Israel-Hezbollah War

The shock

2006-08-19T12:07:00.000+03:00

33 years ago I immigrated to Israel from the UK. Israel seemed to me an exciting place with warm people where I could feel at home being a Jew and not in any tension or dissonance between my national and my religious/cultural identity. For 29 years I lived in or near Tel Aviv which is the largest metropolitan area. That’s where the jobs and most of the action are, and where most of my friends and relatives lived. Four years ago I moved 100 km (60 miles) up the Mediterranean coast to Haifa, “only” 40km from the Lebanese border. It would never have occurred to me that I was moving from a “safe” part of the country to a war zone but that is what Haifa, and the rest of northern Israel has become in this war. Not that there is anything that intrinsically protects the centre of Israel from rocket attack. The Hezbollah in Lebanon have long range rockets which could hit Tel Aviv. They are fewer in number, more expensive, more complicated to deploy and therefore more vulnerable to Israeli Air Force attack. That's why they were used less or not at all. The Syrians and the Iranians have long-range missiles which can hit most of the population centres in Israel.

This time it is us in Haifa and the other intermediate towns in northern Israel who have got a resounding wake-up call as to our vulnerability. I never imagined that I would be under rocket attack and I assure you that it’s very unpleasant. I can (and do) rationalize about the limited danger to myself and my loved ones from the 3500 Katyusha rockets that were fired against Israel this last month “only” 50 civilians were killed . But that’s not the point – it’s the sudden (and frightening) realization that we (the Jews, the Jewish State of Israel) are definitely not wanted around here, and that there are enough groups around who want to hound us out of here. For the vast majority (about 7 million) of us Jewish Israelis , we have no other home. Going “back” to Poland or Morocco where our parents and grandparents were born is not an option.

It is human nature, and quite healthy in many ways, not to think about dangers around us. If we spend the whole time thinking about the purity of our drinking water, pesticides in our food and the dangers of an earthquake , we’d enjoy life much less. But there are times, like with air raid sirens going off, that we suddenly wake up to those dangers. It’s not clear yet what we, as a family or a people, are going to do about it but we can’t ignore the danger any more. Life is going to be different.

To see pictures of the war’s effects on Israel, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlisbona/sets/72157594242301485/ (updated)

Seeing for ourselves

2006-08-19T00:21:00.000+03:00

As soon as the cease-fire went into effect on Monday (14 Aug) Irit suggested that we drive up for a few days to the Galilee (northern Israel) which bore the brunt of the 4000 Katyusha rockets that were fired at Israel from 12 July – 14 August.

We drove up on Tuesday and were amongst the very first visitors after the war. It was a fascinating trip and I have a lot to report, which I’ll start tomorrow. Meanwhile you can take a look at the photos I took on that trip. They are in http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlisbona/sets/72157594212420512/ . For those that relate directly to the war, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlisbona/sets/72157594242301485/ (will be updated in the next couple of days). Thanks for your patience. The picture on the right shows one of many tracts of land in northern Israel that were burnt by brush fires caused when Katyusha rockets landed in open spaces.

A trip to the war zone

2006-08-15T22:54:00.000+03:00

Tuesday 15 August
Irit and I set off for a few days to visit the north of Israel that's closer to the Lebanese border and which suffered the brunt of Hezbollah shelling during the Israel-Hezbollah war of July-August. There's some discussion in Israel whether this was a "war" or a "operation" - I'll call it a war because of the significant consequences and the many lessons to be learned.

We decided to take this trip for several reasons:
We wanted to see with our own eyes the extent of the damage caused by the 4000 rockets fired by Hezbollah against Israel. Irit was convinced from TV reports that the damage was extensive. She imagined that we would find the northern town of Kiryat Shmona bombed out with barely a building untouched. I was sceptical - either way, we wanted to see with our own eyes.
During the war, even though it was no fun in Haifa, we were well aware that it was much worse for the far north of Israel where normal life had been completely paralysed for a whole month. The beautiful Galilee which depends on much of its income from tourism had a very hard time. We wanted to show the northerners we feel for them and we wanted to spend some money there to help, in a modest way, to revive their flagging fortunes
After being cooped up for a month in Haifa waiting for the air raid sirens (with occasional escapes to Tel Aviv) we wanted a bit of a vacation - the north of Israel is beautiful.

Our first stop was Savyonei Yam, a suburb north of Haifa which had suffered several direct hits by Katyusha rockets but we couldn't find any damaged buildings. Next was Nahariya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahariya , the most northerly town on Israel's Mediterranean coast which also suffered many Katyusha hits. Here we saw a few damaged buildings www.flickr.com/photos/dlisbona/218531655/in/set-72157594242301485/ but life seemed to be returning to normal. Apparently 70% of the population of Nahariya and other northern towns fled to the centre of the country for the duration of the war. I thought we would encounter a lot of traffic of returning residents on the roads but, if anything, there was less than average traffic. From Nahariya we drove to Maalot and from there to Tsfat (Safed) , both of which had suffered many Katyusha rockets but we didn't see any damaged buildings, only patches of forest that had burned as a result of Katyusha fires. We had lunch in the historic resort town of Rosh Pina http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Pina - the restaurant was full of soldiers and media folks http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlisbona/218530357/in/set-72157594212420512/

On the way to the northern town of Kiryat Shmona we drive to the holiday village in Kibbutz Gonen, a very pleasant place to stay for a vacation in the Galilee http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlisbona/218529223/in/set-72157594212420512/ . The north of Israel has many tourist attractions, both historic and scenery and the area is usually full of Israelis with their families during the summer school holidays. There hasn't been a single tourist here for over a month. We come to the reception of the Gonen Holiday Village and find the door locked but Tsubik the manager soon appears. It seems we are the first tourists to visit after the war and we get the royal treatment. Apart from the locals, the only others around are soldiers, conscript and reserve, lots of them, and media people. Later we get to Kiryat Shmona where we see far more damaged buildings http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlisbona/sets/72157594242301485/ . We see damage in 2 shopping malls and have an excellent coffee and cake in the Alon Cake Shop in the "Heart of the North" mall which also suffered a direct hit. We see lots of people greeting each other. This town of 20,000 souls had been a ghost town for a month. 70% of the population fled to the (safe) centre or south of the country and 30% stuck in out living 24 hours a day in public shelters. Slowly the town is coming to life again. All the cakes in the cake shop were freshly baked this morning.

Walking free

2006-08-15T09:59:00.000+03:00

Before the war…..it sounds strange saying that as if this “little” war has changed everything. OK, not everything but a lot in our consciousness. We (Irit and I) lived in the apparent illusion that we are living in a reasonably normal Western country and that our lives and those of our children are fairly safe. That might sound ridiculous to the average American or European reader who sees images of war and suicide bombers on television and thinks that we live our whole lives with a helmet on our heads dodging the bombs.

But the reality of everyday life for most Israelis is pretty mundane except in times of war. Most of us have jobs, we have families, we going shopping in supermarkets and malls. And I go jogging a few times a week in the pleasant streets of hilly Haifa and sometimes in the beautiful Carmel forest. But I haven’t done this for a month now – Irit wouldn’t have wanted me to be outside when Katyusha rockets were falling, and I accepted that it was better to be safe than sorry. This morning, 24 hours after the cease-fire went into effect, I went out jogging with our dog for the first time in a month. It’s amazing how we don’t appreciate enough what we have until it’s taken away from us. I certainly hadn’t appreciated what a privilege it is to be able to go out for a walk without fear or tension. Soon we’ll all forget again and take everything for granted. Or maybe not. Many of us (in Haifa) feel a lot less secure than we did before.

Assessment at 08:00

2006-08-14T18:47:00.000+03:00

At 08:00 this morning Israel and Lebanon time the cease-fire called for in UN security Resolution 1701 entered into force. Here then is an initial assessment of the current situation from my/our (Israeli living in Haifa) point of view.

A respite from the Katyusha rocket attacks and the attendant air raid siren alarms will be very welcome. We had about 10 alarms yesterday in Haifa, some in very close succession and it’s very wearing. Many Israelis and Lebanese have suffered.

Will the ceasefire hold? Maybe, maybe not, but the more meaningful question is whether the other clauses in the latest UN Security Council Resolution 1701 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4785963.stm will be implemented. If the previous UN Security Council Resolution 1559 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3623956.stm had been fully implemented (including the dismantling of the Hezbollah military) this war would never have broken out. We find it difficult to believe that the ineffectual, inexperienced and underfinanced Lebanese army will be able (even if they want to) to engage with the highly trained, highly armed and fearless Hezbollah fighters. According to the Lebanese constitution, the Lebanese army answers to the Lebanese president Emile Lahoud, a staunch supporter of Hezbollah and the Syrian regime. Are they going to disarm Hezbollah? Are French, Italian and Turkish soldiers going to risk their lives to confront Hezbollah? I’d like to believe it but I’d be surprised.

Yesterday Lebanon’s Prime Minister Siniora called a meeting of his government to discuss the disarming of Hezbollah. The Lebanese chief of staff declared that he’s not going to send his troops into the south unless Hezbollah is disarmed first. The Hezbollah members of the government said that disarming Hezbollah is out of the question (although it’s part of both above-mentioned well-intentioned UN resolutions) and walked out of the meeting. It’s not so simple in the Middle East –this isn’t Switzerland or Norway.
“Oh ye of little faith” I hear some of you cry at Israeli skepticism. Believe me, we will be more than happy to be proved wrong. The residents of northern Israel have been in air raid shelters for a month and over 100 Israelis have been killed. We’ve had quite enough, thank you.

The Israeli government has accepted the UN Security Council resolution and is prepared to give it a try. Between us, even if the implementation is 80% and not 100% that will be liveable with too. But if it falls through, we’ll be back to square one and back to war.

Killing civilians

2006-08-13T19:54:00.000+03:00

I read with concern 2 recent reports
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2006/08/12/israel-our-pride-that-we-only-hit-hezbollah/ and
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2006/08/11/idf-approves-refugee-convoy-from-merj-%e2%80%99uyun-then-attacks-it/
about the Israeli Air Force attacking Lebanese civilians nonchalantly or by mistake.

A few comments
1) When we feel under attack (as we in Israel do these days) even the most liberal, empathetic and peace loving amongst us are much more concerned about ourselves and or loved ones than people on the other side. These are simply survival instincts.
2) If an enemy fights from within a civilian environment, civilians are going to get killed. I know of no other military that gives warnings to civilians to leave battle areas and we can only regret if civilians don’t get out in time. To the best of our understanding the majority of the population of south Lebanon support the Hezbollah, Supporting on the one hand and saying we are helpless victims doesn’t work.
3) I seem to remember that most of the free world supported the Second World War against the Germans and the Japanese. I also seem to remember that rather a lot of innocent German and Japanese civilians were killed, many in the intentional bombing of cities by the Allies (that’s you) in order to break enemy morale. I don’t seem to remember any great outcry.
4) It’s really easy to criticise when you’re sitting comfortably in Europe or North America. I suggest you spend some time in a war zone and then we’ll talk about your empathy for the people on the other side.
5) In a previous post I mentioned a survey ttp://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/748012.html in which 91% of the Israeli public justify Israeli Air Force attacks even if they destroy infrastructure and cause suffering to the Lebanese. As we continue to be attacked, and let’s remember that the Hezbollah aims only at the civilian Israeli population, that percentage is not going down.
6) Israel has expressed regret at the deaths of innocent Lebanese civilians and I am sure that no Israeli would target them intentionally. I can’t seem to remember any Hezbollah expressions of regret at Israeli civilian deaths, except for those of Arabs. By them, it’s just great when Jews get killed.
7) Accidents happen in wartime and one has the impression, from the endless reporting, that the Israeli military has had too many foul ups during this war. It is therefore unfortunately quite possible that Israeli planes attacked a convoy whose movement had been coordinated with the relevant people in the Israeli military. It shouldn’t happen but anyone who has served in the military knows that there’s a lot of confusion and mistakes during war. I don’t condone these mistakes and I hope command and control will improve.

A Katyusha day

2006-08-13T19:32:00.000+03:00

Well, I had the feeling that the Israeli army announcements yesterday about their elimination of more Katyusha rocket launchers were premature. We’ve definitely had a Katyusha day today (about 11 alarms so far and the day is not out yet). Nasrallah showing us that Hezbollah is definitely not yet down and out. The count so far today for the whole of northern Israel- about 220 Katyusha rockets landed, I person (innocent civilian please note) killed, 73 injured. One rocket landed in a open space next to a neighbouring suburb to where we live. A friend of a friend said that he saw the smoke cloud from his porch.

