Stress poisoning and bombs

This is what it's like to be an Israeli and be "fine"

On October 13th, I had a very interesting day. Too interesting. By the end of the day, I felt like I had been steam-rolled and it took me 24 hours to bring myself back to normal.

Of course, our normal here in Israel, particularly in the north, isn’t normal at all.

Our day began with a meeting with an important Israeli official in a Haifa coffee shop. The conversation was interrupted by the sound of sirens, screaming that we needed to race to the bomb shelter – only there was no shelter in the coffee shop. What do we do? Everyone got up, leaving their food and drinks on the table and ran across the street to the shelter in the nearest building.

Packed in the shelter of an apartment building with people we don’t know, we had to wait 10 minutes before leaving - because while the Iron Dome is excellent, no system works 100% of the time and shrapnel from the missile interceptions can continue to fall from the sky – so we continued our discussion with explosions overhead and a girl crying in the corner from stress.

Then we returned to the shop, paid our bill, and continued our day.

Later in the day, we drove toward the northern border.  

It’s not safe to travel to places under missile bombardment If you are in a shelter, that along with the Iron Dome is likely to keep you more or less safe (and even that is not 100% certain) but traveling between places, there is no shelter and no assurance that you won’t be hit.

But we wanted to see what was really happening to our country. Haifa is under bombardment and the communities along the way to the north have been bombarded even more than Haifa. Traveling that path is a risk but bombs can find you anywhere and the thought that any terrorist would succeed in terrorizing me into not going wherever I want in my own country made me so angry that there was no way I was staying home.

The communities bordering Lebanon have been evacuated for the last year. When the IDF entered Lebanon with ground forces, the area became a closed military zone – meaning that only the military or those approved by the military can travel there.

But from Haifa to Nahariya, life goes on. People live in their homes, go to work, shop, and send their kids to school (according to the assessments of the IDF Homefront Command which shuts down the schools when the bombings are too bad).

We decided to drive on the old road rather than the highway. The highway is faster but the old road has buildings along the way, making it possible to find shelter should we get caught outside when the sirens go off.

We popped in to check on our daughter-in-law who was by herself in their home near Nahariya. Our son, her husband, is enlisted and someplace in the north. That means worrying about him while being bombed. Fun stuff. She told us that although where they live there supposedly is 30 seconds to get to the shelter when the sirens go off, the explosions often come before the siren.

We had a nice visit and continued further north.

After Nahariya, soldiers stand guard closing the area to unnecessary travel – for the protection of civilians and to make it easier for the army to do what they need to do. The soldiers we talked to were pleasant (as our soldiers usually are) but also anxious (which is not usual at all). They were concerned about Hezbollah UAVs invading and bombing them. It was later in the day when we saw just how justified their concern was…

It was getting dark. Definitely, time to go home. That’s when the sirens went off.

We were on the road, nowhere near any kind of shelter. We did what other drivers did – stopped the car on the side of the road and ran down a small incline as far away from the cars as we could get. There was a ditch that provided some semblance of protection so we laid down and covered our heads, as the Home Front Command instructs us to do. When missiles hit shrapnel flies up at an angle so the best bet is to be flat on the ground and cover your head.  

The sound of the siren blaring from the nearest community and my phone was nerve-wracking enough. Then I saw on the app update that the sirens were due to an incoming UAV. Then we heard explosions - the IDF trying to intercept – which is more difficult to do than with missiles that have a defined trajectory.

So there I was face down in a ditch, in the dark, shaking and cursing my curiosity. Len covered me with his body. He wanted me to feel safe and calm down so he made jokes to distract me. I laughed. Then I heard a little girl wailing in terror. She was further down the road with whoever it was that was trying to take her home. None of us were hurt but if I was shaking, how would a small child feel?

How long do you wait before moving when it’s a UAV attack and not a missile? I could see on my app that alerts were going off further south so obviously the UAV was moving in that direction, away from us. I assumed that it would be shot down closer to Haifa.

We got in the car and continued on the way home.

Outside Nahariya, the sirens went off again. This time missiles. Like all the other drivers on the road, we pulled over and got out to run to the nearest shelter. There wasn’t anything close and there wasn’t time. Some people stopped next to a wall that couldn’t really help. We were close to the mall so we ran in that direction, hoping to find an entrance. A building outside the mall looked like a bomb shelter but it was closed. It took us a moment to figure out that it was an electricity generator room for the mall (so not a place to go inside). So we stood in between the wall of that building and the wall of the mall, a relatively good place to be. Women from Nahariya were reluctant to stand where we were because they were wearing flip-flops and there were thorny bushes under our feet. But what’s a few scrapes in compared with flying shrapnel? We encouraged them to come in and they waited with us. One had a 10 or 12 year old daughter. She was silent but had tears in her eyes and her face was twisted in fear.

I swallowed my own pounding heart to smile and tell her she was very brave and doing a great job. It is absolutely infuriating to see children being terrorized – and children should not see grown-ups afraid.

There were no more sirens on the way to Haifa. When we arrived we thought we’d take some time to sit outside on the beautiful promenade overlooking the bay, breathe some fresh air, and relax before going home.

The weather was beautiful and the view stunning, as always.

And then, from the base at the bottom of the Carmel we heard their loudspeakers: “Warning! Be prepared for impact! Take shelter!”

What the hell?! First of all it was shocking that we could hear what was happening from so far away. And my reflexive response was, why do our soldiers have to be prepared for impact?! Hezbollah should be preparing for impact!!

And then they shot an intercept missile, bright like a streak of fire into the night sky. The trajectory was so steep, at first it wasn’t clear what direction it was going in – my body tensed before my mind understood what it was seeing. It looked like it went to Lebanon. The light disappeared and then we heard the sound of the explosion rolling back at us like a wave coming in from the sea.

Looking at my phone to see updates on what happened, I began seeing the lists of wounded roll in. The UAV that didn’t explode on us flew all the way to Benyamina and exploded on people there. A lot of people (later we learned that they were soldiers – 4 were killed, dozens wounded, some critically).

We went home and began to unwind from the too intense day. I understood that my body was washed with adrenaline, and I needed to decompress or suffer from stress poisoning, so I drank a lot of water.  

And then the sirens went off.

We raced down the stairs to the shelter and listened to the huge explosions of the missile interceptions over our house.

It wasn’t easy to relax and go to sleep after all that but finally we managed – only to be woken up too early in the morning by sirens.

That was just one day when nothing happened to us.

“An age is called dark, not because the light refuses to shine but because people refuse to see.” As the West wanes, Israel shines bright. Want hope? Want to be inspired? Look no further. It's here. That’s why I write.

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