The busy skies of Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, General, Israeliness, Life
Eyewitnesses point to the flying object that landed at Bat Yam Beach on Saturday. (Photo: Israel Police)
However, that doesn’t mean that some weird things don’t continue to happen in our skies. On Thursday, the Red Sea resort peacefulness of Eilat was interrupted when a rocket – perhaps a Katyusha or a Russian Grad – landed in a warehouse in neighboring Akaba, Jordan.
The rocket may have been fired from the Sinai in Egypt, and neither Israeli nor Jordanian security sources were certain whether the target was supposed to be Jordan or Eilat. Either way, since it landed early in the morning, it didn’t affect anyone’s day of snorkeling or paragliding in the balmy spring weather.
Sunbathers at the Bat Yam beach south of Tel Aviv, who were taking advantage of the nice weekend weather, weren’t bothered by rockets, but by something more celestial – perhaps a meteorite?
According to sun worshippers who packed the city’s religious beach (which is usually set with separate hours for separate swimming, but open to all on Shabbat), an unidentified object fell very close to the lifeguard booth and caused a small fire.
“I spotted a small object landing from above and starting to burn,” lifeguard Yisrael Rokach told Ynet. “At first I didn’t understand what happened; I thought someone threw it down from above,” the lifeguard said. “When I got closer I saw a small object that kept on burning and smoking. I immediately called my fellow lifeguards, who didn’t believe me. They came down and at the same time we called the police.”
Police sappers were called to the scene to investigate the mysterious flying object, which another lifeguard said “kept on burning and gave off an odd smell. It kept on burning even when we put it in the water and it melted seashells as if they were candles.”
The Chairman of the Israeli Astronomical Association, Igal Patel, said the object was a meteorite.
“Meteorites fall all the time, but one falling in a residential area before the eyes of witnesses is indeed a rare occurrence,” he said.
However, others aren’t quite convinced. “Meteorites are never on fire and they don’t generate smoke,” said Darryl Pitt, founder of the Macovich Collection of Meteorites. Pitt viewed video of the unidentified object and said he is 100% sure it is not a meteorite.
“Meteorites are not remotely hot enough to ignite a fire or be on fire. This is the stuff of movies and vivid imaginations,” he told Ynet.
Witnesses to the event are choosing to believe there was something special about the incident, however. As another Bat Yam lifeguard put it, “There is no doubt that there’s some holiness on the Bat Yam beach.”
Picture of the week: Finding friendship in the ruins of war
Israel is a country of contradictions. While the world outside sees the conflict in the clean crisp black and white of headlines, here in Israel we tend to see things in myriad shades of grey.
Take these two kids for example. Maria Aman (in the wheelchair) is a Palestinian girl from Gaza who was hit by an Israeli rocket during operation Cast Lead. Orel Ilizrov, is an Israeli child from Beersheva who was left with severe brain damage after he was hit by a grad missile fired from Gaza in the same conflict.
Against all the odds, they are best friends.
Maria was left paralyzed when her house suffered a direct hit. Four of her family were killed. Orel, an only child, is lucky to be alive. His mother threw herself on top of him in an attempt to protect him from the missile.
The children were hospitalized at the Alin Rehabilitative Center in Jerusalem and were given neighboring beds. Despite the traumas that both suffered, they ignored the conflict – as kids so rightly do – and formed a deep friendship based on everything they have in common, and not everything that keeps them apart.
Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90
Victims donating to victims
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Israeliness, Life, Politics, War
Throughout the recent Gaza war and its ongoing aftermath, Israelis and Palestinians have been trying to paint themselves as “the real victims” and the other side as “the real perpetrators.” But if we’re all victims, then how can we possibly take responsibility for war spearheaded by our leaders? And if we’re all perpetrators, then why would we care?
The fact is, Operation Cast Lead has meant horrible levels of destruction for the infrastructure and people of the Gaza Strip, destruction which could have been avoided if Hamas hadn’t hidden behind the human shield of one of the most densely populated areas in the world. And as we’ve seen on ISRAELITY before, just because Israelis support our government’s recent war against a terrorist regime that’s been shooting rockets at us for years doesn’t mean that we’re numb to the damage done.
Two grassroots activists are trying to organize Israeli sympathy into material support for Gazan families whose lives and homes were recently under severe fire by the region’s military superpower. 27-year-old peacenik Lee Ziv and Sapir Academic College 25-year-old student Hadas Balas (pictured, doubling as a not-so-shabby singer-songwriter) decided to collect clothing, bedding, nourishment and other essentials from donors to bring them in to Gaza.
Ziv spoke with the Jerusalem Post this week:
“There is no connection to politics,” said Ziv. “We don’t represent a side, we just see an immediate need for blankets for people who have nothing to cover them at night and milk for infants who have nothing to eat.”
Since a short radio interview on Sunday morning, Ziv said her phone had been ringing off the hook. “Within two minutes of the interview, I had 40 voice messages. The response has been overwhelming. Schools have called asking how they can help. A father called who had three sons serving in the IDF in Gaza. A woman called who had a mortar fall on her house.”
The duo thought they’d be bringing one or two truckloads of supplies in today, but thanks to the viral snowball of their email campaign, media interest like the radio interview last week, and the bandwagoning on their efforts by some key human rights organizations, the donations have been so numerous that they’re spearheading a fleet of 10 full trucks.
