War Special #2
Daily Life Under Fire
As of this morning, there will be no more warnings. Iran has changed the way it sends out missiles. Instead of sending out barrages, it is now sending out a small number from a mobile launcher, then moving the launcher so it is harder to find and destroy. Before the ceasefire with Hezbollah we had no warnings; but most of those missiles did not have warheads, and they were smaller. Now we have no warning, but a simple enclosed room is not sufficient protection.
Background
During the portion of this war when here in northern Israel Hezbollah was our threat, attacks came without warning. From the start of the warning siren we had five seconds to get to shelter. Our border has been quiet since the ceasefire that began in early December. Until then, Hezbollah often sent missiles. Many had no payload. Their damage was done by speed and weight. Others were more destructive. My building was built originally to house the large immigration of Russians when the Soviet Union fell around 1990. While built to withstand earthquakes, it does not have reinforced safe rooms for missile fire, but the heavy construction made it relatively safe. I sheltered in my top-floor apartment in a hallway in the middle of my apartment. Following directions from the civil defense authority, I kept all heavy shutters closed. At the siren, I went to the closed end of the hallway end, and shut the doors that opened onto the hall. Luckily I never sustained a hit of any kind. I wrote about this in several earlier posts at www.TanteHannaWrites.com .
The Temporary Situation
With this Iran war, the situation is very different. Iran is sending immense, heavily armed missiles designed to do maximum damage. It takes over an hour for the missles to get to us, so there is time to prepare. We get our first warning about fifteen minutes before the missiles arrive. At that point there is no way to know where they are headed, so a large swath of the country is notified. More notifications come about ten minutes later, when the trajectories have become clear. These tell us either to relax or to get near, but not necessarily in, a shelter. There is a large, underground community shelter in the plaza in front of my building, and with the warning there is time to get there. The "take shelter" warning comes when the missiles' arrivals are imminent. That says, get inside and shut the door.
I am not at home, however. Our first attack from Iran came around 3 am last Friday. Around 7:15 in the morning, my good friend invited me to stay with her family for the duration. They have a mamad--a safe room--in the house, which is easier. And I would not be alone.
Not at all alone: three of the family members who live in the house, two married children, their spouses, and between them a number of children from 5 months to 15 years are staying for the duration. We Jews have a custom not to count people, so I will just say that at the dining table there are about 15 chairs and a babycarriage. There is also a fourth family member who generally lives at home. This 25-year-old son received a call-up notice for more military service and left on a 7 am train from a nearby city. Another married son is also again doing reserve duty; his is guarding his local community, so he and his wife and three children stayed in their home.
So, at my friend's invitation, I left my cats outside to fend for themselves, took the dog (a 10-pound Italian Greyhound), a small suitcase and my laptop, locked the door and left. Neighbors who will stay feed stray cats and keep water out for them. The cats will be fine.
Life Since Saturday Night (Reported in Special Report #1)
I sent off Special Report #1 as the "take shelter" siren began.
Inside the Safe Room
The safe room (mamad) is furnished with two twin beds, a pile of 3 inch foam mattresses, and a pile of duvets. There is also a large bookcase filled mostly with toys, as well as a cooler with some nonperishable food and several 1.5 liter bottles of water. During normal times the room serves as a guestroom and playroom. With this situation, the couple with the infant and their two other children are staying there. Another child, best friends with this family's daughter, slept there the first night. But now, since we have had at least one attack in the middle of the night, most of the children, including the two teen boys, are sleeping there as well. Mattresses line the floor and the kids sleep like sardines in a can.
With Hezbollah, the "take cover" alarm came without warning. In my region we had five seconds to take shelter. Now the situation is different. These ballistic missiles from Iran reach about 150 km (93 miles) high, from the time a missile is destroyed until all the parts of the missile and the anti-missile fall to the ground about 15 minutes pass. With the Hezbollah missiles, we were to stay in the safe room for 10 minutes from the start of the siren. Now we are instructed to stay in the safe room until told by the government that we can leave. The ballistic missiles Iran is sending are much larger and heavily armed so as to cause the most damage, especially loss of civilian life, as possible. I originally wrote, The saving grace is that they take about an hour to come from Iran, so there is time for us to be warned. This is no longer true. This morning we had a "take cover" alarm with no warning. Was it a random missile from Hezbollah or Syria, or is Iran now sending cruise missiles, which I have been told can change trajectory, something that the regular ballistic missiles cannot do after the enter the atmosphere? No, our Civil Defense people say this will be the new norm, as I explained at the beginning of this essay.
