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I guess it can be called a quiet night. We had preliminary alarms at both 05:00 and 06:00, but we stayed in bed through both of them - they didn't develop into sirens in our area, although we thought we heard distant sirens and booms. I got out of bed at 09:00, meaning I slept well, waking up to another day of a drawn out war.
Warwise, on the whole today was a regular day, but in a number of other ways out of the ordinary. Tzippi seems to have come down with a stomach flu and was up much of the night (on a night almost without alerts, wouldn't you know it). Rather late in the morning I needed to get something from the kol-bo for our lunch. I was in a hurry, so I took the car - a rarity for me. On my way up the preliminary alert went off, and just as I was leaving after my purchase it became a siren for our area, so along with some fifteen others I entered the shelter next to the kol-bo (that's been there only a few months) and had a pleasant, if that's the word, visit with the others there for about ten minutes.
We'd planned lunch for relatively late, and after returning from the kol-bo I drove Phil and Debbie to Kibbutz Gat, about twenty five minutes from Hatzor for a short visit. Hila joined us. Phil was on Gat for a short time forty years ago and yesterday I succeeded in establishing contact with someone he remembered from then. We walked around the kibbutz a bit and then called Phil's contact (who had invited us). On our way to his house we met a member of Gat who was Hila's homeroom teacher for two years at the regional high school. She remembered us as well. I was very impressed with Hila who succeeded in visiting with her very pleasantly even though she really disliked her as her teacher. Phil's friend is in his 80s and almost remembers him and was more interested in asking me about people who he knows from Hatzor. We really didn't expect anything else, so it was a pleasant and happily short visit that achieved its purpose.
We had our lunch when we got back and a bit later Debbie's only relative in Israel came by for a visit of about two hours. And of course while all this was happening we had a couple of preliminary alerts, with reports of minimal damage at other spots. I'm writing this at around 21:30, and we haven't had a specific alert here since 11:30.
Oops! I wrote too soon. About as soon as I finished that sentence we had a siren and entered our safe room for about ten minutes. In other words, in our area nothing landed, or was damaged by intercepted shrapnel, but it was apparently close.
Only a few minutes before that I watched Netanyahu on television in a recorded broadcast to the nation. (It was recorded, but broadcast "live".) Among the other encouraging things he told us about how well our war is going was that Israel is now a superpower reshaping the middle east. I'm thinking of printing up a new T-shirt: "I have no interest in being a superpower". (In Hebrew the word for a political superpower doesn't have connotations of movie superheroes.) I'm obviously in favor of Israel's continued survival and even believe that that requires a strong defense. But my vision of Israel is totally different from Netanyahu's.
Along those lines I'm linking to an additional piece by Avrum Burg - The Men Who Think They Can Topple Regimes. I think he goes on a bit too long - the first paragraph may have been enough. But I certainly agree with him.
And for now, enough.
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