Special Report, June 28, 2024

Letter to my US congressional delegation

Text of Letter I Sent to My Senators and Congressman

I am an Idahoan living in the small city of XXX, Israel, near the Lebanese border. Gen. Charles Quinton Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has reportedly told the Israeli government to avoid war with Hezbollah.

I want you to understand what it means to live near the Lebanese border at this time.

• We have had to close all windows because of smoke from fires started by Hezbollah’s UAVs. Night and day we hear Israeli artillery returning fire when Hezbollah fires on us, and by the sound of the Iron Dome intercepting and destroying missiles and UAVs.

• My community has 5 seconds between the warning siren and arrival of missiles or UAVs. I sleep in the living room because I get to my protected space faster from the recliner than from bed.

• I am on the top floor of a 35-year-old building that has no “safe rooms.” The public shelter is 20 seconds from my door, but missiles arrive 5 seconds after the alarm. My protected place is just a hallway without windows.

• If my building gets a direct hit I am a goner, and if a large piece of shrapnel from a Hezbollah missile or rocket that is blown up by the Iron Dome hits the roof, my survival will depend on where in the apartment I am and where on the roof it hits.

• We must wait in a protected place 10 min. after the alarm because it can take that long for shrapnel to land. Injuries occur when people leave their protected place early.

• Hezbollah fires on us the most just before our Sabbath, when we are sitting down at the Sabbath meal, or around 6 AM. So far, unlike my neighbor, I have not been caught soaking wet and soaped up when an alarm comes.

• We all have friends and relatives fighting. We have all lost someone.

• Thousands have been forced to evacuate. Families of five or more have shared two-bed hotel rooms since October. If they move from the hotel, government subsidy ends.

• Many now pay rent in two places—the apartment they had to leave, and one in the center of the country farther from missiles. Some towns are closed because they are so dangerous. My friends do not even know if their apartment still stands. Given 30 minutes to pack and leave, able to take only what they could carry, they have been prohibited from returning to get more—if anything they owned has survived.

• My neighbor, a special education teacher, has been working with parents and their autistic children for all of this school year via phone and zoom. These children, who already have problems, have been moved from place to place and classroom to classroom, with my friend’s zoom meetings the only constant.

• This is worse for children than the Corona shut-downs were because the children are also dealing with sirens, protected spaces, booming, and the sounds of aircraft and military vehicles—plus absent parents who have been fighting at the front for months.

• Fearless volunteers pick fruit and vegetables near the border because regular workers have been called to military service or were evacuated. Food prices are high because of shortages due to a shortage of workers and destroyed fields and orchards.

• Many farmers have had to put their fields up for sale because they have been unable to work their land due to missiles and UAVs. Herds have been decimated by the attacks.

• Hezbollah is reported to have had 150,000 missiles. They have sent us about 10,000 since October 7. That leaves about 140,000 missiles. CNN recently reported that (shock, shock) the Iron Dome might not be able to protect us from that many missiles. Well, that might be news to CNN, but for months it has been a facts that keeps us up at night.

I was planning to replace the leaky roof of my apartment this summer, but I cannot see spending the money when the whole apartment could be blown up. Next rainy season, if I am still alive and the apartment still stands, the roof will be like a sieve. Because of the type of construction and age, it cannot be mended. I will have to live with leaks until the following dry season, so besides stepping around buckets I will be swabbing bleach and water on black mold on the ceiling and high walls, probably from a ladder.

This is what it is like living near Hezbollah.

We did not ask Hezbollah to start firing missiles at us. There are few civilians living on the Lebanese side of the border; it was a heavily Christian area until the Lebanese Civil War, when Muslims killed or chased away most of the residents. Hezbollah agreed to stay 30 km north of the border years ago, something they have never done. Now they are right on the border, attacking us daily.

And the American Chiefs of Staff are telling the Israeli government not to go to war with Hezbollah? Hezbollah is at war with us! The primary purpose of a government is to protect its citizens.

Israelis are not particularly concerned about the US getting into a war with Iran. If Obama and Biden had stood up to Iranian demands years ago, we would not be in this war at all. Israelis are concerned with protecting our very small territory and its residents. We are tired of this war, and now the U.S. government is telling us, “Tough cookies, keep living in a war zone but please do nothing to stop it.”

On another but related subject

Please get the US to fulfill its commitment to resupply us with materiel. Our soldiers are dying without it. We especially need more drones that can identify booby-trapped buildings without endangering soldiers, and the vests for armor plates (our government can supply the armor, but we are short vests).

Please use your influence in the U.S. government to stop Biden’s murderous policies and live up to his promises.