| Letters from the Iran War - 2026 |
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| Monday, March 2, 2026, sent at 01:10 | |||
A bit more than 24 hours ago, in a WhatsApp chat with Mark, he responded to something I'd written: |
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| Amazing that war can be so boring. | |||
Nine Israelis were killed earlier this afternoon when a missile fell in Beit Shemesh, and about an hour ago someone was seriously wounded, along with others less seriously, in Jerusalem. It feels wrong to respond to this nonchalantly, but the truth is that yes, it's boring. The country is on the whole on shutdown. Basically we're told to stay close to home. The "excitement" of moving to the safe room and staying there for a while is far from exciting. We don't have to listen/watch the news, but there isn't much else to do. Reading something interesting demands focus and concentration, and those qualities are hard to come by in stressed situations. It's a continual limbo. Phil and Debbie and Eitan returned from their trip up north at 16:00. Under the circumstances it was a successful trip. Driving around wasn't really recommended, but a missile can hit you when you're sitting at home doing nothing, so why not be on the road doing something interesting. In general it was a quiet evening, even with the missile in Jerusalem. We had a couple of preliminary warnings but didn't have to sit in our safe room. For some reason the news tells us that the expectation is of a noisy night, though whoever is predicting this has about as much information as I do on which to base that prediction. We really don't know. Since Phil and Debbie don't have Hebrew we didn't watch the evening news (though I kept an eye on them via my laptop to check whether the preliminary alerts were going to become real ones for us. Instead we saw a highly forgettable movie before they went upstairs about an hour and a half ago to sleep. Tzippi has now finished showering, meaning that I'm about to go in. If there will be alerts during the night there will be four of us in the safe room, waiting impatiently for the all clear. As often happens, after my shower I dry off to some reading, and since it's now only 01:00, which is a bit early for me, I have time for that. But there's no law against going to sleep early, and there really isn't anything I want to read at the moment. There certainly doesn't yet seem to be much speculation about negotiations and ending this. That's something I'd like to read about, and even better - have it happen. There are definitely benefits to boredom. And I have to admit that wartime boredom is preferable to distressing excitement. But it's my guess that even reading this letter is at least a bit boring, though there's really no reason to apologize for that. |
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to: Monday, March 3 |
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