According to coverage in Haaretz, the duo has accomplished this feat thanks to key help from organizations like Hashomer Hatzair in Jerusalem, Beit Hachesed in Haifa and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, the Qassam-battered community which has offered up its warehouses as a depot for the donations.
More information on donating to the operation can be found here.
An Israeli soldier’s story
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, War
IDF soldiers mourning at the funeral of a fallen comrade.
Our rabbi’s oldest son Didi, an army medic, was part of one of the first units to enter Gaza in Operation Cast Lead, and was lightly injured in the face by shrapnel. In the midst of his four-day hospital stay, Didi’s close friends Nitai and Dagan were killed in one of the war’s regrettable ‘friendly fire’ incidents.
Let’s let Rabbi Schlesinger take over.
After being discharged from the Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, Shira drove him home to Efrat to change into his dress uniform and then to the Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery to take part in Nitai’s and Dagan’s funerals.
I never knew that Nitai’s parents had such a warm kesher (connection) with Didi. At the funeral, Nitai’s parents, aunt and siblings hugged Didi, thanking God that he was only injured. Didi spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday sitting Shiva with the family. He was part of them.
I returned home on Thursday to see Didi for the first time since I had left for the States. I saw my child in pain – my child was bereaving. He could barely smile and wasn’t ready for conversation. He was clearly in a Shiva mode. He had lost his spark….
Om Saturday night we drove up to Pisgat Ze’ev, a very large neighborhood in Jerusalem (the size of a city) to do a Shiva call. As soon as we walked into the Stern home, Reuven, Nitai’s father noticed that Didi had arrived. He called out “Didi, get over here!”.
Didi went over to Reuven, they hugged and cried – and then Reuven let go and said lovingly “Beat it kid, before I break down.”
Shira and I waited among the many Menachamim (consolers) to get close to the family. We finally got close in order to offer our condolences – when Nitai’s parents Reuven and Sarah both looked at us and asked:
“Are you Didi’s parents?”, we answered “yes” and then they both exclaimed together “Mazal Tov – you have received a gift from God – you have a lot to be thankful for.”
We were overwhelmed with a combination of joy and extreme sadness.
As the rabbi’s wife, Shira, wrote soon after Didi’s injury, “Life/reality for these young handsome strong wonderful “boys,” because they are boys/children that have to grow up so fast and so suddenly, is so different here than anywhere in the world. The pride that they feel within the unit with their friends is so intangible, that only they can understand.”
Didi will always carry a small piece of shrapnel around embedded in his cheek as a reminder of the war in Gaza. But he, and all of the boys and men who fought in this war, will likely carry around something else far deeper in their soul.
A tragedy of the Gaza war
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, War
One of the most heartbreaking tragedies of the recently completed Operation Cast Lead is the story of Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian gynecologist from Gaza City who works at Israel’s Sheba Hospital near Tel Aviv.
Abuelaish, a fluent Hebrew speaker and known among his colleagues as an advocate for peace and coexistence, had been a regular interviewee on Israeli news broadcasts during the 22 days of war. On Friday night, three of his daughters were killed by an Israeli shell at the Abuelaish home. The IDF said gunfire had emerged from the home, a claim Abuelaish denies.
What set this tragedy apart from the other innocent Palestinians and Israelis who were killed during the war is that it played out on television According to a report by Ben Lynfield in The Independent, Abuelaish’s raw anguish -captured live on Channel 10 – forced Israelis to take their first real glimpse of the suffering and death caused to Palestinian civilians
Shlomi Eldar, the Channel 10 correspondent, his own voice choking with emotion, repeatedly noted Dr Abuelaish’s connection to Shiba Hospital as he held out his mobile phone, allowing viewers to hear the physician cry and sob: “My daughters, they killed them, Oh lord, God, God, God.”
“I want to save them but they are dead,” Dr Aboul Aish said. In a video of the interview, available on YouTube, the physician can be heard imploring for help while a shaken Mr Eldar pleads on air for anyone in the army who might be viewing to let ambulances reach the Aboul Aish home in the Jebalya refugee camp. “Maybe something can still be saved,” he said.
The IDF allowed ambulances to come straight to the house, and the doctor’s other daughter, niece and brother were rushed to Israeli hospitals – first to Barzilai in Ashkelon and then to Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv.
Abuelaish, who did his residency at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, was adamant he had not allowed his house to be a Hamas firing position. “They should just admit they made a mistake. There is no shame in making a mistake, but don’t deceive the nation,” he told the Independent.
Israel Television reported that autopsy reports showed traces of Grad rocket fragments in the head of one of Abuelaish’s daughters, the kind of weapon fired by Hamas, and not the IDF. But there has been no followup on that, and it appears that the IDF shell was the cause of the loss of life.
The high civilian casualty count in the Gaza operation has been attributed by Israel to the fact that Hamas both used civilians as human shields and fired from inside major population centers. Most people I know are able to use that as justification for retaining a clean conscience over the civilians killed.
But the Abuelaish case makes it impossible to ignore the victims on the other side. We can blame Hamas for the deaths of the Abuelaish girls, but we can’t just shirk off responsibility, and say ‘tough luck’. Otherwise, we become as inhuman as our enemy seems to be.
If quiet rains down on the South of Israel now due to the Gaza operation, will the loss of innocent life have been worth it? Perhaps. Could it have been achieved in another way?
Doubtful. But the images of a grieving Abuelaish, a man who epitomizes the possibility that Israelis and Palestinians can one day live together in peace, were a chilling reminder that even in winning a war, we are all losers.
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