The Drill

May 26, 2010 - 3:11 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Israeliness, War 

An outdoor bomb shelter in Israel

Today, Israelis headed to their bomb shelters as part of a national drill to test the nation’s preparedness in case of a missile attack. The exercise is not the same as the old “duck and cover” ones of 1950s America where it was unlikely a classroom desk could withstand a nuclear barrage.

Rather, Israel has enemies armed with more conventional missiles – Syria and Lebanon in particular, but possibly also Hamas and whatever Iran might decide to send our way. These types of missiles won’t annihilate Israel, but they could definitely make our lives miserable. So knowing where your nearest shelter is and how long it will take to get there could very possibly save your life.

At precisely 11:00 AM, the siren sounded. Our building has a shelter for every four apartments – enough to hold (snugly) the approximately 20 or so people living in each entrance (each apartment has a family of five). When we headed down the stairs this morning (in less than a minute, I might add), we were the only family at home.

Except for two tourists who had been staying in the downstairs apartment and who exited their front door at exactly the moment of the siren. “Come with us,” we said, as the tourists looked around perplexed by the sudden alacrity of activity and sound.

As we entered the shelter, however, I remembered reading in the news that tourists were specifically exempted from the shelters. Moreover, they were instructed to davka carry on with their touring as if nothing was going on, even while Israel’s citizens hurried to their hideouts. One newspaper even quipped that the country will belong exclusively to the tourists for exactly ten minutes.

“Sorry, you can’t be here,” I told the tourists. That led to even more befuddlement. What, they cried, the country is expecting visitors to lay their lives down on the line? What kind of pro-tourism message is that?

They then added that they hope to make aliyah some day. So we did the only respectable thing and invited them in where we all marveled over the asbestos walls (well, at least it looked that way) and checked the non-functioning toilet.

When we exited, we felt slightly more prepared, but nevertheless chastened by the reality in which we live, where bomb shelters are no mere relic of a cold war past, and where tourists might become the unlikely front line of homeland defense.

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False alarm in Jerusalem

January 15, 2009 - 9:59 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, War 

Can someone get these other girls behind me to stop crying?

Can someone get these other girls behind me to stop crying?

Until Day 19 of Operation Cast Lead, those of us living in the Jerusalem area had been immune to Hamas rocket attack. While we’ve been supporting our brethren in the South – and let’s not forget Katyushot are still landing in the North on occasion – we central folks haven’t had to worry about running for cover when a warning siren suddenly goes off.

Until yesterday, that is.

Just before 1 pm, that high-low frequency, nuclear-bomb-coming-in siren went off around Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh. Even level-headed people might have been jolted upright with a moment’s panic going through their system – Kassams and Grads fired from Gaza can’t reach here, can they?

I initially thought the noise emanated from actual ambulance or police car sirens and surmised there must be a major accident somewhere, or a regular, old fashioned terror attack/suicide bombing that we all too frequently encountered in the earlier part of the decade.

I walked out onto my porch in Ma’aleh Adumim, and realized that it was a warning siren, and could see pupils in the playground of the junior high school in my view’s range running into the building.

Ah, an excercise. Good deal, I thought, Let’s keep everyone on their toes, remembering the nuclear bomb drills we used to participate in the US growing up in Colds War era. Still, just to be sure, I turned on the 1 pm news on the radio.

Turns out it wasn’t a planned drill, but an alarm malfunction that caused the sirens to go off. Evidently Magen David Adom and the Jerusalem Municipality hotline received hundreds of calls from panicked citizens, but my eight-year-old son wasn’t one of them. When he returned home from school later in the day, he recounted his ‘alarming’ experience.

“I was just about to go into the bathroom, and we all had to hurry back to our class and then go into the big bomb shelter next to the school’s library. The kids were running around and really excited, and some thought it was a real attack. But I knew it wasn’t because I saw that the teachers were calm,” he recounted. “When we were waiting inside the shelter, some of the girls were crying. They’re so emotional.”

So, at least he got an astute life’s lesson out of his false alarm experience, which will hopefully provide some guidance when he starts dating.

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RepORTs from the teens

January 9, 2009 - 12:32 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: General 

AshkelonA network of high schools across Israel that emphasizes high-tech vocational training, ORT is an educational powerhouse, its 100,000-strong student body representing about one tenth of all Israeli high school students.

With six branches within rocket range in southern Israel, ORT estimates that 7000 of its pupils are currently under high risk of Hamas attacks.

ORT’s Ronson School in Ashkelon, which educates some 1800 students, has temporarily closed its doors due to this situation, necessitating special tutoring and commuting arrangements so that the 12th graders don’t fall too far behind.

In the meantime, the school’s Eye 2 Israel / Yama and student blogging (informational site in Hebrew only) projects have encouraged students to use their tech bent to help foment a positive image of Israelis in the blogosphere – a motivation close to Israelity’s heart.

One of their bloggers, 14-year-old Rebeca Mayer, is an immigrant from Cuba. Although her English isn’t the most polished, Mayer’s accounts of her day-to-day life are a poignant reminder that there are real people behind every headline. As she puts it in her blog, “I decided to open this blog so all of you out there will understand what we’re going threw here in Ashkelon.”

Writing from inside a bomb shelter, where she and her family have been spending lots of time lately, Mayer wrote on December 28:

I’m really board here cause there’s nothing to do, my little bro is playing with my grandma with a train.

….I wanted to go out today and buy some shoes, but I guess this plan would have to wait, it really sucks to live in this kind of reality I just hope everything will be ok.

More recently, this past Tuesday, she wrote about her feelings of personal connection to the IDF soldiers who had recently been killed in combat in Gaza:

I feel so responsible for there death, cause I know they died to defend me.

They were supposed to come home as heroes but they come back in a coffin.

Now nothing could change, I just hope they will be happy up there in heaven.

As of yesterday, Mayer was planning on going to Eilat for the weekend for some escape and fun. We hope she finds what she’s looking for.

Image Ashkelon courtesy Jason Turner from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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