Beyond rockets

The bus bombing this afternoon made this a whole lot more terrifying.

Apparently somebody came onto a bus with a special package and dropped it off, and then ran away.  The bomb exploded and injured about 21 people (the numbers in the reports keep changing, so we don't know yet for sure how many or how serious).  This happened on Shaul Hamelech street in central Tel Aviv.  I’ve made a few maps so you can understand what the geography of all of this looks like, since it’s probably hard for people who’ve never been here to know what “Tel Aviv” means, regarding what it means for a bus to blow up in Tel Aviv, how close Tel Aviv is to Gaza, etc.  

Map 1 shows my usual stomping ground.  The red line on the right is the street where the bus blew up today.  I pointed out where I live and where Moriel and Claire (very close friends of mine) live, so people have a sense of perspective.  I also pointed out a few of our favorite bars. 

Map 2 is a bit more zoomed out.  In the maps that follow, a blue box shows where the borders of the last map were, so you can get a better sense of your bearings.  I've outlined what most people consider central Tel Aviv in red, and I've kept on the highlighting of the street where the bus blew up.  I also marked Tel Aviv University, where I am now and where I work.

Map 3 is a bit more zoomed out and you can see the relative locations of Holon, Tel Aviv, and Rishon LeTsiyon.  Holon and Rishon are sites of recent damage from rocket attacks.

In Map 4, you can see Rehovot, where Moriel works (at the Weizmann Institute), and Ashdod.  Ashdod has been under continual bombardment since this thing started, and for the last few years it's sustained rocket attacks on a regular basis.

Map 5 brings Gaza, Ashkelon, and Beer Sheva into the picture.  Ashkelon and Beer Sheva have been under continual fire.  Also, Jerusalem shows up on the right.  A couple of Hamas missiles have landed near there during this conflict, including one yesterday right before Ban Ki Moon of the UN arrived.

And here's the same map of Israel right next to an equally scaled map of the New York Met area.  I put a red line so you can see the distance missiles are flying between Gaza and Tel Aviv, compared with an equivalent distance in New York.  It's as if Manhattan were being fired at from East Brunswick.  I mean, I know that there's a rivalry between New York and New Jersey, but come on now...

The bus bombing was shocking and a whole new type of buzz went over my friends when we heard about it.  It seems this was a lone actor... Hamas did not claim responsibility.  We shall hope that this was an isolated incident.  Even more than the rocket attacks, many of my Israeli friends seemed to take this as a matter of course, while Americans I've spoken to, including myself, were more shocked.  I guess that it takes living through a few bombings to get used to it...  

By the way, an Israeli news site to watch for very up to date news is Ynet:

http://www.ynetnews.com/.

Thanks for your thoughts everybody.

Fajr fajr burning bright…

For the first siren I was on a bus with my laundry.  

The bus suddenly stopped and three or four Israelis bounded off of it, as if they were late for an appointment or the world were about to explode.  The rest of the people on the bus stayed sitting as if nothing were happening, which, not having a clue what was happening, is what I did too.  The bus started up again a few seconds later and then opened its doors and a few people ran back on, and then we continued on our merry way.  While we roared down Rothschild in the series of feints and weaves that is the terrifying norm of Israeli driving, I got a call from my friend Raphy asking if I had heard the siren and knew what to do if I heard one.  I hadn’t, and I didn’t -- but I learned what to do then.  

I was calm until I got to the laundry café and the barrista exclaimed “why are you doing your laundry when we almost just got blown up?!”  I thought the response was a little extreme and told her so, but I didn’t realize yet that an actual missile had been intercepted somewhere in the vicinity of Tel Aviv.  And yet… I still thought her response was a bit excessive.  

I did my laundry.  Plenty of other folks were in the café, too.  I met my friend Iv for a beer afterwards.  It was a quiet night, but people were still out.  That was last Thursday, the first day that a live missile siren had sounded in Tel Aviv in decades, and people were a bit shocked.  But the danger then, and still now, is rather minimal.  We all do what we can.  We keep the windows cracked so we’ll hear any sirens, and we pay close attention to any high pitched wails.  If an alarm sounds we go to the stairwell, or the basement, or whatever the safest place is.  But we all have the choice: we can play the role of a victim of terror and actually be terrified by this stuff, or we can do the rational thing and continue on with our lives.  I, along with most Israelis, choose the latter.  

