Not Your Average Refugee Camp
Hundreds of thousands have fled northern Israel and its steady rain of Hezbollah rockets. They’re fleeing to the southern part of the country, out of Hezbollah’s range. It’s a hardship for many, but most are making the best of things, with an almost holiday-like atmosphere.
“Check her out, she’s the most beautiful girl from northern Israel,” Ilan Faktor says, practically swooning, his white teeth beaming from his tanned face. He’s girl-hunting with his buddies, and the women are everywhere — all in bikinis and most with long, curly hair. “The best part,” Ilan says, “is that they can’t run away.”
Ilan and his buddies live in a crowded refugee camp set up on the beach in Ashkelon, Israel. All along the street, flags flap in the breeze from the sea. People here seem to love showing off their gym-toned bodies. Tents have been set up everywhere. In one, people practice yoga; next to it others are getting their bodies painted. In another tent Orthodox Jews try to recruit young people. One could easily mistake the place for a nightclub if it weren’t for the fact that everyone here has been displaced by a war. Hordes of young people under 25 mill around wearing the same kind of colorful armbands you might see in a hip urban club.
Ilan isn’t happy with the color of his armband — the blue has already faded. Worse yet, blue means he’s scheduled for the day’s earliest meal-time. Organizers in fact adopted the idea of arm bands from night clubs; here, though, it’s a way of arranging staggered mealtimes. In the end that’s only difference between this camp at the Israeli beach resort of Ashkelon, just south of Tel Aviv, and an all-inclusive holiday resort.
Make no mistake, though — it’s no holiday resort. It’s a refugee camp, in spite of the sun and the sound of waves pounding the beach. Everyone here has fled the rain of Hezbollah rockets that are showering northern Israel. First they came from Nahariya, then Carmiel and later from Haifa and Tiberias. In total, more than 2,600 have converged here. On Monday the camp was expanded, with new tents and toilets being set up on the white sand dunes right next to the sea.
More in Der Spiegel Online
And don’t miss the wonderful photo gallery that accompanies the story.
Up To the Border
One of the Rock of Galilee bloggers, a northern resident who is staying in Jerusalem for the duration, headed up to the border to check on her house, bring back some supplies and lend a helping hand:
It was a quiet trip up, I didn’t see a missile or hear anything until I got home. I drove around the city a little bit first, it looked like a ghost town. The supermarket parking lot that was hit has already been patched. The flower shop that was destroyed is still destroyed. There was a metal fence with a hole in it, though that looks like it was from shrapnel, not an actual missile.
I went home and everything was normal. I took pictures of the kids rooms, so that they could see that they were still there.
The entire time I was there, there were constant booms. From what I understand most of them were our booms hitting them, but there were a number of louder booms which was them hitting us. From what I understand we got hit with another 30 yesterday. Compare this with the 66 missiles that hit Israel during the Gulf War. We have already absorbed over 1000 in this war.
I went for dinner with doc, his wife, and their son in law, the nurse’s husband (Excellent lasagna with chocalte pudding cake for dessert, worth coming up just for that).The welfare office asked me to take a single guy with me to Jerusalem and then they called and asked if I could bring a woman who was suffering from panic attacks and her two sons. They told me that her situation was serious, so I said I would make room. Then my cell phone stopped working and I lost everyone’s phone number. It would still ring and show me who was calling, just none of the buttons were working.
The panicky lady kept calling to ask when I was leaving already. I told her I had a number of things to do, and we would leave as soon as we could. But she kept calling and was completely panicked so I felt under pressure. I forgot a bunch of stuff, including bringing the chocolate to the docs wife :-(. I’ll buy or borrow a pump for the air mattresses that we need in the next apartment we’re moving to. Someone already said they would give us pillows.
I also didn’t feel I had time to walk around handing out money to people in bomb shelters, so I called the local chesed (charity) organization and gave them a wad of cash and told them that it was donations from people in America that was supposed to go help people with extra expenses during this situation. He said he would make sure that it all got given out. (The chesed organization is 100% volunteer, so all the donations do go to the people who need it, without administrative commissions taken out).
I couldn’t get in touch with the guy I had promised to take out because I couldn’t get his phone number, so then I spoke with the welfare agency a couple more times while they tried to find him until I finally said “Die” (“Die” in Hebrew means Enough, so if you hear Israeli children yelling “Die” at you, they don’t mean it in a death way.)
The trip home was uneventful. The panicked woman calmed down when we were out of firing range, or at least we were out of range of the farthest missile they’ve shot at us so far. I arrived at the apartment here around midnight and collapsed in bed.
After an afternoon back home, I’ve decided the booms don’t really bother me at all, I ignored them, but it is impossible to have children living in that situation. I also didn’t find any good shrapnel or exploded missiles to bring home. Maybe next time.
An Israeli Blogger Speaks Out
Great interview with Israeli blogger Chayyei Sarah on Iraqi Bloggers Central:
Sarah calls it like she sees it:
Americans — or, at least, American journalists– have an interesting idiosyncracy of always rooting for the underdog, whether they share the same values or not. It is difficult to tell how much of that attitude reflects the ideas of the masses.
Israel has made some grave errors in its policies in Gaza and the West Bank, but in the minds of many people around the world, the only way for Israel to be a good guy at this point is to become the underdog. I think there is some truth to the Jews’ paranoid idea that the only way the world likes us is when we are dying. Give us some power, and they can’t stand us — even if we are right. That may be a paranoid outlook, but that doesn’t make it inaccurate.
I’d also like to say that my own particular position is that I don’t care whether the rest of the world, especially Europe, thinks we are right or wrong — the “rest of the world” are the same people who persecuted us for 2,000 years — but I do care very much whether God thinks we are right or wrong.
Staying Tough
It’s amazing what people can get used to. I was on the telephone with a friend in the north this morning, checking in and making sure she was OK. In the middle of the call, she said in a perfectly calm voice, without missing a beat, “Oh, sorry, I’ve got a siren right now. I’ll call you back in a minute.”
A couple of minutes later, the phone rang and she picked up the conversation where we left off.
From the Bunker to the Forest
Eugene, who skyrocketed to international fame with his impromptu war blog Live From an Israeli Bunker has left his wired underground post for a scheduled family vacation in the woods of Canada. Now that’s going to be quite a transition.
He says that odd as it might sound, it was hard to leave Haifa under fire.
It feels strange to leave now in the midst of it all, I know others who left because they didn’t want to risk it and I don’t blame them. But still, I have mixed feelings about this.
Hopefully, it won’t all be waiting for him when he gets back.
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