted on making another stop before their final destination; again there was no arguing with him. Eventually, it became too late and the son was forced to give up on his weekly meditation. As he returned to his house to prepare for Shabbat, the son looked out into the woods from the window in his living room and saw that a Katyusha had fallen exactly in the spot in the woods where he usually meditated.

Is the story true? Apocryphal? A miracle? I’m not a particularly religious man, but the son’s experience reminds me that not everything is under our control. We can let fear rule our actions and keep our children locked up at home where we hope it’s safe. Or we can continue living that “normal life” for which Israelis are so famous, knowing that sometimes you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes you’re not, and there’s little one can do about either.

In the current conflict, I’ll opt for the latter. Which for us means sending our daughter on Friday off to camp…with Katyushas.