3 times this morning I started to walk our dog Sushi and each time I had to return home because the sirens went off. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t hold her water when the sirens went off in the afternoon. Or maybe she’s just getting more afraid. She wouldn’t be the only one. I know some young people who didn’t go down to the shelter when the sirens went off in the first two weeks but do so every time nowadays. Others just don’t believe that it could hit them so they go on driving and walking as usual.

Like other Haifa residents, I have started to listen to our local Haifa radio station Radio Haifa. I’m not normally very taken by their programming but they do have the best reporting about rocket hits and casualties in Haifa and the area. It’s also good to listen to them when one is driving because they’re the only radio station that broadcasts the sirens. If you’re driving with the windows closed and the air-conditioner on (it’s summer and all cars in Israel have conditioning) and the and one of the national radio stations on, you might not hear the siren. Radio Haifa has a jingle proclaiming that they’re the only radio station with online alarms. It’s definitely got them new listeners.

You too can listen to Radio Haifa via the Internet http://www.1075.fm/ although it gets a bit overloaded (at least during peak shelling time 9am – 8pm Israel time = 2am – 1pm EDT) . Who knows, maybe this will really be the last day of shelling, this time around. Tomorrow morning the cease fire is due to go into force. After a day like today, it’s difficult to believe that it might all be quiet in our home town from tomorrow. For the meantime.

Who won in this war ?

2006-08-13T14:42:00.000+03:00

Neither side – it’s pretty much a draw. Each side can claim victory – the Hezbollah paralysed normal life in Israel for a month, killed 50 civilians in Israel and survived as a fighting force. The Israelis showed that it won’t turn the other cheek when attached, destroyed quite a lot of the massive Hezbollah military infrastructure in Lebanon and created the conditions for change in Lebanon. Both sides suffered losses and the war raises many questions for the Israelis and the Lebanese.

Interestingly and worryingly enough, Israel seems to be much more concerned with the question “Who won?” There seems to me to be something very immature, almost childish about this psychological need to say I won, he lost. There’s a lot of (false) pride and honour here, traits that we in Israel usually equate (with disdain) with the Arabs. But isn’t that what the psychologists say? – that we scorn in others those traits we will not admit in ourselves?

Hassan Nasrallah, in his televised address yesterday didn’t say that Hezbollah had won – he was his usual, calm, matter-of-fact televised self. Meanwhile the knives are being drawn in Israeli politics and media to find who is to blame for the failure. This while the official spokespeople keep claiming that Israel won. It’s time to stop playing cowboys and Indians, heroes and villains and just learn instead of looking for scapegoats and false victories. There’s a lot to learn and improve.

Almost over

2006-08-13T13:41:00.000+03:00

Well, it seems this war is almost over and soon everyone will go back to their daily business – that is all those who were not directly affected and those are very many, in obviously differing degrees.

This morning we had 5 air raid alarms in Haifa in the space of half an hour – part of a last volley of rockets before the cease fire is due to be implemented. Yesterday only 68 Katyusha rockets fell inside Israel – the Israeli army says that the reduced number is a result of their extended ground operation in southern Lebanon. But that’s what they would say of course. They have a lot of lost credibility to regain in the eyes of the Israeli public and it doesn’t hurt to justify the ongoing land operation with its heavy toll in lives of Israeli soldiers. Let’s hope that Nasrallah doesn’t prove them wrong with a final dramatic firework display before the ceasefire is implemented.

An ordinary war day in Haifa

2006-08-11T23:55:00.000+03:00

The day started (not particularly early - thank you Nasrallah) with an air-raid siren . It caught Irit just while she was exercising , but, no choice, we run down to the shelter. We've tidied up our shelter and put in some more chairs because we're expecting the visit of Irit's daughter-in-law, Einat and her 3 children. Irit's elder son has also been called up into emergency reserve in the army (we now have 3 family members who've been called up) and Einat doesn't feel comfortable staying alone in their apartment with 3 children (including a 6 week old baby). They are, as it were, internal refugees in Haifa. We are happy to have them stay with us - it's nice to have children around the house.

They come at about 10 a.m. and soon afterwards the siren goes off again and 8 of us rush down to the shelter - Irit, Shiri (from the upstairs apartment) , Einat, her 3 children, me and the dog.
The next alarm catches me outside walking the dog. I find shelter but our dog, Sushi, gets rather nervous when we hear a rocket explosion not that far away. So as not to give the Hezbollah aiming information, radio and televsion no longer announce the precise landing spots of the rockets in and around Haifa. But we all have friends all around Haifa so after a few phone calls we find out that one of the rockets landed near the coastal road (to Tel Aviv). That's scary because we use that road sometimes. At lunchtime I pass by there and see police cars and workmen repairing the road.

In the afternoon we only have one air raid and in the evening my 94-year old father and another elderly relative come for dinner. As I take them home, I wonder what I and they should do if they're an air aid while we're in the car. If driving when an alarm goes off, one is supposed to stop the car, get out and run for shelter. But this doesn't seem a very practical odea for the over 8o's and 90's . I don't have a satisfactory plan but fortunately it doesn't happen.

As I said, just an ordinary war day in Haifa.

From the Press

2006-08-11T18:21:00.000+03:00

From the leader in The Economist www.economist.com of Aug 5: "It is sometimes no bad things to end with a draw. Lopsided victories, like the ones Israel won in 1948 and 1967, can leave a residue of hubris on one side and shattered pride on the other that block peacemaking for decades. By contrast, the war of 1973, which both Israel and Egypt claimed to have won, restored Egyptian honour and persuaded Israel that it was worth exchanging the Sinai peninsula for peace with its strongest neighbour." I think I'll buy that. Since the start of the war I've been hoping that both sides can declare that they've won. If indeed a cease-fire is close, Hezbollah can claim it has survived, fought heroically against the Israelis and injured Israel with its incessant barrage of Katyusha rockets. Israel will be cable to claim that it has changed (hopefully for good) the situation where a heavily armed militia (that does not accept Israel's exisitence) sits on its border and attacks it.

In a survey published in this morning's Haaretz newspaper more Israelis see the result of the war as a draw or a failure than a victory, and that presages a lot of political mud-slinging, and hopefully some serious soul searching and lesson learning once the fighting is over. The implications of this war, which is the first for over 50 years to be felt painfully by Israel's civilian population, will be enormous.

On Wednesday the Haaretz newspaper www.haaretz.com reported the resignation of veteran Arab affairs journalist Faiz Abbas from the biggest daily newspaper Yediot Achronot www.ynetnews.com because of an article by the newspaper's editor. Faiz Abbas lambasts the Arab affairs commentators on the Israel TV channels for wishful thinking and totally misrepresenting the mood in the Arab world. Without knowing (like 95% of Jewish Israelis I know very little Arabic) my guess is that he is right. The commentators and Arab affairs analysts tell their masters and the viewers what they want to hear and we do not really understand the Arab mindset. We are playing at being a prosperous, democratic, consumerist, fun-loving country in the middle of 100 million under-achieving 3rd world Arabs who don't want us here.

In another article in Wednesday's Haaretz, the virulently pro-Palestinian columnist Amira Hass writes "Israel is convinced that in Lebanon, as in Gaza and the West Bank, its unlimited power to destroy is both a deterrent and a spur to political change............... the Palestinians and Lebanese fortitude grows in lockstep with our strengthening powers of destruction". I suspect she is right. Against all Western logic the Palestinians are showing remarkable (some would say masochistic) powers of endurance in seeking what they see as absolute justice and honour. Destruction and revenge do not work - they are also morally repugnant. But pacificism and soft talk is no alternative. There are too many Moslems who want our elimination. There has to be a middle way.

Every month the Steinmetz Center of Peace Research conducts a survey among the Israelis public. In the survey conducted at the beginning of August http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/748012.html 91% of the public justify Israeli Air Force attacks even if they destroy infrastructure and cause suffering to the Lebanese, and a small majority defines the national mood as good. Well, the mood is not so good now and one wonders what alternatives can be found to the use of force. Israel feels frustrated, unloved and afraid but powerful and that's a very problematic combination.

Extending the war

2006-08-10T18:43:00.000+03:00

At the time of publishing this post, there seem to be renewed possibilities of a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah and I would be very happy for that (not just because of the rockets on Haifa and the north of Israel).

Yesterday, after a 6-hour meeting, the Israeli cabinet yesterday approved extending the ground war against the Hezbollah by giving the Israeli military the go-ahead to advance 20 km (to the Litani river) in Lebanese territory. However the implementation has been suspended to give more chance to the diplomatic process.

It's understandable that the decision to purseue the ground war was taken (with many reservations) and it's understandable why it took 6 hours.
In spite of the reputation of the all-powerful and over-proportional Israel military it has not succeeded in inflicting a resounding defeat , or even a significant weakening of the Hezbollah.

Israel's war against the Hezbolah was launched in the shadow of 2 incidents in which the Israeli military was caught ill-prepared - the raid in Kerem Shalom (near Gaza) where 3 Israeli soldiers were killed and one was captured (the Israelis say kidnapped) and the Hezbollah raid where 8 soldiers were killed and 2 soldiers were captured. And this in the wake of intense frustration at being unable to stop the daily barrage of primitive (but deadly and terrorising) Kassam rockets from Gaza. It should be mentioned that all these attacks aganst Israel are across internationally agreed borders - but that doesn't seem to stop those who hate Israel.

After 4 weeks of fighting and Israeli air raids on Lebanon, Israel has still has not managed to stop Hezbollah's shooting over 100 rockets per day into northern Israel. The extension of the land operation is both a gamble and a tactical move. The gamble (vis-a-vis the Israeli public) is if the military will succeed in "significantly diminishing" the number of Hezbollah rockets without too many casualties amonst the Israeli soldiers and the local Lebanese population.

There is both an individual ego-play and a regional deterrence game here. The Israeli military has been made to look foolish and ineffectual while its leaders have boasted about "teaching the Hezbollah a lesson". Their personal honour, pride and credibility is at stake. The deterrence issue is a more rational and less testosterone-filled argument. I am convinced that power and strength play very very important roles in the patriarchal Arab psyche and that Israel cannot afford to look weak. As it is, the Palestinians and the Hezbollah view Israel's exit from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza last year as signs of Israeli weakness and as encouragement for their belligerency. However, if Israel is indeed to restore its power of deterrence, it had better be 200% sure that it's going to suceed. Otherwise the attempt will be a greater failure than not having tried at all.

The fighting in Lebanon is very tough (more of that in another post) and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is said to be worried about the extent of Israeli and Lebanese casualties. This is not weakness but caution and I don't envy him these decisions right now.

We don't know of course whether the current diplomatic efforts will yield fruit and Israel should continue applying pressure (and fighting the Hezboollah) in order to improve the diplomatic outcome - that's the tactical move. Let's hope the diplomats come up with acceptable solutions soon , otherwise there'll be a lot more suffering on both sides.

On the use of force and violence

2006-08-10T17:17:00.000+03:00

Israeli society is probably by Western standards , and definitely by Middle Eastern standards, a fairly peaceful one. I am almost certain that the number of murders or wife/child-beating per thousand of population in Israel is less than in Russia or the USA, and definitely less than in Egypt or Lebanon (in peaceful times). I'll be happy to bring you precise statistics.

That being said, violence in Israel (within families, by schoolchildren) is said to be on the increase. Liberal psychologists have ascribed this to the force used and lack of respect by Israeli soldiers towards the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

If you would ask 100 Israelis in the street whether they believe that the use of force and violence is an acceptable way to solve problems, I believe the vast majority would give a resounding no. However, if you would ask those same Israelis whether the use of overhelming force is acceptable against the civilian Palestinian or Lebanese population, far more would approve, some even enthusiastically.

I wouldn't call this racism but I would admit that Jewish Israelis are culturally conditioned to fear and distrust Arabs. Almost 100 years of violent Arab opposition to Jewish settlement and independence in the historic Land of Israel/Palestine doesn't help. There is also an old trusim in Israeli society that "the Arabs only understand power". Certainly we in Israeli society believe that power, force and violence and much more respected, accepted and used in Arab than in Western society. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 (in which 2 million people ! were killed) and the current interethnic carnage in Iraq seem to support this thesis.

Right now many Israelis are very angry and very frustrated at the lack of success in curbing the incredible power and arsenals that Hezbollah has accumulated in southern Lebanon. We are very afraid of the threats being made against our existence. Like any other species (human or animal) we value more highly the lives of our species than that of competitive ones. In existential crises, we get into the mindset "It's either us or them". So, amazingly and terribly, talking to otherwise liberal and pleasant Israelis these days , you will find not a few who propose razing Lebanese villages (including their remaining residents) to the ground if Hezbollah fighters are shooting from there.