From the first warning until the "you can exit your safe space" was a half-hour wait; now, without those warnings, it will be less. Most of the attacks come in the middle of the night. Iran, a couple of hours earlier than we are, is trying to cause the most damage in the most ways possible, so our sleep is deliberately being destroyed. But they are also sending the occasional missile wave during the daytime. We need to be prepared and know where the nearest safe spot is at all times. Today (Tuesday) I started walking the dog without my phone. I turned around and got it before continuing on the long walk that this dog needs. Vigilience takes energy, which when you do not sleep well is difficult. This is part of Iran's psychological warfare.
Another aspect of psych war is misinformation. The Iranians, like their proxy Hamas, are experts at providing propaganda instead of news. I was inoculated against misinformation years ago. As a senior in college in the USA during the 6-Day War, I heard nonstop reports that Tel Aviv had been destroyed, with hundreds of thousands of casualties. The truth: Tel Aviv saw absolutely no action or destruction during that fast-paced conflict. But some people don't check the source of the news they hear, and panic.
Rather than a diary-like report, here are incidents from the beginning of the Iran war. They are in no particular order. Logic flies out the window with the stress of a sudden, possibly deadly attack.
Children and Dogs
The children where I am staying range from 5 months to 15 years. Outside of the normal stress of being cooped up, such as during a period of heavy rain, the kids appear to be rolling with the punches. When we are all in the safe room, they still joke around, play cards, or nap. Being all together, cousins are also playing with and watching out for each other--and for my little dog Dolly, who should have been named Houdini, the famous escape artist of the previous century.
I have a new understanding of the young men in the USA who do not want to be fathers. Large families and closeness with extended families are not common, especially in the heavily populated coastal regions. Boys have little or no experience with small children, so it is not surprising they do not want to be fathers. Here, however, with large, close families, they know how to care for babies from a very early age. Watching the five-year-old nap close to his 5-month-old brother, with the baby's tiny fist curled around the larger boy's fingers, makes me smile, as does watching the 13-year-old comfort his infant cousin. The 15-year-old plays with his 3-year-old brother and 5-year-old cousin, sometimes in gentle rough-and-tumble boys' play and sometimes quietly with a building toy. And the 13-year-old boy has read aloud to the two 6-year-old girls, one a sister and one a cousin. For them, fatherhood will be just another step in life.
While this is normal for Israelis for the American boy, raised with at most one or two siblings and no cousins nearby, the situation is very different. Fatherhood would be a step into an unknown strewn with stumbling blocks provided by constant fearmongering articles about child abduction, child abuse, dangers of poisonous houseplants, drownings in bathtubs, contradictory social media posts about proper or improper parenting, etc. etc. etc.
One mother, a teacher, realized Sunday that her children had outgrown last summer's playclothes and because of her teaching obligations she had not yet gone shopping. Although most businesses were shut, she found a clothing store and stocked up. We do not know how long this will go on, but her kids are now set with playclothes.
I wrote the other day about the gas man, whose workers had all been called up to active duty. This morning we had an alarm while he was at my friends', changing out their gas balloon. I was pleasantly surprised that he remembered my name when we met in the safe room. Remembering customer names out of context is the sign of a service-conscious businessman, for sure!
My host tried to make his yard secure for my dog, but had not understood her magician-like ability to escape. While I and one of the 6-year-olds were playing with her in the yard, she suddenly headed for the fence and got through it. We saw her racing on the sidewalk. She was probably 100 yards from me when I called her. She came barreling towards me, then veered away into the street and up the hill. Running incredibly fast, she disappeared. My host drove me around and we found her halfway back to my apartment. She came as soon as I called her, but now I cannot let her out of my sight. She does not want to be in her crate, she knows how to open the sliding screen to the enclosed patio, and the littlest children are forever running in and out of the house, making the unsecure front yard a constant temptation. (I had been told the dog was a miniature pinscher mix but Google Lens said Italian Greyhound. After watching her run and reading about the two breeds, I am convinced she is at least 3/4 Iggy and maybe purebred.)
