| |
We were awakened this morning by my telephone. It was 08:45 (which a day earlier would have been 07:45) and my now 94 year old computer student wanted to know whether I'd be by her today. We arranged that I'd get to her in about half an hour from then. She needed help ordering medicines from the pharmacy for delivery to her home, and we dealt with that, and talked, when I got to her. It was when she woke us that I noticed that we'd had a preliminary alert during the night. Apparently it was precisely when our clocks changed, and perhaps that's the reason that the phone didn't ring as it ordinarily does. We're not complaining that we weren't awakened.
The rest of our day (so far) has been safe room free, though we had preliminary alerts at 13:30 and then at 14:30. These came when we were at home - when we ate lunch and after I'd sat down to finish the archives newsletter I'll put out tomorrow. Because the day has been uneventful (again, so far, and again, for us) I'm now going to read some of the Shabbat paper, and probably doze off while doing so.
It's been a quiet evening as well. I've been catching up on newspaper reading and I'll link to at least one item before signing off. But right now, 23:15 the television is reporting that after nine hours of quiet there are alerts in the south. We're apparently not included since we didn't receive a preliminary alert.
But now, 23:30 we've gotten an alert. We're part of Israel!! Interestingly, the alert is on our phones, but it took the television a couple of minutes to cut into the programming. We're getting a siren, but though it's loud it doesn't seem to be for us. A couple of weeks ago we would have immediately moved to our safe room. Now we debate whether it's for us or not. Tzippi has gone to our safe room while I continue to watch the report - ready to make the move but not really sure it's necessary.
Of course that was two minutes ago. I'd hardly finished that sentence when we had a siren for us and I moved to our safe room, closed the door, turned on Tzippi's laptop and tuned into the news there, and now I'm at my laptop continuing the play-by-play.
It's a few minutes before midnight. We're out of the safe room, but getting reports of at least one person killed, apparently in the Tel Aviv area, from this latest barrage. When nobody is injured in these barrages the programming quickly returns to whatever was on before (though much of the time that's some sort of news/commentary programming). When someone is killed or the destruction is large the news continues, mostly with coverage from the scene. So that's what we have now. We're pretty sure that for our area this was the first alert of the day, and it really was a quiet and even relaxing day. Clearly we can't expect to get through a full day without being reminded that we're in a war.
For a bit of catching up:
The attached article by Dror Ze'evi gives an interesting perspective on Ali Larijani. I'm not convinced that this is something other than wishful thinking, but it's still interesting.
A day or two ago I noted that respected members of the religious Zionist and even settler camp are finally speaking up about the ongoing settler violence in the territories. Judy Maltz, in today's HaAretz writes about this, and fills in some details:
|
|
| |
On 'erev Shabbat I'm showered before dinner so I don't have to do that now, or even dry off. It's been almost an hour since we've been out of our safe room and the "news" is still on, reporting from the scene of the missile landings. Chances are good that this will continue for at least half an hour. I'm hardly watching, absorbing the reports while writing (and reading). Soon we're off to sleep.
|
|