Israelis are,by and large, a peaceable and fairly tolerant people. Our fear and frustration is driving us to contemplate terrible things. Nobody will risk extinction in order to remain humane - survival is the ultimate primal instinct. A lot has to be done to calm Israeli fears - unfortunately Jewish history and the behaviour of our Arab neighbours reinforce our fears.

Another visit to hospital

2006-08-10T11:54:00.000+03:00

I took the picture on the right a few days ago when Irit and I went to visit a friend whose father is terminally ill in Rambam hospital in Haifa. It's not that clear from the picture but the sight we saw as we approached the main entrance of the hospital were tens of stretcher beds and wheelchairs outside the emergency room waiting for the injured, either from rocket attacks in Haifa or injured soldiers from Lebanon.

Yesterday evening Irit and I went again to Rambam hospital (to visit the same friend) but this time, things looked much worse. There were far more stretcher beds waiting ourside the emergency room, several TV outside broadcast vans (aiting to broadcast about injured) and we found that many of the regular wards had been relocated in the concrete basement of the hospital. Our friend's father had been moved out yesterday to another hospital and it was clear that the hospital is on a war footing. They are obviously preparing themselves for the possibility of many more dead and injured . Emptying wards of non-critical patients and moving the remaining patients underground is not exactly a hopeful sign either.

The Israeli cabinet yesterday authorised a massive expansion of the land operation but it has been put on hold. Prime Minister Olmert is actiong very cautiously and known to be very concerned that hundreds of Israeli soldiers might be killed in such an operation. As terrible as any casualties are, so far casualties on both sides are limited. But it isn't over yet, and for Israel (and the Palestinians) it may never be over.

Getting used to the air raid sirens

2006-08-08T14:03:00.000+03:00

We are in the 28th day of the war and Haifa (where my beloved Irit and I live) has experienced air raid siren alarms for most of the last 24 days. I have written before http://hezbisraelwar.blogspot.com/2006/07/air-raid-experience.html about the air raid siren experience but it's time to write again. These alarms (and the occasional rocket explosions we hear) are the way in which we personally are experiencing this war. There have been a few days that have been completely quiet, on other days we have had 8-9 alarms a day.

First of all, to get a feeling of what a real-life air raid siren sounds like, click on http://www.airraidsirens.com/mp3/uvfrsd10.mp3 . I don't recommend doing it near someone anxious or someone who's been in a war - Irit's daughter (who lives in Tel Aviv) turned as white as a sheet when she heard it, even though I told her it was just me. Israelis have a lot of fear.

When we hear the air-raid siren at home, Irit and I rush down to the shelter we have in the basement with our dog Sushi. In the first week, we kept Sushi's leash on during the whole day so it would be easier to lead her down. This is no longer neccessary - she has become perfectly conditioned and waits at the door to the basement as soon as the siren starts. Yesterday we visited some friends here in Haifa who told us that their dog is the first in their protective space when the alarm sounds. The alarm is supposed to give us up to 1 minute warning and we stay in the shelter for a few minutes after the alarm stops.

The alarms are a very mixed blessing. On the one hand, they do give warning although there have also been many cases of false alarms. Everybody who has taken refuge in a shelter has escaped injury even when there has been a direct hit . One couple were in a protective space (with concrete walls) when a Katyusha rocket hit and completely destroyed their home -apart from shock they were OK. There have been tragic cases where people were in a shelter, heard a rocket explosion, left the shelter to see where the rocket landed and were caught outside, and killed by a second rocket attack a few minutes later. So every sensible person with common sense takes shelter when they hear an alarm. That does not include those macho Israelis who think it's cissy or pointless to take shelter. They will say (and they have a point) that -on average- only 2 Israelis have been killed by 120 rockets each day over the small whole of northern Israel so the absolute risk isn't that great. Some people are fatalistic and say that if a rocket has their name written on it, then it will find them shelter or no shelter.

Fatalism or not, the alarms do have one major downside - they are in themselves very scary. Imagine if you heard a certain , very definitive loud noise several times a day bearing the message "Look, mate, you may die in a minute or so if you don't take shelter". One elderly lady already died from cardiac arrest on her way to the shelter. It's not surprising that some people prefer denial. The residents of Kiryat Shmona , an Israeli town of 20,000 people only 10 km from the Lebanese border who have suffered the worst Katyusha shelling by far in the last 10 days have only had alarms since the last few days. Before that they had no warning -residents there are supposed to stay in shelters 24 hours a day. But you can go crazy having to sit around all day in a confined space and probably more and more people have been going out for a breather. The army used to say that they couldn't provide warnings for the short-range Katyushas (like those that hit Kiryat Shmona) but now they do, and the locals are hearing 20-30 alarms a day as well as the deafening explosions when the rockets hit the ground or a house and the incessant artillery barrages from Israeli guns. God knows what this is doing to their sanity.

In Haifa, where the situation is much much easier, we are getting used to the alarms. Human beings are remarkably adaptive and somehow we are accepting these alarms as part of our current daily lives.

Patriotic songs

2006-08-07T12:34:00.000+03:00

The mood in Jewish Israel is pretty subdued these days. The war is not going the way that the Israeli government and military leadership thought it would. The war has been going on for 25 days which is a long time for the 1/3 of Israel's population which is directly affected.

Since 12th July Hezbollah has launched 3200 rockets against Israel - that is over 120 per day. The vast majority fall in the "front line" of Israel's towns, villages and kibbutzim within 20 km of the Lebanese border. Even though the majority of rockets fall in open spaces and do not hit people or buildings, some 50 Israeli civilians have been killed so far by Hezbollah rockets. This in spite of the Israeli Home Front Command's directives that all residents of the border areas should spend the whole time (day and night) in air raid shelters. Many of the residents of the north have fled to the centre or south of Israel for temporary refuge, most staying with friends and relatives. But the less privileged have stayed behind - they have nowhere to go to - and can you imagine how it must be to live for 25 days in underground shelters with no privacy? Many workplaces are closed, some factories have gone over to working nights because there are less rocket attacks at night than during the day.

At times like this, the local Israeli radio stations play more Israeli than foreign music. Patriotic songs, one might call them, but more melancholic and personal than rabble-rousing.

Two songs particularly run through my head - Ain Li Eretz Acheret (I have no other country) and Darkeinu (Our Path).
The first is an iconic classic in Israeli music , written by Ehud Manor during the first Lebanon war, explaining in 11 short lines that for 8 million Israelis there is no other home. (Also - David's comment- there is no other home for the 3.5 million Palestinians in this area)

The translated lyrics courtesy of http://www.hebrewsongs.com/song-einlieretzacheret.htm :

I have no other country even if my land is aflame
Just a word in Hebrew pierces my veins and my soul
- With a painful body, with a hungry heart,
Here is my home.

I will not stay silent because my country changed her face
I will not give up reminding her
And sing in her ears until she will open her eyes

The other song, which became associated with Israel's suffering during the Second Intifada and period of suicide bombings is Darkeinu (our Path)

An excerpt of the lyrics (see http://www.hebrewsongs.com/song-darkeinu.htm )
The road is still long
The journey is not yet over

It's not easy, our path is not easy
And your eyes sometimes are so sad

Indeed the eyes of all of us in this area are sad these days except for those few who find glory or destruction in fighting and desolation.

Credibility and bravado

2006-08-07T11:02:00.000+03:00

The headline of Sunday's Maariv newspaper in Israel read " Senior [military] officer: If Tel-Aviv is attacked Beirut will burn"
Today's Maariv: "If Syria gets involved [in the war] it will pay dearly"
On an inside page: Defence sources: "Syria can be paralysed within a few hours"

From interviews with army officers yesterday on Israeli Army radio (one of the most popular radio stations in Israel) "The Hezbollah is on the defensive", " we have the advantage over them", "they are going crazy".

I don't know whether the people making these bombastic declarations really believe in them themselves, are trying to raise the Israeli public's morale or their own. One thing is sure - they're not doing anybody a service.

This war has been characterised on the Israeli side by a breat deal of bravado. Israeli commentators are very quick to talk of the "threats" made by Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah although to me they sound more like promises, or just a plan of action uttered in his deadpan ultra-calm voice. Meanwhile Israeli military commentators exude optimism and bravado while there are few discernable signs of "significant achievements"

How things have changed. Israeli leaders (especially generals) used to be very tight-lipped in times of war while the Arab leaders were full of inflammatory hyperbole.

The Israeli military used to be kept well out of politics and only very occasionally were very senior officers allowed to be interviewed, and definitely not in time of war. Now everyone shoots his mouth off and it's not a happy sight. Israeli commentators jump on every Hezbollah announcement looking for cracks in its credibility but nobody in Israel is (yet) digesting the implications of the breach of the credibility of the Israeli commentators.

In the eyes of the Jewish Israeli public, the army was traditionally adulated, the holy of holies to be believed admired and followed whenever summoned. That blinding admiration has been challenged increasingly in recent years and this will only be accelerated by the current credibility debacle.

It can take a lifetime to build up credibility but it can be destroyed in a very short time. There's going to be quite a bit of rebuilding to do when this is over. The redeeming quality of an open, Western, democratic society (Israel) is that, in due course, it does look at its mistakes and draw conclusions.

A visit to hospital

2006-08-06T23:09:00.000+03:00

After a week in which no rockets fell on Haifa, 6 rockets fell on Haifa shortly before the main news bulletins on TV at 8 p.m. this evening, destroying 2 houses, killing 3 people and wounding over 100. By cruel irony, the worst damage and casualties were in one of the Arab neighbourhoods of Haifa - Wadi Nis Nas. One of the people I know there is a wonderfully warm-hearted woman called Lubna who runs a kindergarten for the children of underprivileged Arab families. I called her mobile number but there was no answer which was worrying. I called the hotline of one Haifa's hospitals and was told that her name is on the casualties list. I drove to the hospital and found her on a bed in the hospital foyer. Fortunately she has only very light injuries, not caused directly by the rockets but from falling in the street after the explosions and the smoke. For a few minutes after the rocket attack, she was hysterical with fear looking for her two small children who had been playing in the street. A very close call.

An even greater miracle was that Irit's son-in-law came home for a short break this lunchtime from his emergency military service close to the Lebanese border where 12 reserve soldiers were killed today by a Katyusha rocket. Eli was with those same soldiers this morning and even took a picture on his camera-phone of one of those killed. This is the story I referred to in my previous report. It's very scary to know people involved and the bigger picture is hardly any more comforting.

Close, very close

2006-08-06T15:00:00.000+03:00

Since 12 noon today (at time of writing it is 3p.m.) in Israel over 100 Katyushas have fallen in the north of Israel, one of which killed 10 people and wounded many more. Someone very close to Irit and me was in the North these last few days and came back to Tel Aviv this morning. He was exactly in the place that was hit and knows at least one of the killed. It is a miracle that he was not there and was not hurt. Very, very scary.

Some people here are getting very angry that the Israeli military has not succeeded in stopping or significantly reducing the Katyushas being fired against Israel. The commentators are saying that either Israel should have decided on a short, sharp punitive action against Hezbollah or on an extensive land-based action to drive the Hezbollah out of missile-shooting range.

It is difficult to understand how decisions are being made. On the one hand the politicians are highly sensitive (some would say over-sensitive) to public opinion and the level of casualties the public can bear. On the other hand, the military, which is supposed to get its directives from the government, seems to have decided that there are more pressing military objectives. Maybe they are right from a rational strategic perspective, but they are missing the psychological perspective which evidently Nasrallah understands much better. Unceasing daily attacks on the Israeli civilian population with dead and wounded will not go unremembered, also within Israel.
Let's pray for better days.

David

A "clean" war

2006-08-06T10:00:00.000+03:00

It's difficult to look at the pictures of destruction from Lebanon and to pronounce this as being a "clean" war but it's worthwhile to look at some numbers.

Any war where hundreds are killed and hundreds of thousands are displaced from their homes is a tragedy. But the casualty numbers are less in this war than in previous wars.

In the first Lebanon War in 1982 between 6000-800 Lebanese civilians were killed as well as 300 Israeli soldiers in the first week alone. Losses this time are much less so far (100 Israelis and 900 Lebanese) because Israel is being very careful to limit its own losses and those of the Lebanese civilian population. The attack in Qana (the final toll by UN oberservers is 28 not 60 as first reported) is regrettable and Israel has expressed its regret. I don't know of other countries at war that express regret for casualties on the other side. It should be noted that the Katyusha rockets which killed 3 people yesterday in Haifa, not 3 km from my home, were fired from the same village of Qana.

Will he or won't he?

