Flip-flop

A flip-flop

In Sderot, we go through a little bit of crazy when under fire. Things get slightly out of whack, there is a snafu here and a snafu there. This is trivial compared to the rigors of actually getting hit, but it adds up to long-term stress and struggle just living in our own home. 

Kids have to have fun. That is part of growing up. And kids under fire seem to need more and more fun. So my kid Moses is watching Hogan's Heroes. A lot. He is glued to Hogan's Heroes. I also let him have a dog that he loves, Smoothie, who is like a living teddy bear and that is also a help under fire. Smoothie is a girl, so she has some puppies that are still in the house. The puppies love to chew on shoes and flip flops. You know this. Well, here's an example of how the fire adds up to a kind of craziness:

When I work, it is hot...we have no air conditioning, and this is the Middle East...I toss off my flip-flops under my desk, without thinking about it, and then the puppies find them and take them somewhere to chew on. Then the Code Red siren sounds, and I jump up from my desk and rush to the bomb shelter. But without the flip-flops, because there is no time to find them in the 15 seconds that we have before the first missiles fall -- sometimes it is really more like 5 or 10 seconds, honest. So I have to rush. So just earlier, we rushed, as usual, but when I ran through the next room that leads to the bomb shelter, what! glass under my bare feet. Moses, that dear boy, had dropped and broken a glass on the floor but was too glued to his escapist TV show to clean it up. Ouch. 

This is our own tiny example, but there have been many cases of serious injuries among people runnng to bomb shelters. They get heart attacks and die. They break their legs. They get run over by cars. Bomb shelters are not really the answer. No bombs and no missiles--that is the answer. If Hamas men have to die before they stop shooting off their deadly projectiles and lying about everything under the sun, then I say the only reasonable thing to do is to kill them. There is a corner of my heart that weeps for any killing, but in this case, for the first time in my life, I can say with complete conviction that killing them is 100% justified.

Damn! There goes $250,000 in two minutes.

Boom.

So about ten minutes ago we heard the usual "Tseva Adom" (code red) alarm loudspeaker and we rushed into our bomb shelter, like usual at least 20 times in the last few days.

This time, though, instead of the typical two overhead booms, I think we heard five, in two minutes.

BOOM!     BOOM!     BOOM!     BOOM!     BOOM!

I am most grateful that --I think--the booms had the sound of the Iron Dome when it shoots down incoming rockets. But each Iron Dome rocket costs, it is said, around $50,000. Do the math and that comes to a cool $250K in two minutes.

Soon we will hear on the news if I heard the booms correctly.

We are gaining keen hearing for the types of booms we can hear from the apartment. There is the worst boom of a rocket crashing into a street or house nearby. It sounds heavy and brutal. Then there is the overhead higher popping boom of the shoot-down from Iron Dome. Then, coming across the border from Gaza, I suppose you could classify two basic kinds of booms...the smaller ones hitting individual terror targets, and the huge ones that reverberate, sometimes rattling the windows here, as the bombs knock down buildings.

I cannot understand the minds of the islamist men who are so determined to bring explosive destruction on everyone who stands in their way. There is something so infantile about it.

"Sexy mama" spent rocket

Sexy in polka-dotted "skirt" - and look at those red lips!

Today, back in Sderot, I limped and shlepped around to government offices, getting ready to apply for unemployment, disability, food handouts, and emergency government business assistance for war-zone business owners. Whew! Now I have finally entered the netherworld of war-zone citizens who have come to the point of needing government support.

Really it is hard to get clients these days, and when I get them, my head is spinning from lack of sleep after nights of bombing that compounds the general stress I feel when sending my son out, for example, to synagogue, only to hear the code red sirens and hope he ran into some on-street bomb shelter fast enough. Moses is only 11. He is brave. But my work is very affected. Imagine trying to decipher Japanese legalese in that situation. Japanese lawyers are sure known for their predisposition to write each contract clause as a single sentence, sometimes running on for hundreds of words, and in need of a reverse sentence order when translated into English. So generally this is a losing proposition. Even my "law school" work is impeded by this situation. And knowing that many others are suffering does not help. Knowing that this is really nothing at all compared to the situations of the mothers in Gaza, that is just another heartbreak in a sense. I have to think about this some more, and whether I can still feel empathy for them, after they raised sons whose whole mission in life is to kill my sons.

Anyway, back to the sexy rocket picture. This is a decoration in the welfare office, next to the front door. I see it as defiance against those brutal islamists who would turn our women to mourners, and who would control their own women to the extreme, and who would effectively kill and maim their own children, and who would of course never allow polka-dots.

Life in Sderot

Edge of Sderot from the air

Those of you following my other blog, "Toyota Whistleblower's Journey," know that my son Moses and I escaped from Sderot at the start of the current war and have spent around seven weeks as  displaced people.

Finally, Moses and I came to recognize that we need and want to be in our own home, a small fourth-floor walkup apartment with a breeze and a view of the border with Gaza.

Now that we are back, we expect to go through the next phase of the war here, just when the army generals are advising the local people to leave the area. Many had already left and then returned to prepare for the new school year, but will leave again, especially after a rocket killed a 4 year old boy in a nearby kibbutz yesterday. We may end up in a war of attrition or we may find ourselves in the thick of fierce battles. Time will tell.

Whatever kind of war is pending, we may stick it out this time, partly on account that Moses can start the school year in a school building that is completely roofed over with thick cement, including the playground, and where the quality of study is quite good, and partly so I that can witness events and write about them.

AFAIK, there are no other English speakers living here who blog, so this will be an experimental effort at home-grown citizen journalism.

I welcome all civil comments.