The Corona Response
In many ways, the situation now parallels the Corona shutdowns, the difference being that visiting is not forbidden. Children are attending zoom classes, both those from their schools and independent classes by teachers, artists and others. Many people are baking and cooking gourmet meals; cooking is a good way of filling time and good meals help in times of stress. We have all been joking about the Corona diet: 20 pounds painlessly gained.
Synagogues and large gatherings are prohibited. During the Corona, my host, a rabbi, provided a place for religious services in his yard. He began doing that again, with just very near neighbors attending. Last night, midway through the afternoon service, we got a warning that an attack had been launched and to stand by for the take-cover siren if we were in the path (impossible to see at the beginning of an attack). I have never heard such fast praying! The men finished in time to get home before the take-cover siren.
Sometimes all the adults sit around focused on their phones, then sharing the news that they have read. Memes, short videos, and cartoons have started appearing, some of them hilarious.
But some of the news is devastating: those of deaths and injuries of Israeli men, women and children. Some of the casualties have been Jews; some not—Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze, and others. A direct hit on a safe room killed a couple the other night. Another night, people without a good protected place were sitting on the stairs of their apartment building and survived.
On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we pray,
On Rosh Hashanah they are inscribed [in the Book of Life] and on the fast day of Yom Kippur they are sealed: How many shall pass away and how many shall be born; who shall live and who shall die; who shall live out his allotted time and who shall depart before his time; who [shall perish] by water and who by fire; who by the sword and who by a wild beast; who by hunger and who by thirst; who by earthquake and who by pestilence; who by strangulation and who by lapidation; who shall be at rest and who shall wander; who shall be tranquil and who shall be harassed; who shall enjoy well-being and who shall suffer tribulation; who shall be poor and who shall be rich; who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted. But Repentance, Prayer and Charity
avert the severity of the decree.i
These words are resonating throughout the land.
This morning walking my dog I ran into a friend also dog-walking. The dog belongs to one of her sons, a young man in his early 30's. He suffers from PTSD from his experience fighting in Gaza in a previous war. The other night, all the windows in his Tel Aviv apartment were shattered by the shockwaves from a near-by hit. Yesterday he brought his dog to his parents and took one of the few flights to New York. Hopefully, said his mom, he will return when the situation calms down. He holds US citizenship through his father so did not need a visa.
Yesterday was supposed to be the bar mitzvah and brunch for the son of a friend: cancelled. When his brother's bar mitzvah party was held, my friend was heavily pregnant; she gave birth the next day. She told me she had been in early labor throughout the party. She and her husband have three younger children, all daughters. She hopes that all the weddings to come will be calmer.
There are reports of families with large safe rooms taking in families of strangers to stay with them for the duration, the way my friends have taken me in. I had heard this about many of the refugee families whose communities near mine had been evacuated earlier in the Oct. 7 War, but I didn't really understand until I became a sort of local refugee, although I am just a ten-minute walk from home. This morning's attack came without warning. The first half of the way here from my house there are several public shelters, but the second half of the way there are none. I would have had to run to a stranger's house. I am reluctant to leave the safety of this house and the immediate neighborhood.
Good From Evil
This is not, thanks to God and the prayers of us and our overseas friends, a war story of blood and gore. What I am seeing is lives turned upside down, and an overflowing of lemonade made from the lemons that we have been given. The Israeli people are resourcesful, kind, and generous. We hurt when people die and are injured, and we pray for them. But in my small corner of the land, at least, there is a strong sense of community and continuity. We are part of the eternal people. Contrary to what the news reports, and if you except the left-wing radicals funded by the same beasts who fund the Antifa riots in the USA, the country is strongly united. The people who die in this war are dying "al kiddush haShem," in the sanctification of God's name," and they will not be forgotten. We pray on every Sabbath and holiday special prayers for the souls of those who died merely for being Jewish, joining the young couple gunned down in front of the Washington museum last month, the victims of the Holocaust, and all the others throughout the generations. We steadfastly believe God has a plan, although we cannot understand it, that this war is part of His plan, and that Israel will survive and thrive in its aftermath.
ihttps://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2701114/jewish/Text-of-Unetaneh-Tokef-Prayer.htm