2006-08-05T22:20:00.000+03:00

Ine one of his first TV interviews during the current war, Hassan Nasrallah, secretery-general of Hezbollah promised/threatened to fire rockets "..ba'ad Haifa wa ba'ad ba'ad Haifa..." - further than Haifa and further than further than Haifa - presumably against Tel Aviv, Israel's main metropolitan region in the centre of Israel and on the Mediterranean coast.

More recently Nasrallah has threatened that, if the Israeli Air Force bombs central Beirut, he will shell Tel Aviv. Yesterday evening a missile was fired on Hadera, a town half way between Haifa and Tel Aviv and a lot of people are wondering whether Nasrallah will bomb Tel Aviv or not. Informed opinion in Israel (and I'm not sure I trust that much anymore) says that Hasrallah has to ask Iran's permission before launching the long range Zilzal missiles that could hit Tel Aviv. To judge by the ongoing encouragement Iran's president Ahmedinajad gives to the idea of eliminating Israel, it doesn't seem that he'd be particularly averse. However the nodding heads say that Iran won't want to fire a rocket against a Western city just when its nuclear program is drawing a lot of adverse attention.

On the other hand many commentators have predicted that it would be absolutely in character for Nasrallah to fire a rocket at Tel Aviv just before (or just after) a cease-fire to show a symbolic victory - that Israel in 3 weeks of air strikes has not succeeded in destroying the Hezbollah's offensive capability. Israel has stationed Patriot anti-missile defences near Netanya which are supposed to prevent long-range missiles getting to Tel Aviv.

There's no doubt that Israel would want to react very strongly if Tel Aviv were to be attacked. Rationally we know that Nasrallah can't have many such missiles and the damage and injury would be limited. But psychologically (and Nasrallah knows this) the impact would be enormous. More than the citizens of any other city in Israel. the Tel Avivians live and love the good life and will be totally shocked that their lives can be theatenened too. Amongst all Israelis even one missile on Tel Aviv would bring home the terrible realisation that we are really living on the sword, and that war demands sacrifices. Israel war born in war and, until 1967, felt existentially threatened. Ever since the Six Day War Israel has been convincing itself that the existential threat has passed and that we can get on with improving our quality of life and living the normal life of a Western country. It seems it is not so and that depresses some of us enormously.

On the other hand (Jews like these mental exercises) one should remember that the Jews are survivors. For 2000 years so many people have wanted to be rid of us (and made creditable attempts) but have not succeeded. Survival of the fittest has distilled the Jewish people so that Israel has many excellent survivors who can certainly overcome the current troubles. It's way to early yet for Nasrallah and Ahmedinajad to be taking out the champagne.

A wake-up call

2006-08-04T11:51:00.000+03:00

There's an article by Ari Shavit in the supplement of today's (4 August) edition of Ha'aretz www.haaretz.com (I'll try to find the exact link) that's well worth reading. It's titled "Systematic Failure" and it deals with the many failures and questions in Israeli society that have lead to Israel's middling achievements in the current war against the Hezbollah. The result of this war will either be a stalemate between Israel and Hezbollah or a small advantage for Israel. It is far from the resounding victory that Israel's oveconfident military thought it could achieve. Prime Minister Olmert's declarations about "unprecedented achievements" - see http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746308.html - are just spin.

In a democracy (and Israel is a very vital democracy) spin works only in the short term. There is a very lively (and sometimes acrimonious) debate going on in Israel at the moment about whether it is legitimate to criticise the military or the government while the fighting continues and soldiers and civilians are getting killed. The patriots say it is demoralising and that we all (including the mainstream media) should all be supporting the government, at least until the war is over. The "democrats", the liberal, and the critical and the media claim the inviolable right of free speeach at all times. I doubt whether there is a "right" answer for this - I have been very hesitant about giving vent in this blog (at this stage) to the many criticisms I have. But, as the war progresses, the media, which initially was very gung-ho and unconditionally supportive of the government is increasingly realistic and critical. Jewish-Israeli society is very self-critical (some would say masochistically so) and the Israeli media is often hyperbolic in its criticisms.

There are probably only 3 good things that will come out of this war:
1) the Israeli public has become cruelly aware of the threat from Hezbollah (and indirectly Syria and Iran)
2) Hezbollah military capabilities have been significantly damaged
3) Many questions are emerging about Israel's values, leadership and direction. This is the main point of Ari Shavit's article. In a democracy there is an opportunity (I believe it is a neccessity) to air, discuss and resolve these questions. The aftermath of this war in Israel may be much more tumultous than the war itself. This war is one hell of a painful and expensive wake-up call. Let's make sure we hear it loud and clear, and not just press the snooze button.

Katyusha's keep falling

2006-08-03T17:41:00.000+03:00

Irit and I are back in Haifa after a 5 day "vacation" in Tel Aviv. It definitely helped our mood for to have heard any air raid sirens for a few days. Since our return 6 hours ago we have run down to the shelter 3 times but there don't seem to have been any hits in Haifa. Other places further north have no been so lucky.

After Monday and Tuesday's 48 hour lull, the mutual shelling and bombardment has resumed with a vengeance. Yesterday 230 Katyushas fell on Israel killing 1 man, so far today 130 have fallen and 7 people killed in Akko and Ma'alot.

A journalist friend (who runs a blog you should see http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/ ) has written to me that I have had in Haifa "a great seat for the war". It's a good joke, and a little humor is always appreciated. But I'm not sure the analogy is appropriate. More later.

Call up notice number 8

2006-08-02T08:58:00.000+03:00

Our morning started with a text message to Irit's mobile phone that her son in-law Eli received a phone call at 3 a.m. from his reserve army unit advising him that he is called up for emergency reserve service in the north - that means in Lebanon.

All Israeli men and most women have to do compulsory military service at the age of 18 - 3 years for men and 2 years for women. In theory all the men have to do one month's reserve duty every year until their mid-forties. In practice the heaviest burden falls on those 20% of soldiers who are in combat units such as Eli. Normally the yearly reserve duty is scheduled a few months ahead so people can plan, although it is almost always a great disruption for students (Israelis go to university at age 21 after army service) and the self-employed. In times of war or exceptional military activity, the army can call reserve soldiers up (by a call-up notice number 8) in which case the civilian soldier has to report to his reserve unit straight away.

So at 5 a.m. this morning Eli headed up north towards Lebanon while Irit's younger son has been called up for service in the West Bank. Apparently thousands of Israelis were called up last night for emergency reserve service. This will be a time of great worry for parents, wives and children.

- David

Country closed for art show

2006-08-02T00:16:00.000+03:00

A visitor to Israel who hasn't been here for a couple of years would find a huge surprise when arriving at the Terminal 1 building of Israel's Ben-Gurion airport. For over 30 years that terminal was the almost only gateway between Israel and the outside world.

For the first 31 years of Israel's statehood, its existence was not recognised by any of its neigbours - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria or Lebanon - so the one national airport (Ben Gurion) and its one terminal building (now called Terminal 1) had enormous psychological significance as the one way to enter or leave Israel (except by boat). In the 1990's a second terminal building (2) was opened for internal and charter flights and in November 2004 a brand new terminal building was inaugurated and the old one (Terminal 1) that we had used for 50 years was closed down.

Now, for the first time since then, the Terminal 1 building has been reopened temporarily for a huge and fantastic exhibition of art and design by the graduates of the famous (in Israel) Bezalel Academy of Art and Design www.bezalel.ac.il/sitee/homepage.asp and other design schools from around the world. You can get a good impression of the exhbition from a video clip by Elaad Yair http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEwY6Kum5Zg&search=bezalel accompanied by Meir Ariel's beautiful song "Terminal Luminelt" - Hebrew lyrics at http://mp3music.gpg.co.il/lyrics/167.html .

The exhibition is vast and varied and the location in a place I visited at least 300 times as an airline passenger (you can still see the planes taking off and landing) is mind blowing. Irit, Tami, Einat and I visited yesterday afternoon. The scope of the exhibition reminds me almost of the Venice Biennale. There are excellent photos of some of the exhibits at http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-meir/sets/72157594207725972/ and the exhibition closes next Tuesday 8/8.

Why am I writing about an art show on a war blog while Israeli and Lebanese civilians and solders are being killed? Because these are the stark contrasts of life. Just 2 hours from death and destruction there can be beauty and art, and I'm happy that Israelis can see this wonderful exhibition even in the middle of a war.The talent and creativity of Israeli art students, Jewish and Arab, is truly inspiring, and a sign that Israeli vitality will prevail.

I am slowly getting used to the surrealism of ordinary life next to the images of war but here was a new dimension to surrealism. The country is symbolically closed because the airport terminal has been taken over for art. Suddenly an airport, symbolising movement and transition, has been transformed into a place for inspiration. Suddenly the rush of daily life stops for beauty. There is a God.

Standing up for Israel

2006-08-02T00:00:00.000+03:00

If like me (and I'm biased - my home and my national identity are being attacked) you accept Israel's justification in fighting the Hezbollah, you might be interested in the following links to help convince other people (see my previous post) . Israel is unfortunately not doing a very good job at explaining itself to international audiences. Pictures of wounded children are indeed heart-rending but this is not just about emotion and compassion.

The following links may help you understand more and, at least, accept Israel's position.
- David

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Israel-Lebanon_conflict Wikipedia entry on the current conflict

Israel Government and Military websites
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa Israel Foreign Ministry
Israel Military http://www1.idf.il/DOVER/site/homepage.asp?clr=1&sl=EN&id=-8888&force=1
http://www1.idf.il/DOVER/site/mainpage.asp?sl=EN&id=7&docid=54279.EN
www.intelligence.org.il Intelligence Information Center

Israel news sites
www.haaretz.com Haaretz newspaper
www.ynetnews.com Ynet, website of Israel's biggest newspaper Yediot Achronot
http://www.jpost.com/ Jerusalem Post

Research sites
Middle East Media Research Institute http://www.memri.org/
Jewish Virtual Library http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/index.html
MidEastWeb www.mideastweb.org

Israel Advocacy links
http://www.standwithus.com/ Stand with us
http://www.middle-east-info.org/take/index.htm Middle East Info
http://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=40793 UJC
http://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=37976
Links http://www.livnot.com/Pages/links-mideast.htm
Honest Reporting http://www.honestreporting.com/

Why the war on Hezbollah is justified

2006-08-01T23:25:00.000+03:00

Israel's war was triggered by a raid into Israel by Hezbollah fighters killing 8 and kidnapping 2 Israeli soldiers. The justification for the war requires some history:

From the 1970's Israel's northern towns (like now) were intermittently attacked by terrorist forces from Lebanese territory. Israel counterattacked and had forces in southern Lebanon until May 2000 when Israel retreated to the international border (as acknowledged by the UN). Since then the Hezbollah or Lebanon have no legitimate claim that Israel is occupying their territory.

However during the 6 years since Israel's complete withdrawal, the Hezbollah (by their own admission and international estimates) have accumulated, with Syria and Iran's help, an incredible arsenal of over 12,000 rockets in southern Lebanon in defiance of UN Resolution 1559 http://www.mideastweb.org/1559.htm

In the past 3 weeks the Hezbollah has fired over 1600 of these rockets against Israel.

The Hezbollah organisation does not recognise the legitimicacy of the State of Israel - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah#Ideology
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9155/ and
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hizballah.htm

Israel is completely justified in defending its sovereignty against a ruthless terrorist organisation that is armed to the teeth and has repeatedly denied Israel's right to exist.

The 21st day

2006-08-01T09:23:00.000+03:00

Today is the 21st day of fighting in the current Israel-Hezbollah war.

At Condoleesa Rice's suggestion (insistence?) , Israel agreed to desist for 48 hours (34 of them are up already) from aerial attacks in Lebanon on fixed targets , like the house in which 54 civilians were killed in Kfar Kana. This has been interpreted by some as a climb-down by Israel, or as a victory for the Hezbollah. But, as they say, it ain't over till it's over, and it ain't over yet.

Israel does not agree to a cease fire without a deal (including a multinational force) that will significantly diminish the threat to Israel from the Hezbollah, while the Hezbollah wants an unconditional ceasefire and won't talk about a deal. Yesterday was a welcome break for Israel's home front, only 4 Katyusha rockets were fired, compared to the previous day's 140 and the daily average 0f 100. It's not quite clear why it was so quiet yesterday (My Dad said "I was getting used to the sirens already") - is this the way the Hezbollah is trying to promote an cunconditional ceasefire or do they want to lull us into a sense of security before they start firing again.

Haifa in fact has had several quiet days now from rocket attacks although until Monday there were repeated false alarms - presumably of the rockets that landed in the historic town of Akko (Acre) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre%2C_Israel which is on the flight path from Lebanon to Haifa. Yesterday was, however, completely quiet and evidently many people thought that there was a complete bilateral cease-fire. So we heard that people in Haifa were out more yesterday, the cafes opened, people went back to work.