You see, Hamas sends missiles not to kill people but to scare them, and it’s amazing what they can achieve with a single rocket.  One missile which is sure to be shot down by the Iron Dome, several million Israelis potentially terrified.  But the bang is much louder than the bite.  Nothing has hit Tel Aviv so far.  Even if something did, the chance of someone getting hurt is much lower than from many other forms of sudden death -- cardiac arrest, allergic reactions, car crashes or bike collisions or other accidents.  If you want to increase your safety in this city, you’re better off choosing the salad over the falafel rather than gnashing your teeth over missiles.  Even the same is true in the south of the country, where many hundreds of missiles have fallen in the last days.  There have been very few deaths, just a continual bombardment of fear.  And that fear is the point of it all.  

In truth, I feel much worse for Southern Israelis now than for us in Tel Aviv, and much, much worse for the citizens of Gaza.  People in Gaza are dealing with hell from both directions.  Their leaders have done their best to screw them, and the Israelis are now punishing them for Hamas’s mistakes as well.  The point of this blog isn’t to get political, so I’ll stop there.  But it is just amazing to me how futile and empty this whole thing is.  Nobody wins here.  People die, and stuff is blown up, international opinion swings towards Israel and then against it as unintended civilian targets are inevitably hit, and the cycle rolls on and on.  This is a power theater like all of the other turns of the screw, in which there is no political or military endpoint, just an escalation towards a new equilibrium upon which the governing engines on both sides are striving desperately to gain the upper hand.  We’re all meanwhile being driven full tilt into a pillar of cast lead.  Everything happening just makes the crap more entrenched.  There is no movement, only stasis.  This is the circular madness of Middle East logic.  

But I digress.  The night after the first siren went off, I drove North with a group of friends to go rockclimbing and camping for the weekend.  I actually wasn’t in Tel Aviv at all when the sirens went off on Friday and Saturday.  On Sunday I felt unwell so I slept in until around 10:30am, when I awoke from a siren.  I was out of bed, dressed, and in the stairwell in less than a minute, with a few seconds to spare before the siren stopped and I heard a loud double kaboom.  Moriel and I spoke on the phone afterwards and discussed what we’d heard and where the sound seemed to come from, and what news reports we had read about it.  It’s like a game -- siren, run for cover, kaboom, return to normal activities, talk to friends, and then check the news incessantly until something comes up.  You don’t really know what happened exactly until you see the report that the missile was shot down by the Iron Dome, or it landed in an empty field, or whatever.  That’s part of the whole psychological toll of this.  It’s the uncertainty of it.

The last siren in Tel Aviv (so far) was later on Sunday.  I went out into the stairwell along with a bunch of my neighbors and my friend Hagai who was over, and we all crouched or leaned against the walls until we heard the kaboom.  There is a thrill that runs through your spine when that blast goes, something instinctive about feeling the earth tremble.  But that terror was gone for me almost as instantly as it began.  The blast was assurance that we were still fine.  

All of these strangers, crouching together in a “safe place”, waiting patiently for the blast so they can get on with it--it’s surreal and actually rather awkward.  How serious or scared ought we act?  We are all sitting there, we’ve been told to stay for six minutes after the blast in case there’s another, but… really?  I mean, it’s like a bunch of grown men and women playing hide and go seek.  After the blast, it’s obvious that it’s over.  That moment passed, and we dispersed.  I got on with my night.  I even slept really well last night.  But I confess that i’ve had trouble concentrating for checking the news today…

Different people react differently.  Some of my friends have gotten scared, and some are totally cool.  Some also find humor in it.  The important thing is that we’re safe, and life is going on in Tel Aviv, if not with its usual velocity, at least with some momentum.  People are a bit more subdued.  There are less people out at night.  But the Iron Dome works, and Hamas has pretty minimal capabilities to hit Tel Aviv now, and for the short-term, nothing is happening here.  Please know that, and turn your worry to the South.  That’s where the war is going on.  And I feel for them--we can all hope it’ll end soon.