Jerusalem Th Night 15/11/12

So, clearly there is a lot going on in Israel at the moment. I won't go into the details about number of rockets or "tseva adom" alerts ("color red" - an alert that rockets have been fired and that one should seek shelter immediately, between 15-90 seconds, depending on city/region) to which the people in southern part of Israel have been subject over the past few days (never mind, the past few months and years) or the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) response to Hamas in Gaza within the past 48 hours. You can read those details, analyzed from every perspective, in newspapers and online. In this blog post, I want to write about how we've been experiencing and what we're feeling.

First of all, we are totally, totally okay. There is no current threat to Jerusalem, and we are not in harm's way. Thanks to everyone who has emailed, called, messaged, and sent us good thoughts and wishes. Although Israel is a very small country, we feel very removed from what's happening only 60 miles away. I read an article in the paper this morning about how even though the people of Tel Aviv are technically within range of the rockets from the Gaza Strip (or the "Strip" as all of the English newspapers seem to refer to it), Tel Avivians act (and feel) like they are in a "bubble" amidst all that's going on.

That being said, what's happening is affecting us. The boys and I went to Ammunition Hill yesterday afternoon after having postponed the visit because of rain earlier in the week. In order to get there, we took the #13 bus downtown and then the "rahkevet kalah" (light rail) to the Ammunition Hill station. While we were on the bus, I received an email from the US Consulate, announcing that because of what was going on, all non-official US Government travel in the West Bank and Gaza had been canceled and that US citizens were advised to exercise caution in traveling to and in the West Bank, including Gaza. We have received a couple of these emails before, but each previous time had been a result of demonstrations and political activities in the Territories/Gaza. Also, this email included travel on Routes 1, 90 and 443, which are highways we have traveled on many times, including on the way to and from the airport outside Tel Aviv. I received another email with the same info early last evening, so it's clear they mean business.

One of the things they have at Ammunition Hill is a movie with a model depicting the action, and we hung around outside the theatre until the English version was ready. As we waited, a female soldier who works at Ammunition Hill talked to us about what was going on. She indicated that there might be a war soon, but hopefully not. This information definitely startled the CK, and from that point on, he was very worried and scared throughout the movie and last night about the possibility of war. (It didn't help that the movie gave hour-by-hour details about the fighting in 1967 and ended with homage to the 183 Israelis who were killed in the battle.)

I assured the CK that Pentheus and I would always do whatever we needed to do to keep our family safe. We reminded the CK that Jerusalem is far away from where the rockets are being dropped and that the Israeli army is strong. I'm kind of angry at myself for even engaging in the conversation with the soldier at Ammunition Hill. Maybe I should have just smiled and steered the conversation away from the topic. We were able to calm the CK down, and he has been feeling better today.

We've had several other connections with the violence, including at the CK's guitar lesson today, when his teacher told us that in the middle of a gig in Beer Sheva last night, his band and the whole audience evacuated the club and went to the bomb shelter after the "tseva adom" went off. Also, our friends' daughter, who is currently doing a volunteer program about 30 kilometers from Gaza, and others in her program faced a "tseva adom" early this morning and subsequently came to Jerusalem until the weekend ends. Plus, kids we know on other programs, like Young Judaea's Year Course, are being moved around to make sure everyone stays safe.

As I typed that last paragraph, our next door neighbor came over to check to see that we were okay. She wanted to make sure we knew what was happening and to tell us not to travel anywhere South or to Tel Aviv. We were surprised the she included Tel Aviv, until she told us that a rocket allegedly landed in a Tel Aviv suburb just 15 minutes earlier. The general consensus is that if there is a successful strike on Tel Aviv, the more likely Israel is to launch a ground invasion in Gaza. Kind of weird considering the article about Tel Aviv that I discussed at the beginning of this post (which I wrote a couple of hours earlier).
I went to Cafe Duvshaneet this morning (Thursday instead of Friday), so that I could buy the English newspapers and read what's happening. We've also gotten information from the Internet obviously, but I wanted to sit and read. I would have a very hard time reading the newspapers in Hebrew, although I can guess what they are saying. I took a few pics of the headlines.

I have to admit that it feels tense here and we're all a bit anxious. While I am not worried about our safety, really I am not, I am very sad about what's going on. I'm not a good enough writer to describe how we're feeling. It sucks that I have to keep reassuring my 7-year old that we're safe, and it really sucks that I can't reassure myself that this isn't going to escalate into something more ugly. I can't image how the Israelis in the line of danger feel, and it makes me even more sad to think about it.

Despite all of that, we had a good time at Ammunition Hill. Ammunition Hill was a key battle site for control of East Jerusalem (including the Old City) between Israel and Jordan. The trenches, bunkers and other remnants of the battle site remain at Ammunition Hill, as well as a museum and the national memorial site for fallen soldiers from the Six-Day War in 1967. (http://www.g-h.org.il/en/about-us and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ammunition_Hill) The boys and I had been looking forward to seeing Ammunition Hill, as visitors can (and, believe me, the boys did) walk through the trenches, climb over bunkers, and check out the actual battle site.





After we left Ammunition Hill, but before we boarded the rahkevet kalah, we called Pentheus and made a plan for a family dinner in "mehrkhaz ha'eer" (downtown Jerusalem). Last night was the first time that Pentheus had been downtown since we arrived in Israel, as he mostly spends time working at his computer during the day, and we typically go to the Emek (as opposed to downtown) in the evening. We had a good meal at Moshava 54 and enjoyed spending time together. The boys were psyched because we sat at a table with high stools and a good view of the huge TV tuned into a sports channel. (It didn't matter much that the volume was off and that all of the text was in Hebrew; the boys could still tell that San Antonio beat the Lakers.)

I guess I haven't written yet about what we did earlier this week. On Tuesday after school, the family had lunch together, which was nice. Then, the boys and I went to the Science Museum because although it wasn't raining anymore, it was too muddy to go to Ammunition Hill. The Science Museum was okay, but nothing super exciting. The exhibits seemed a bit outdated to me even though supposedly they were fairly recent. The exhibit I liked the most was "Science-That's All of the Story" in which science themes were pulled out and illustrated from popular Israeli children's books. The boys loved the water exhibit.

Last night around 9 pm, my friend Jessie called on my cellphone to see what I was doing. When I admitted I was watching a rerun of "Everybody Loves Raymond" (the one where Ali's hamster dies and Ray arranges a funeral at Deborah's insistence), Jessie said she was in my neighborhood in a car with a few girlfriends, and did I want to go out for drinks with them. I was totally willing to forgo the hamster funeral and left the dira about 2 minutes later. We went to a restaurant/bar called "Mona's" a couple of blocks outside downtown Jerusalem and had a great evening. There were 4 of us in total, two women (Jessie and a friend of hers whom I actually knew a little bit via a mutual friend) who had made aliyah many years ago, one woman who is here with her family for her husband's two-year sabbatical from Indiana University and me. I very much enjoyed hanging with them and was glad to have been invited.

Today I didn't do much after I left Cafe Duvshaneet. The CK had his guitar lesson, but the WK's Hebrew lesson was canceled because his teacher is out of the country until mid next week. We had pasta for dinner - super exciting, and then Pentheus tried his first Oreo Cakester, a kind of Oreo whoopie-pie that the CK has really been into these days. The boys are hopefully almost asleep, and Pentheus has his weekly work conference call. I'm hoping to go to sleep fairly early tonight because I haven't been sleeping that well. We don't have big plans for the weekend, but I am sure things will come up. Let's pray for calm in the rest of the country.