The war, however is definitely not over, with the Israeli goverment (backed by Jewish public opinion) determined to destroy (as much as possible) the Hezbollah military infrastructure in southern Lebanon in preparation for a multinational force. It is absolutely unclear whether Haifa is due for more rocket attacks - the Israeli Air Force may have succeeded in diminishing Hezbollah capabilities - but it's almost certain that the northern towns will still suffer a lot. The town of Kiryat Shmona, close to the Lebanese border was hit by 80! rockets in one day just a few days ago. I hope the Israeli forces will act effectively and that that there will be as few casualties as possible on both sides.

- David

Some answers

2006-07-30T22:27:00.000+03:00

I'd like to relate to some questions which came up in comments to this blog

Isn't killing innocent children, women and the elderly an attack of terrorism?
No, not when
a) there's no intention to kill innocent civilians and considerable care is taken to limit civilian deaths and injuries. Even though 450 Lebanese civilian deaths are terrible, this is a very small number considering that the Israeli Aif Force has made over 2000 bombing sorties against the Hezbollah since the start of the war.
b) those civilians are aiding, abetting, supporting and hosting terrorists firing dangerous weapons at innocent people. Let's remember that Hezbollah is intentionally and exclusively targeting the Israeli population and that 100% of deaths and injuries on the Israeli side from Hezbollah rockets have been civilians .

The media keeps on saying how the Israeli army has warned the citizens of Lebanon to flee their homes because the army will be dropping bombs. Where are the citizens going to flee to? Some can't even get passed the check points.
Indeed there have been reports that in some places the Hezbollah prevented Lebanese civilians from leaving their villages. The Hezbollah seem perfectly prepared to sacrifice Lebanese lives so they can use civilians as human shields. I call that moral blackmail and we cannot play along. However, this was not the case in Qana where the civilans stayed without coercion. It is, of course, desparately difficult for poor people in a severly bombed war zone to find refuge. We hope that as many as possible will find some way of distancing themselves from the Hezbollah fighters, even if it is in the fields and orchards of the villages.

Is it illegal for Israelis and Arabs to meet ?
80% of Israelis are Jews and 20% are Arabs and there is no limitation of any kind for Israeli Jews and Arabs to meet. My point was that, by and large, Jews and Arabs don't mix socially especially in Israel's major population areas. Ironically, in the north of Israel which has a considerable Arab population and where people are holed up in shelters for the last two weeks, there is much interaction - mostly at work, less on a social level. Before the Palestinian Intifada and suicide attacks in buses, shopping malls and other civilian targets, over 100,000 Palestinians came into Israel each day to work. Israel has built a wall to protect itself and there is no vitually no contact between Israeli civilians and Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza.

- David

The tragedy at Qana (revised)

2006-07-30T19:24:00.000+03:00

Let there be no mistake. The Israeli Air Force intentionally bombed the village of Qana from which 150 Katyusha rockets have been fired against northern Israel. The killing of 28 civilians (not 50 or 60 as previously reported) in the Lebanese village of Qana was however a tragic miscalculation. Israel did not intend to kill innocent civilians.

It is a tragedy that innocent civilians get killed in war although this has been happening since the start of time. The citizens of Qana received clear warnings (through dropped leaflets) that the Israeli Air Force would attack because Hezbollah has been firing from there. There are many proven cases of the Hezbollah firing Katyusha rockets from within civilian homes and those civilians sometimes pay the deadly price of hosting (in their homes) terrorists who are firing rockets against population centres in Israel. It is a tragedy that the Hezbollah cynically uses the civilian population as human shields and prevents some of them from fleeing and saving their lives. It is a tragedy for the citizens of southern Lebanon that they support an organisation that wants to eliminate its powerful southern neighbour.
If you were being fired on by someone who hides among women and children, are you sure you would desist from responding? Terrorists like Hezbollah know that we have more inhhibitions than they do and they blackmail our morals. 28 civilians killed tragically in the course of a legitimate response to attacks is not a massacre whatever the inflamed Arab media may say.

Israel is well aware (at least after the fact) of the adverse effect on world public opinion of the pictures of childrens' bodies being removed from the ruins of a building. We in Israel have much criticism of Israeli intelligence for not having known there were civilians in the building because, if they had, they would have desisted. I also criticise the government for not thinking that a tragedy like this might happen i.e. of not weighing correctly the benefits to the risks. I shared with many people my concern about another tragic incident on the Israeli side.

Life will be forever changed for some families in Qana and the question is what will happen in the wider picture. It is a terrible shame that the Israeli military has not suceeded more against the Hezbollah and has taken many Lebanese lives. The Israeli government has been weak and ineffectual. Let us hope that the suffering on both sides will not be in vain.

Morning concert

2006-07-30T09:09:00.000+03:00

My Dad is 95 years old and immigrated to Israel 3 years ago from England to spend his latter years with his family in Israel. He was a bomber pilot in World War 2 and has seen a thing or two in his life. He doesn't get particularly upset in the current war, definitely not for his personal safety. At his age, it's unlikely that he'd die from a Hezbollah rocket.

Every day (not only in wartime) he calls me at 9 a.m. to check how we are and to ask if I can come to him for lunch. This morning he called as usual and asked and I reminded him that we are in Tel Aviv - we stayed over at my daughter Daphnie's apartment. "Oh", he said "so that means you missed the morning concert - we had 3 alarms since 7 o'clock in the morning". "You see, when you leave Haifa, you miss all the good stuff". Humor definitely helps. I'm actually quite surprised that he heard the alarms this morning. Usually he doesn't unless he has his hearing aid (I almost wrote raid) turned on.

Yesterday 90 rockets fell in the Galilee, 100 on Saturday, 120 on Friday. Is this sign of a decline? Maybe, maybe not - too early to tell. The daily average since the start of the war is 100 a day. Varying the frequency may just be part of a Hezbollah policy to keep us confused and on edge.

Irit and the war

2006-07-30T08:47:00.000+03:00

My beloved significant other Irit is a wonderful woman whom I admire and love enormously. She works as the principal of a Special Education school in Haifa for emotionally and psychologically disturbed teenagers. Most of the kids in her school come from broken homes with dysfunctional parents - some of the kids are violent and they need and get a lot of loving care.

Irit has to manage a complex and difficult environment and she does it admirably. She has a lot of common sense, she has her feet on the ground and functions well even when those around her are very stressed. At the start of this war (this is our first war together) she told me "You should know that I don't do wars very well" and indeed she has been edgy, worried and angry since the war began. Every time there's a siren she runs down with our dog to the shelter at lightning speed and when we emerge she always turns on the TV to see if there are any news reports about what happened.

I thought it might do us some good to do what many others (who can) have done since the start of the war and that is to move down to the peaceful centre of the country. More of that in my next report.

Sin(ema) City

2006-07-30T08:41:00.000+03:00

A few miles north of Tel Aviv on the Tel-Aviv Haifa highway, near a hush-hush installation, lies a huge entertainment complex called Cinema City with 21 screens, a food court with Pizza, McDonald's, Chinese food and ice-cream.

Irit and I are "on vacation" in Tel Aviv for a few days to get away from the air raid sirens and rocket attacks in Haifa. As part of this vacation in a "normal" part of the country we decided to go to the cinema last night to see a new Israeli film (Aviva, my beloved) and that's what brought us to Cinema City. We knew that life in the sin city of Tel Aviv (compared to the provinciality and respectability of Haifa) was normal but we didn't imagine that it could be this "normal". We stood in the foyer of the cinema complex after the movie and gaped at the attractive young folks in their microskirts, deep tans, spiky shoes and and streaked hair enjoying entertainment like on any summer evening in a prosperous Americanized society.

Someone from another planet coming to Cinema City could never guess that an hour north of here people hear air raid sirens several times a day and that 2 hours north of here soldiers are fighting a bloody war and civilians have spent over 2 weeks in air raid shelters. I have very mixed feelings about this "normalcy". On the one hand, I'm happy that over two thirds of Israel's population have no first-hand experience of the war (yet) and continue their working and partying lives as usual. On the other hand, I wonder if this isn't yet another symptom of disconnect in modern (Israeli) society. Irit's daughter, Yael, who works as a psychotherapist in Tel Aviv reports that all her patients/clients are just talking about their personal issues and not the war. As we watched the happy filmgoers last night, Irit and I wondered whether all of them know about the war. For some of them, maybe it's just another action movie and they're waiting for the bad guy to go down in flames and the good guy to go off with his girl. And then they'll move to another channel.

Ballistics experts

2006-07-29T20:15:00.000+03:00

We've all suddenly become military experts. The Israeli Air Force supposedly attacked a Hezbollah command centre in Tyre a couple of days ago which controls the despatch of rockets towards Haifa and indeed it has been quieter with rocket attacks in Haifa since then. The rocket attacks continue on the Israeli towns and communities closer to the Lebanese border - Naharia, Kiryat Shmona and others. For years Israelis such as Irit and I heard about Katyusha attacks on Israeli towns near the border and in the last 6 months we have been hearing about daily Kassam attacks from Gaza on the southern town of Sderot. But the truth is that either we are egoistic or lack imagination to understand what it feels like to be under daily rocket attack. Now we understand real good and it's not going to make us any more pacifist. I am a great believer in understanding the pain and problems on the other side by talking to ordinary people and that's why I've been involved in the last 4 years in the very unconventional activity (for Jewish Israelis) of meeting Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and it has opened my eyes. Now my eyes are being opened by the real threats from and aspirations of the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

There weren't any sirens in Haifa this morning (thank you Nasrallah for giving us quiet Saturday morning) and at lunchtime Irit and I drove to Tel Aviv a few days vacation. We heard that there were 3 false alarms in Haifa this afternoon.

Yesterday Hezbollah fired (for the first time) a more powerful rocket against the Israeli town of Afula - not far from the biblical site of Megiddo (Armageddon). Fortunately there were no injuries but Hezbollah leaders threaten to fire rockets at the big cities in central Israel.

At least people like Irit and I will know what to do if we hear an air raid siren while we're in Tel Aviv but I don't wish the experience on those who have been saved it so far. As it is, we are all ears for the possible sound of a siren. At the time of the first Guld War in 1991 it took us months after the war ended not to tense up when we thought we heard a siren. And in that war there was only about one air raid siren alarm per day.

The tragedy of Lebanon

2006-07-28T17:21:00.000+03:00

As an Israeli, I cannot visit Lebanon although it is supposed to be a beautiful country and it is only an hour's drive from my current home. Before 1948 Palestinian Jews and Arabs would travel to Beirut to enjoy its nightlife and to the Lebanese mountains to go skiing. There used to be a railway line from Haifa to Beirut. The railway tunnel from Israel to Lebanon has been cemented up since 1948.

Lebanon is the home to many ethnic groups - Sunni and Shia moslems, Druze, Christians of various denominations - it also has a tiny but aged Jewish community http://www.danielpepper.com/blog/?p=16 . Some of my relatives were born and lived in Lebanon.

Lebanon had a sort of power-sharing arrangement between the various groups which collapsed during the Lebanese Civil War that lasted (on and off) from 1975-1990. PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) terrorists attacked Israel repeatedly and Israel invaded southern Lebanon in 1978 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Litani and again in 1982 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War when the PLO was forced to flee Lebanon. In 1985 Israel retreated to a security zone in the south of Lebanon and retreated unilaterally to the international border in May 2000. The optimists in Israel (me included) thought that finally we would have peace (or at least quiet) on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

During the good years Lebanon was the playground of the Arab Middle East. During the bad years of 1975-1990 there was terrible destruction. Since 1990 Lebanon started to rebuild and rehabilitate and now once again there is death and destruction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Israel-Lebanon_conflict . My heart weeps for all the innocents who have suffered so much.

To stay or to flee

2006-07-28T10:28:00.000+03:00

My beloved Irit and I are undecided about staying in Haifa or fleeing temporarily like many others to somewhere in central Israel. We have had offers from family and friends in Tel Aviv, Kfar Shmaryahu and Jerusalem to host us and also from Arab friends in the village of Faradis and the town of Um-El-Fahm (more of that in a separate post).

Unlike the refugees in Lebanon for whom the very act of fleeing is fraught with dangers (from Hezbollah or the Israeli Air Force), we can take the car anytime and go somewhere in Israel beyond the current range of the Katyusha rockets. We do it from time to time - a couple of days ago we visited some frends from Canada who are staying at a holiday village on the beautiful coast between Tel Aviv and Haifa (see picture) . It is quite surrealistic to come from Haifa - where the streets are half-empty and the shops shut - to central Israel with the beaches full and traffic jams abound.

