Sometimes Nostalgia Can Be Tough

July 21, 2006 - 8:14 PM by · Leave a Comment
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Imshin, born and raised in Haifa, but now living in Tel Aviv, is disturbed by television pictures of her old stomping grounds.

Watching the initial shaky footage on TV, R.T. and I immediately recognized one of the spots in Haifa where rockets had fallen at lunchtime today. I haven’t been in that particular part of the city for at least twenty five years. Oh look, there’s a fountain there now, I thought to myself.

It’s hard to grasp that this could be Haifa, where I grew up. Sleepy Haifa, where nothing ever happened. It gives me this creepy chilling feeling, of horror invading my childhood memories. Do you know what I mean?

I got this feeling a couple of years back, when the bus I used to ride to school blew up, at the bus stop I used to wait at, killing school kids who now went to my old school. I hadn’t been there for years and years and there it was on the television screen, distorted by death and destruction.

It’s like something weird is happening in your mind. It’s like having a nightmare while you’re wide awake, in the middle of the day.

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A Well-Earned Rest

July 21, 2006 - 7:47 PM by · Leave a Comment
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Carmia from the group blog Kishkushim, which has been posting faithfully from the front lines in Haifa — had a difficult Friday, but is hopefully enjoying a peaceful weekend a little further south. She deserves it.

I wish I could say that there’s nothing to report in Haifa, but we just had our first siren. I thought it might just be another false alarm but we heard three katyushot land and the explosions were really powerful. I screamed against my will with each boom. After we thought it was safe, we went back to the living room but jumped back right away to the hallway when we heard a fourth, even louder missile hit.
Hearing ambulances.
My electrical cable from the computer just burned and my laptop’s battery is very old so it will last me only for a few more minutes. I will not be able to blog for a while now.
My boyfriend and I will try to drive to Ashdod soon. His parents and siblings live there and we always visit them every second weekend. With these missile strikes though, I’m not sure how safe it is to be.

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So Far Away

July 21, 2006 - 7:30 PM by · Leave a Comment
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Daniel Cohen is a native of Haifa and a partner at Gemini Investment Funds, an Israeli venture capital firm. Three weeks ago, he packed his bags and headed to California to be his company’s Silicon Valley representative. Normally, his blog is dedicated to promote Internet Start-up (and Music) activity in Israel.

But not right now. He writes:

It’s so weird… I left Israel 3 weeks ago – everything was calm, status quo was maintained, no danger in site. 3 weeks… and look what has happened. I have been walking around with the desire to write something about this, but it’s so difficult. What can I write about?

My parents? They are in Haifa, living the sirens and shelters on an hourly basis. I must say, they are very cool about it, not sure I would have felt the same.
Tel-Aviv? I talk to my friends, and it seems that Tel-Aviv is just as far from Haifa as Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley? Everybody is talking about Israel… Usually that’s a positive sign for us, but I much rather hear people talking about business in Israel as opposed to fighting in Israel.
Internet? That totally doesn’t make sense. How can I write about YouTube or MetaCafe or eSnips when there is such a mess back home.
So – I write about nothing. I hope things will calm down soon.

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So Far Away

July 21, 2006 - 7:30 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

Daniel Cohen is a native of Haifa and a partner at Gemini Investment Funds, an Israeli venture capital firm. Three weeks ago, he packed his bags and headed to California to be his company’s Silicon Valley representative. Normally, his blog is dedicated to promote Internet Start-up (and Music) activity in Israel.

But not right now. He writes:

It’s so weird… I left Israel 3 weeks ago – everything was calm, status quo was maintained, no danger in site. 3 weeks… and look what has happened. I have been walking around with the desire to write something about this, but it’s so difficult. What can I write about?

My parents? They are in Haifa, living the sirens and shelters on an hourly basis. I must say, they are very cool about it, not sure I would have felt the same.
Tel-Aviv? I talk to my friends, and it seems that Tel-Aviv is just as far from Haifa as Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley? Everybody is talking about Israel… Usually that’s a positive sign for us, but I much rather hear people talking about business in Israel as opposed to fighting in Israel.
Internet? That totally doesn’t make sense. How can I write about YouTube or MetaCafe or eSnips when there is such a mess back home.
So – I write about nothing. I hope things will calm down soon.

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We Don’t Wait For the UN; We Help Our Own Refugees

July 21, 2006 - 2:34 PM by · Leave a Comment
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Gavriel and his family decided to do more than watch television and feel badly for the refugees from the north. They decided to help.

The missiles have been falling on Israel’s northern cities for a week now. That’s a long time to stay in a bomb shelter. Especially for the kids. That’s a lot of sleepless nights listening to explosions. Especially for the kids.

Not surprisingly, many families are packing suitcases and travelling south to get away from the danger and the chaos — anywhere else in the world and they might even be described as refugees, albeit temporary ones. As they leave, carring with them the anxiety of leaving their homes and possessions behind, I can only wonder at how they held out as long as they did.

One such family is staying with us right now. They arrived the night before last with their three kids (3, 9 and 15), all exhausted and shaken — especially the three year old who walked around saying “boom boom boom.” That’s all a three year old can say to describe the experience of having explosive laden rockets flying randomly over his house and exploding nearby, day after day…..

For many Israeli families the move South, while stressful under such traumatic circumstances, is not difficult in practical terms. Many have cars for the trip and friends or relatives ready to welcome them.

But not all are so fortunate. Not everyone has a car. Not everyone can afford extended time without work. Not everyone has family or connections where the missiles have not reached.

The family staying with us doesn’t have a car and had to write a check to pay for a taxi to bring them all the way down to our town, Beit Shemesh, a two or three hour drive. And they don’t know us, having been sent to us only because we volunteered on a list of willing hosts. They’re staying with strangers — welcoming strangers, but strangers nonetheless. And even they consider themselves lucky compared to those who don’t have the money for such a taxi ride, or for whom volunteers have not yet been found to host them. There are still families remaining in the North, never straying far from their basement shelters and praying the warning sirens give them enough time.

Compared to what they go through, this war seems like little more than a top-of-the-hour fixation for the rest of us. But if we examine the effect of our own sense of personal powerlessness — our inability as concerned citizens to make the missiles stop, to shelter our people from danger — we realize it eats away at all of us. Especially our own children. I can see it clearly in my own kids, with their anxious questions about bombs, and need for reassurance that we would move them if they were in danger.

So far, the best thing for our kids, and for us, has been this chance to help another family. It has been a chance to attach this distant problem to a real-world face, and to do something to help. When these three kids and their parents arrived, our own kids were so excited they even cleaned their rooms to make them feel welcome.

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