We somehow don't feel at ease in an environment which seems to be functioning as if there is no war on. We hear that people are going out less and reactions seem to depend on the age group. From what we hear from our anxious, liberal friends our middle-aged generation seems more concerned or at least more verbal than the 20-somethings who are more detached. Now that many more reserve soldiers are to be called up, that may change.

No diplomatic option now?

2006-07-28T09:54:00.000+03:00

Further to my previous post, my friends tell me that there is no diplomatic option now, that Hezbollah will not agree (as of now) to leave south Lebanon, and that no international force will agree to come there and confront them. None of us know what Hezbollah's real position is and they may be more conciliatory in private diplomatic discussions than in their public pronouncements. I hope anyway that Israel is testing the diplomatic waters all the while. In truth, it is difficult to imagine an international force taking risks, absorbing casualties and being effective.

So it seems that meanwhile Israel's only other option is a massive all-out attack against the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and thereby against southern Lebanon itself. Israeli newspapers report this morning the call up of "tens of thousands" of reserve soldiers including probably Irit's son-in-law who told us last night that he expects to be enlisted. It is sad, it is painful, it is frightening. We seem to have gotten ourselves into a situation where we must "win". Let's pray that we do and that the price will not be heart-rending.

Israel's two options

2006-07-27T19:10:00.000+03:00

As we speak, Israel is at a crossroads in this war. The militarists, the right-wing say "Put massive ground forces in, we must win", the liberals and the pacifists say "Get the beast diplomatic agreement we can".

The Israeli government should indeed coldly evaluate and choose clearly between one of these two options. Choosing a wishy-washy option may be worse - there will be no chance of a significant victory while Israel remains so sensitive to its own and Lebanese civilian casualties and to world opinion.

Let us understand the two options. The first is total determination for a significant victory against the Hezbollah, even at very great cost. This option means calling up thousands of Israeli reserve soldiers and sending a massive force to re-invade southern Lebanon (Israel did this in 1982). The Hezbollah guerilla forces have shown themselves in the 1990's and already in this war as being brave, well-armed and effective fighters and they may cause the deaths of hundreds of Israeli soldiers. To increase its chances of success Israel would have to be merciless, killing everything that moves in southern Lebanon to beat Hezbollah. Israeli planes have dropped leaflets over southern Lebanon telling the civilian population to flee but , contrary to Israel's "humanitarian" intentions, many have not. The Hezbollah is ruthless, including the cynical use of the civilian Shiite population. If Israel is to have a better chance against the Hezbollah, in this option, Israel must be ruthless too, impervious to the killing of thousands of Lebanese civilians and to the inevitable international reaction. Israel should cut off Lebanon's electricity which will hurt all the Lebanese people but also the Hezbollah acting in their midst. Israel should use carpet bombing, maybe even napalm, without compunction. If Israel is crazy and ruthless enough, the Arab world and Iran will take note. If Israel causes sufficiently massive destruction and suffering in Lebanon, it will "succeed" (at least for now) even if it doesn not succeed in severely disabling the Hezbollah fighting force.

The alternative is to realise that Israel does want to maintain some humanity, morality and international legitimacy, to realise that if one wants to limit one's own and the other's civilian casualties then there's a price. The price is one's pride and one's feeling of security. The last days of war have shown the Hezbollah fighters to be effective fighters who fear nothing while the Israeli army leadership suffers from fear, poor intelligence and ineffective management. Israel has wreaked enough destruction already in Lebanon for there to be an improvement for Israel by diplomatic means. Israel has flexed its power of destruction enough. Please let's go the diplomatic way as soon as possible.

A must-win situation?

2006-07-27T09:51:00.000+03:00

In his today's article in Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/743169.html , the newspaper's veteran military commentator Ze'ev Schiff expounds a widely held view among the Jewish public in Israel that Israel must "win" (my quotation marks) the current war with the Hezbollah. This declaration usually goes along with the declaration that Israel had no choice in starting this war.

Israel did have a choice how to react the the Hezbollah border raid on the Israeli Army patrol and it chose massive retaliation as punishment, deterrence or both. In the far distant past of 2 weeks ago, our (Israeli) leaders spoke (with much macho) about eliminating the Hezbollah, teaching them a lesson and restoring Israel's deterrent power. As of today none of these objectives seems achievable. Israel's leaders took the gamble (maybe they didn't have any doubts, which is probably worse) that the most powerful army in the region could achieve an overwhelming victory aganst the Hezbollah guerilla forces. The gamble was that the benefits of a military action would outweigh the suffering on the Lebanese and Israeli sides and international disapproval. So it's not we didn't have a choice but either the assessment of the chances and risks of different courses of action was wrong or wasn't made. To say "we didn't have a choice" is really to say "Sorry, we made the wrong choice".

Now let's look at this current declaration that "we must win". What does it really mean? When we say "I must stop smoking" or "I must go on a diet", we mean that we know we should, it would be good for us, some part of us wants to and another part of us is holding us back. The declaration "we must" is used to encourage ourselves but we have doubts. If the consequenses of "losing" (I really don't like this childish, competitive, losing and winning way of looking at things) are really so bad, then we have to chance the rules of the game - carpet bombing of southern Lebanon, destroying their power supplies, killing thousands of civilians, risking hundreds of Israeli dead.

To summarise, if "we must win" is a way of encouraging ourselves when we are either unsure of our motivation, legitimacy, courage or ability, we are not in good shape. If "we must win" is an excuse for doing terrible things because of our fears, then that is terrible. I'd feel much happier if we said "We decided what we decided - now let's simply try and get the best diplomatic solution we can. We have shown our destructive power enough for the world to realise the necessity of new security arrangements in south Lebanon".

Katyusha graph

2006-07-26T10:32:00.000+03:00

This is the graph (scanned from today's Maariv newspaper) of the number of Katyusha attacks on Israel each day by the Hezbollah. In spite of the Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah launchers and ammunition respositories, there's no apparent decrease.

The accidental war

2006-07-26T09:20:00.000+03:00

Leader in the July 20 edition of the The Economist magazine

The war that has just erupted apparently without warning between Israel and Lebanon looks miserably familiar. The wanton spilling of blood, the shattering of lives and homes, the flight of refugees: it has all happened in much the same way and just the same places before. In 1982 an Israeli government sent tanks into the heart of Beirut to crush the “state within a state” of Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organisation. A quarter of a century later, Israel's air force is pulverising Lebanon in order to crush the state within a state established there by Hizbullah, Lebanon's Iranian-inspired “Party of God”. That earlier war looked at first like a brilliant victory for Israel. Arafat and his men had to be rescued by the Americans and escorted to exile in faraway Tunis. But Israel's joy did not last. The war killed thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, along with hundreds of Israeli and Syrian soldiers. It brought years of misery to Lebanon—and, of course, no peace in the end to Israel. The likeliest outcome of this war is that the same futile cycle will repeat itself.

Why it started
As in 1982, it started with a pinprick. Then, it was a Palestinian assassination attempt on an Israeli diplomat in London. This time it was the decision of Hizbullah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, to send his fighters on a cross-border raid into Israel on July 12th, where they killed several soldiers and captured two. This was, as Israel complains, an unprovoked attack on its sovereign territory. Israel says the timing—three days before the G8 summit in St Petersburg—was no coincidence, that Iran was using Hizbullah to deflect attention from its fishy nuclear programme. An equally plausible explanation is that the war is the product of a mistake.

In launching his raid Mr Nasrallah was in fact doing nothing new. In recent years, Hizbullah has mounted several similar raids into Israel. It got away with them, even when Israel was led by Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, tough prime ministers who had been war heroes too. Their reactions were astonishingly mild. The reason for this, as Mr Nasrallah constantly boasted, was his arsenal of around 12,000 Iranian and Syrian rockets and missiles. With these as a deterrent, Mr Nasrallah felt free to pursue an intermittent cross-border war against his much stronger neighbour, piling up prestige for resisting the Zionist “occupier”—even though, in point of fact, Israel withdrew from all of Lebanon's territory six years ago, and has a certificate from the United Nations to prove it.
This time, too, Mr Nasrallah may have expected the usual tokenistic response. If so, he miscalculated. Shortly before the Hizbullah raid carried away two Israeli soldiers, the Palestinian Hamas movement had mounted an equally daring raid into Israel from the Gaza Strip (another place from which Israel had completely withdrawn), killing two soldiers and nabbing another. Perhaps precisely because his non-military background required him to look strong, Israel's new prime minister, Ehud Olmert, decided that this double humiliation was more than he could survive or Israel could bear. So he has chosen to go to war (see article).
To much of the world, that looks like a crazily disproportionate response. And so it is, measured against the offence. But measure it against the threat that Israel feels from Hizbullah and it may not be. From that perspective, this war did not spring from nowhere, even if its timing is an accident. The conditions for it have been building, in slow motion, for years.
In the decades since Israel's invasion of 1982, Hizbullah has emerged as the strongest local military force in Lebanon. Since last year, when Lebanese public opinion and forceful diplomacy pushed out the Syrians, it has been the strongest force, period. It certainly cannot be disarmed, as Israel says piously it should be, by the official Lebanese army. And Hizbullah has shown little interest in Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls equally piously for the disbanding of all Lebanon's militias (there is in fact now only one) but suggests no way of enforcing this. Hizbullah is a political party, with representation in Lebanon's parliament and government, but its militia does not take orders from that government. It almost certainly pays more attention to the ideological and tactical advice it receives from Iran, its chief armourer and mentor.
The untidy political arrangements of its neighbour might be of no interest to Israel but for the fact, now being underlined daily in fire, that by giving Hizbullah all those rockets and missiles Iran has transformed a small militia into a strategic threat to the Jewish state. None of the strong states on Israel's border, such as Egypt or Syria, would dare to plaster Israel's towns and cities with rockets. A non-state actor such as Hizbullah, inside a weak state such as Lebanon, is much less easy to deter. Hizbullah retorts that it needed all these weapons as a deterrent of its own. Israel did after all invade Lebanon and occupy bits of it for 22 years. But it was utter hubris for Hizbullah to believe that, with its rockets in reserve, its fighters could keep crossing into Israel with impunity.

How to end it
A war that starts by accident is not necessarily easy to end. This one is what Israelis call a “war of choice”. Mr Olmert did not have to react the way he did. But now that he has, the stakes could hardly be higher for both sides. It is no longer a matter of wounded pride or the fate of the kidnapped soldiers.
If Hizbullah is beaten, it risks losing its position as the strongest power in the fractious Lebanese state, with damaging consequences in the region for its Iranian sponsor and Syrian ally. If Israel falters, many of its people think, the iron wall of military power that has enabled it to win grudging acceptance in the Middle East will have been seriously breached.
It is because the stakes are so high that both sides have rushed so fast up the ladder of escalation. Israel's aim is not just to even the score by hurting Hizbullah and then stopping. Before stopping, it says, it wants to deprive Hizbullah of its power to strike Israel in future. That means destroying Hizbullah's rocket stores even if they are concealed in villages and bombing its command bunkers even if they are located under the crowded residential suburbs of south Beirut. It also means cutting off Hizbullah's resupply, even if the subsequent blockade by land, sea and air brings Lebanon's economy to its knees. If hundreds of civilians are killed, and hundreds of thousands put to flight, so be it: in war, under Israel's philosophy, moderation is imbecility. Hizbullah is no different, and in some ways worse. The “open war” declared by Mr Nasrallah consists chiefly of firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel's towns. Israel says it is killing civilians by accident, but the disparity in firepower means the Lebanese still suffer much more.
This is madness, and it should end. It is madness because the likelihood of Israel achieving the war aims it has set for itself is negligible. However much punishment Mr Olmert inflicts on Hizbullah, he cannot force it to submit in a way that its leaders and followers will perceive as a humiliation. Israel's first invasion of Lebanon turned into its Vietnam. It is plainly unwilling to occupy the place again. But airpower alone will never destroy every last rocket and prevent Hizbullah's fighters from continuing to send them off. No other outside force looks capable of doing the job on Israel's behalf. At present, the only way to disarm Hizbullah is therefore in the context of an agreement Hizbullah itself can be made to accept.
George Bush is in no rush to rescue Hizbullah. And why, he must wonder, should he? This organisation killed hundreds of American marines in 1983. It is part of an alliance, consisting also of Iran, Syria and Hamas, working against America's interests and friends. Pro-American governments, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, bluntly blame Hizbullah for this latest wasteful war. Israel is asking for more time, perhaps another week or two, to complete its demolition of Hizbullah's arsenal and create a new order in Lebanon. Though Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's secretary of state, says she is bound for the region, there is no concealing the American temptation to dawdle.

That is a mistake. Hizbullah cannot be uprooted. It is not going formally to surrender. Its past struggle against Israel has won it the fierce loyalty of many Lebanese Shias, and its present one will add to their number even if it comes off worse. Israel's security will not be enhanced by destroying the rest of Lebanon. By weakening the Lebanese state, and its fragile but well-intentioned government, Israel just weakens the already feeble constraints Lebanon tries to impose on Hizbullah's actions.
What is needed now is a way for both sides to climb down. Israel must get its soldiers back, Hizbullah's departure from the border area and an undertaking that Hizbullah will not attack again. The Lebanese army or a neutral force should then man the border. Hizbullah needs to be given a way to consent to these changes without losing face. Squaring this will take time, ingenuity and the full engagement of the United States. It will not bring peace to the Middle East but it might silence a dangerous new front. America should start its work at once.

Unrealistic expectations with multiple constraints

2006-07-24T23:04:00.000+03:00

Reading an article "Not dying in vain" http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741792.html on the webiste of the excellent Israeli newspaper Ha'artez made me think about the strange attitude of the Jewish Israeli public to war these days.

At the beginning of this war there was a lot of fighting talk in Israel about "teaching the Hezbollah a lesson", "wiping the Hezbollah out", "making the Lebanese government understand that they have to take responsibilty", "let the Israeli army win".

On the other hand, there is an expectation, or rather a constraint, that there should be few Israeli casualties or fatalities. If, God Forbid, there should be many casualties , the public , through the medium of an agressive and accusatory media will look for those who are to blame. There's a very mixed message here "We the public want a quick clean war which you the politicians and generals guarantee we'll win".

The Jewish Israeli media (and public) altogether behaves in a very strange way. At the beginning of the war they group together in a fawning national concensus where they accept without question the meaningless platitudes and cheerleading from commentators and military spokespeople. But, if and when things start to go wrong then they will suddenly start to act like hungry wolves looking for prey, someone to blame, as if war is supposed to be a risk-free enterprise with the good guy winning like in a 195o's Hollywood cowboy movie.

The other serious constraint to the Israeli Army's freedom of action is the desire to limit to a resonable number (what a terrible thought) the number of civilian injuries on the Lebanese side. It is unclear to what extent this is motiviated by true humanitarian concerns and to what extent by the possible adverse reaction in the world if many Lebanese civilians should be killed. The Israeli Army well remembers the miserable incident in Operation "Grapes of Wrath" in 1996 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Grapes_of_Wrath in which Israeli bombs mistakenly killed over 100 Lebanese civilians seeking refuge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qana_shelling .
International reaction forced a premature cease-fire on Israel.

These constraints pose severe questions about what could be achieved by Israel in the current operation all the more so as the Hezbollah are fighting very effectively. Expectations were clearly unrealistic.

Fewer rocket attacks?

2006-07-24T22:05:00.000+03:00

For regular readers of these reports, I apologise for dwelling on the rocket attacks on Haifa. But if you were here, you'd understand how these have suddenly become an important parameter in our lives. However both Irit and I are more concerned about the general situation (more of that in a separate report) than the specific threat to us from rockets on Haifa. Both Daphnie and some good friends of ours have offered us a deluxe option to stay with them in Tel Aviv or nearby but we still prefer to come home to Haifa. Today we were most of the day in Tel Aviv (Irit baybysat her 3rd grandchild) but in the evening we came back to Haifa. The nights so far have been quiet (no rocket attacks) - it is believed that the Hezbollah believe thair launch sites can be more easily detected at night.

Irit's older son, Ofer and his family have been in Tel Aviv with Irit's older daughter, Yael, since Friday. Good friends of ours are with their daughter in Ra'anana. Many people in central Israel have offered to take in complete strangers and the Russian-Israeli millionaire Arkady Gaydamak has financed the building of a tent city on the southern coast which is already accomodating 3000 temporary Israeli refugees from the north of the country. He is providing meals and entertainment for the children so, dor the meantime it's apparently a bearable temporary solution. A newspaper report today said that the tent city is being expanded to accomodate up to 3000 more people.

On our way back to Haifa today we heard a radio report about the difficulties faced by working mothers (why does the burden alway fall on the mothers?). On the one hand the Civil Defence authorities encourage people in the intermediate danger zone (between Haifa and Carmiel, say) to go to work if there is a bomb shelter in the workplace. On the other hand all the creches and public child-caring facilities and summer camps have been closed down since the start of the attacks have been closed down, so in any family with small children uusally one of of the parents has to stay home with the children. In better times one might rely on neighbours or grandparents, but parents are understandably worried about the children when rockets are falling from time to time. May people are not turning up for work and employers (who are losing lots of money eanyway because of the situation) are applying pressure on their employees to come to work and threatening them that, if they don't, they'll have to hire someone else. The brunt is being borne by the working mothers.

Altogether the economic impact of this war within Israel is going to be considerable. These months of July and August are the school summer holidays when most people take some vacation. Thousands of Israelis (and foreign tourists) spend time in the beautiful north of the country but right now there's not a single vacationer around. Hoteliers, bed and breakfast places, restaurants and shops have zero income while having to pay their fixed costs. All self-employed people in the north are suffering seriously from a loss of income. The plight of salaried employees, many of whom are unable to get to work, is still in the balance.

One of you has asked me whether there is a decline in the number of rocket attacks on Haifa. The answer is no although the numbers vary greatly from day to day. Last Thursday there were none, until a rather close one on Friday lunchtime. Yesterday there 14 rockets landed on Haifa, killing 2 people but most of the rockets fortunately either land in open spaces or just cause some damage to buildings. It is important to understand that the rockets are a weapon to terrorise us by frightening us and disrupting our daily lives and sense of security - far more than the actual damage and killing they do. As part of this psychological terrorising war by the Hezbollah on the Israeli public it makes perfect sense from their point of view for there to be some days with many attacks and others with none which might lull us into thinking that things are getting better. It's a bitter pill and we have seen the ability of terrorists around the world to disrupt the lives and strike fear into the hearts of ordinary people.

How our lives have changed in the last week

2006-07-24T18:27:00.000+03:00

For those of you who have just joined this "blog" or series of reports about what is happening in the Israel-Hezbollah war and in our lives in particular, here's a summary:

On Wednesday morning July 12, guerilla fighters from the Hezbollah organisation launched a dawn raid on a routine Israeli Army patrol inside Israel near the Lebanese border. The Hezbollah killed 8 Israeli soldiers and took 2 prisoner whom they spirited over the border into Lebanon. This incident happened about 10 days after a raid by Palestinian guerillas on an Israeli army outpost in Israel (near the Gaza strip) . The Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah wanted to use the captured soldiers as bargaining chips for the realease of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. The Israeli government decided it would not be extorted and would react with force against such unprovoked agression across an agreed international border. Within hours Israeli Air Force planes started pounding Hezbollah and Lebanese infrastructure targets with the aim of neutralising (as much as possible) the Hezbollah's offensive capabilities and to cut their supply lines.

Almost immediately the Hezbollah responded to the Israeli attacks by launching Katyusha rockets (which can each destroy a house and kill up to 10 people) against towns and communities in the north of Israel near the Lebanese borders. Many of these towns, such as Kiryat Shmona and Naharia had known many such Katyusha attacks by the Hezbollah in the past.

On Thursday evening July 13, those of us who live in the north but not in the border region, in our case the city of Haifa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifa experienced something we hadn't known before - a single Katyusha rocket landed in Haifa, fortunately injuring noone and causing limited damage (see picture) . The optimists, like me, thought this incident was a unique aberration but on Sunday morning July 16 a barrage of Katyusha rockets landed, without warning, in different places in Haifa. One of these rockets killed 8 railway workers in a maintenace depot. Since then the rocket attacks have continued on Haifa and since last Sunday afternoon we (usually) have a 30-60 second warning - before impact - by the wail of air raid sirens. We had a 36-hour lull at one point when there were no attacks or sirens but after that the attacks resumed with anywhere from 1-10 air raid warnings per day.

Since Sunday July 16 the streets of Haifa are almost empty in contrast to the centre of the country (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem) where life continues as usual. Irit and I have driven down to Tel Aviv several times in the last week and we continue to be amazed how people are leading their normal lives elsewhere, walking in the streets, going to shops and cafes. It's good that we can take a break from the war atmosphere in Haifa from time to time (a great privilege compared to the suffering in south Lebanon) but it feels rather surrealistic.

For other reports on our life and our musings in these crazy days, see the other reports in this blog. Best to you all
- David

Rockets on Haifa today

2006-07-23T19:10:00.000+03:00

So far at time of writing (7 p.m. Israel time) we in Haifa have experienced about 9 air aid warnings and 14 rockets that have landed on Haifa today. The worst attack was at about 11 a.m. when we heard sirens which gave about 60 seconds warning. I was in my car at the time (on the way home from a gym class) - I stopped my car and sought shelter in someone's garage. It had rather a flimsy roof but almost certainly was a better option than staying in the car.

A car driver not far from our home was killed in that first attack (see picture) as was an Arab worker in a carpentry workshop who was working with earplugs (against the noise of the machinery) and didn't hear the sirens in time. Later there were several alarms without any rockets falling . Ans also several rockets that landed in Haifa without any alarms going off. Evidently the alarm systems are far from perfect.

The Air Raid experience

2006-07-23T18:41:00.000+03:00

Most of you have probably never heard a real air raid siren - see picture -(and I wish for you that you should never have the experience). You may have heard sirens in WW2 films about the London Blitz.

Anyway so you can know how it sounds, click on http://www.airraidsirens.com/mp3/uvfrsd10.mp3 and imagine that going on for about a minute and a half. The siren starts with a low-pitch whine which rises in pitch and volume and then oscillates between a low and high pitch. In our house we can hear the sirens quite loud and Irit has developed a seventh sense of discerning the siren's wail within 3 or 4 seconds of it starting even if we're asleep. That doesn't happen often - one morning there was an alarm at 05:30 that woke us and nowadays we rarely rest in the afternoon which we often used to do. One becomes very sensitive to any sound which might be an air-raid siren. The screech of a lorry's brakes today made us think it was a siren. Ever since this war started we can hear the noise of (Israel Air Force) planes flying overhead - day and night - but, in this crazy world, for us that is a good noise (not so for the residents of southern Lebanon).

So the sirens go off, we rush downstairs to our shelter with our dog. Normally our shelter , like most people's is used as a storeroom but now we've spread a carpet and put a couple of chairs in it. We get into the shelter and wait for the sounds of the explosions. Sometimes there's one , sometimes several - of differing loudness depending how close they've landed. The nearest so far to out house has been about 2 kilometers away but we can hear the explosions quite clearly. Sometimes you hear several "booms" for one explosion because of the echo from surrounding valleys. Sometimes there's no boom at all - it was either a false alarm or fell out of our earshot.

The nearest rocket fall to us was on Friday (about 800 metres from where my Dad lives) on a large block of flats. The mother of a friend of ours lives in that block of flats but in another entrance. The parent's of the girlfriend of Yoav, Irit's younger son, live in a flat on the other side of an adjoining valley several hundred metres away but some of the round shrapnel pellets that are packed in the explosive head of the rocket fell on their balcony (but caused no damage or injury).

War dairy (3)

2006-07-19T23:26:00.000+03:00

So far today 6 rockets have fallen on Haifa – there were no sirens for some of the attacks – we just heard the “booms” of the explosions from inside the house. It’s not very loud (say, like a supersonic boom of an aircraft) but that’s because all the rockets that have landed so far are rather far from our house – at least 4 or 5 kilometers. We spoke yesterday to good friend of ours from Carmiel, a town further north in the Galilee, who told us that a Katyusha rocket landed 2 days ago 150 metres from her office and that the whole building shook. She meanwhile has taken refuge with her daughter in Tel Aviv. Another friend from Rosh Pinna, also up in the north has gone to stay with her sister near Netanya. Back in 1991 when Israel suffered Scud missile attacks, there was a lot of ambivalence about whether it was “right” for people to move away from the worst areas and seek refuge in safer pastures – many did and many didn’t. This time there seem to be no such hesitations – whoever feels they want to get away , and they can (they have family or friends in the centre of the country, they can afford it) does. We hear on the news that the hotels in Eilat have are very full (and have put up their prices) but it is unclear how many of the guests are from up north or just tourists who have gone down south because nobody is vacationing in the north.

So far the southernmost points in Israel which have been bombed by the Hezbollah are Haifa and Tiberias (on the Sea of Galilee) – see map at http://www.debka.com/doc/missiles.html (www.debka.com has a lot of info on the situation) . Hezbollah apparently has some longer-range missiles which could reach Tel-Aviv or even beyond. So far there have been no missile attacks on Tel Aviv (where my 2 daughters Daphnie and Tami live) and there life continues pretty much as normal with everyone going to work and cafes, shops and restaurants full as usual. Haifa, by contrast, is rather quiet – most workplaces, shops and restaurants are closed and there’s little traffic on the streets and only one couple we know has left Haifa so far. However many of the towns further north, especially those which have had many rocket hits like Naharia, Tsfat, Carmiel are apparently like ghost towns with residents supposed to stay the whole time in air-raid shelters. A resident of Naharia came out for a bit of fresh air yesterday and was killed by a direct hit. Irit’s eldest son wanted to take his family today to Tel-Aviv for a break but heard that there was an alert in the centre of the country for a suicide bomber – with lots of roadblocks and traffic jams – so they found somewhere else to get away for a few hours.

Several of you have asked how my Dad (will be 95 in September) is doing in all this. Well, he’s doing pretty well. He and those of his generation have suffered worse stuff in their lives and they seem to take it in their stride. Irit and I go almost every day to eat lunch with him in the beautiful assisted living apartment block in which he lives. Two days ago the air raid siren went off when we were in the restaurant there and I was pleasantly surprised by how calm most of the old folks seem to be. Today the siren caught us in the car on the way to my Dad. I stopped the car by the side of the road and Irit and I rushed into the garden of a nearby house hoping to find cover. But there was none and Irit was rather upset. Nothing happened to us and of course rationally I understand that, at the present rate of shelling (that sounds bad..), it’s very unlikely statistically that we would be hurt. But it can happen, and if the sirens go off, it’s definitely preferable to be in an enclosed space, ideally a concrete air-raid shelter. On the other hand, one feels very cooped up staying at home all day and being afraid to go out. It’s very weird how, suddenly, usually banal decisions like going out to see my Dad can become major decisions. I have already mentioned previously that the air-raid sirens are a mixed blessing since they raise fear as well as helping decrease risk – furthermore in the last couple of days we have witnessed more cases of hits without alarms or false alarms than real ones.

Like in the Gulf war one tries to find a logic to the time of day or intensity or location of the rocket attacks but there seems to be none. Israeli TV reports that the air force is pounding Hezbollah launching pads, units, munitions depots and supply lines but to date we cannot feel any significant let-up in the number of or fatalities and injuries from the rocket attacks. We just heard that 3 people (2 of them children) were killed by a rocket attack on the Arab-Israeli town of Nazareth. What irony for them to die in vain at the hands of their Arab brethren. It’s pretty amazing that there have been quite a few rocket attacks also on other Arab communities in Israel – either they can’t aim or they don’t care.

War dairy (2)

2006-07-18T23:28:00.000+03:00

The big picture
It’s difficult to believe that all this started only 6 days ago when Hezbollah fighters mounted a daring (and unprovoked) border raid against a routine Israeli army patrol apparently with the express purpose of capturing an Israeli soldier for bargaining against Lebanese guerilla fighters and terrorists in Israeli jails. From Hezbollah’s point of view, they want their boys back. From Israel’s point of view, the Lebanese that are held in Israeli jails, if released, will go back to planning or making war against Israel. The last time around an Israeli businessman (with strong military connections) and 3 Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, Israel agreed to a very disproportionate deal of releasing hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the “businessman” and the bodies of the 3 soldiers who had been murdered. A lot of people in Israel felt uncomfortable at the time about that deal and it almost certainly encouraged the Hezbollah into more kidnapping in the belief that the weak-kneed Israelis would again pay a huge price to get our people back. Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert seems very determined to push through the message that Israel won’t play that game anymore and will not tolerate aggression across agreed International borders.

The Israeli public is now keenly aware that the Hezbollah is but the well-trained, well-armed and well-financed local arm of the Iranians who are happy to stir up trouble in Israel/Palestine while continuing to strive for their own nuclear arsenal. Hezbollah is reputed to have over 13,000 rockets that can be fired against Israel. In the last 6 days Hezbollah has fired 816 rockets into Israel in the last 6 days killing 17 civilians and injuring over four hundred. The Israeli Air Force has carried out over 1000 sorties against targets in Lebanon in which 206 Lebanese fighters and civilians have been killed. Many millions of dollars of damage have been caused in Lebanon and over half a million Lebanese have fled their homes at least temporarily. In absolute terms the Lebanese people, particularly in the south of Lebanon where most of the Shias live are going through a terrible time. Most of the Shias support the Hezbollah and many Shias have offered shelter for Hezbollah fighters and weaponry.

The small (but personal) picture
Yesterday 20 Hezbollah rockets hit Haifa, most causing minor damage but some causing direct hits on buildings and injuring people. The air raid sirens went off six times, the first time at 6am and the last at about 10pm. Every time Irit and I rushed down with out dog to the shelter we have in the basement. I just realised the most of you (living in the peaceful Western world) don’t know that Israel not only has public air raid shelters but , for the last 30 years or so has required all new apartments and houses to have one room – with 30cm thick concrete walls and a steel door – which can act as a family shelter in the case of bomb attacks. For people with larger houses (like ours) the shelter is used normally as a storeroom, others use them as work spaces or spare bedrooms. After the first massive rocket attack on Haifa on Sunday (in which 8 railway workers were killed) the civil defence authorities sound air raid sirens when rockets are flying towards Haifa – and these give us about 40 seconds warning before the first impact (often several rockets land within a few minutes of one another). When we see (later) the pictures on television of direct hits on homes and the destruction they wreak, we realize that, in the very unlikely case of a direct hit on one’s home, it’s definitely a good idea to be in the shelter which gives more than adequate protection. On the other hand, hearing the wail of the air raid sirens and knowing that you might get hit in the next few minutes is pretty scary. Yesterday afternoon Irit and I wanted to rest a bit, and 3 times in the space of an hour we were raised from our bed and ran down 2 flights of stairs to the shelter in the basement. The last time we were in shelters was in the first Gulf War in 1991 when Scud missiles were fired from Iraq against Israel – that wasn’t much fun either although the damage and injuries inflicted were much less than this time. After the 3 alarms yesterday afternoon, Irit and I decided to drive down to Tel Aviv for a few hours to visit her elder daughter. Tel Aviv is (so far) out of the range of Hezbollah rockets and unlike Haifa, life there continues as usual. In Haifa most shops and workplaces are closed and the streets are fairly empty. We just heard the muffled sound of a siren (one’s ear gets very attentive to it) – might be in a neighbouring area – otherwise it’s been quiet since last night.

Katyusha Rockets on Haifa

2006-07-17T23:30:00.000+03:00

I never thought I would be reporting to you that missiles are falling on Haifa where Irit, I and my father live. But so it is.

Background
They are being fired at a range of targets in northern Israel by the Hezbollah, a Lebanese Moslem Shia political party and terrorist organization which has been outlawed by the USA and some European countries. The Hezbollah is basically Iran’s agent on Israel’s northern border, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah and http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4314423.stm
The rockets that are being fired at Israel are Katyusha rockets – see http://www.iris.org.il/katyusha.htm and http://www.veteranen.info/~cedarsouthlebanon/kat/kateng.htm which the Hezbollah has had for many years and used often against Israel’s northern towns and settlements. The innovation in the current conflagration is the use of longer range Iranian- and Syrian-produced rockets which have ranges up to 75 kilometers enabling Hezbollah to target larger population centres including Haifa, Israel’s 3rd largest city.

How this war started
Israel has intermittently had problems with guerilla or rocket attacks from Lebanon since the early 1980’s and Israel first invaded Southern Lebanon in 1982. Israel retreated to a 20km-wide security zone next to Israel’s border in 1985 but guerilla attacks on Israel continued until May 2000 when Israel withdrew completely from Lebanon. The Hezbollah kidnapped and killed 3 Israeli soldiers in cold blood in 2002 but the then Israeli government chose not to counterattack. Last Wednesday Hezbollah mounted a border raid against Israeli soldiers on patrol , killed 8 and captured 2 for bargaining against Lebanese terrorist detainees in Israeli jails. The Israeli government chose this time (with the massive support of Jewish Israelis) to react severely and to try and cripple the Hezbollah fighting and rocket-launching ability, hopefully for once and for all. The Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi governments have severely criticized Hezbollah. Their only supporters are Syria and Iran who have supplied them with their incredible arsenal of short-,medium- and long-range missiles.

What’s happening on the ground
The Israeli Air Force is bombing hundreds of Hezbollah targets (and some infrastructure targets in Lebanon) with much damage and regrettable loss of life also of civilians.
Since Wednesday Hezbollah has launched over 1000 (one thousand) Katyusha rockets against population centres in Israel, mostly the smaller towns and villages close to the Lebanese border. On Friday one “Katyusha” landed in Haifa (causing some damage but no injury – we didn’t hear it, it wasn’t close, we heard about it on the TV news. It showed that the Hezbollah have the capacity to hit Haifa and this morning (Sunday) just after 9.a.m. we heard a number of “booms” which were evidently Katyusha rockets hitting the ground. In that first attack of the day on Haifa 8 railway workers were killed. Later in the day we were told on TV that air raid sirens could give 1 minute warning of impending strikes and 3 times Irit and I rushed down to the shelter in our basement and within 30 seconds we heard several “booms”. All this of course reminded us of the Scud missile attacks on Israel from Iraq in the first Gulf War in 1991.

I didn’t believe that rockets would land on Haifa, and, when they did on Thursday evening I was sure it was a one-time event. Irit’s elder son and daughter-in-law were wary of coming to us for dinner on Friday evening and asked if our shelter was clean and could hold several people. I though they were being ridiculously hysterical. Once we had 12 rocket attacks on Haifa today I’m not so sure. My common-sense tells me it’s unlikely there will be more attacks on Haifa now that Hezbollah’s capabilities are being seriously attacked. Rationally I know the chances of a rocket hitting any one house or family are very small, and yet it’s scary. We are fine, nothing has happened to us (and I hope nothing will) and I’ll keep you posted.

Hoping for a quiet night and a quiet tomorrow

A word about Haifa and our roots

2006-07-13T18:52:00.000+03:00

My beloved significant other Irit and I live in Haifa, Israels' 3rd largest city, on the Mediterranean coast about 100km north of Tel Aviv, Israel's main metropolitan area. You can see Haifa's location in the top centre of the attached map. The Lebanese border is about an hour's drive north of Haifa.

The population of Haifa itself is about 270,000 people, probably about half a million with the surrounding towns. Haifa itself is very hilly with the ridge of Mt. Carmel running from south-east to north west. There are magnificent views of the harbour and the bay area from Mount Carmel . Haifa is much more easy going and provincial than the cosmopolitan hedonsitic atmosphere of Tel Aviv. Historically it is known as a worker's town with a lot of industry in the nearby bay area. Haifa has a reputation for moderation and peaceful co-existence between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority. Before Israel's War of Independence in 1948 there were many more Arabs but they fled (to Lebanon and Syria) during the fighting and the capture of Haifa by the Jewish Hagana forces. The Jewish narrative has it that the (Jewish) mayor appealed to the Arabs to stay even though may of their leaders had left and much of the Arab media was exhorting the Arabs to leave until the troubles were over. The Palestinian narrative is one of ethnic cleansing - you can read it at http://www.palestineremembered.com/Haifa/Haifa/ - the "truth" is probably somewhere in between. I doubt the Jews actually expelled the Arabs of Haifa (they definitely did in some other places) but they almost certainly weren't sorry to see them go.

Irit's parents immigrated to Mandatory Palestine (the precursor to modern Israel) in 1933 and settled in Haifa in 1934. I immigrated to Israel in 1973 from the UK and lived in the Tel Aviv area until 2002 when I moved to Haifa.

Links

Haifa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifa
Palestine (region) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_(region)

Israel-Hezbollah War

2006-07-12T11:40:00.000+03:00

My name is David, I'm 57 years old, I live in Israel's 3rd largest city Haifa on the Mediterranean coast which has been hit by tens of Kayusha rockets in the war between Israel and the Hezbollah and Lebanon which erupted on Wednesday 12th July.

Politically I would call myself a liberal Zionist in the sense that I believe in the right of Jews to live in peace and security in our historic homeland. I abhor war and wish that humanity would find other ways to resolve its differences. I realise and accept that in the last 100 years Palestinian Arabs have suffered a lot. No one side in this 100 year conflict is "right" or "wrong", all good or evil and we have to find the way we can all live together.

Most of this blog will be devoted to reports from the Israeli side of this latest eruption in the conflict. Some will relate to the reality of daily live in a beautiful (and normally peaceful) city, Haifa that has suddenly become part of the war zone. Other reports will try to decipher what all this is all about and where it is leading. Let's hope that some good comes out of this in the end.