A Clock Ticking

Elie getting a passport to go to the States to visit Lauren’s family has gotten me thinking. Years and years ago, we were in the north. I think I’ve written about it before. The story is simple. Wonderful vacation with the kids. I think we had four at the time. Leisurely days in the north. We rented an apartment very close to the Lebanese border and did day trips all around.

On our way back one evening, we stopped in the northern city of Kiryat Shemona and purchased food for dinner. We drove back to the apartment – I think I remember it being no more than a ten minute drive. We unloaded and the kids went to watch TV while we quickly started the barbecue. My husband was outside…I was inside when I heard two loud booms – seconds apart.

In the clarity of that moment, I knew katyusha rockets had been fired at Israel and had landed nearby. I had never heard a rocket – but I knew. I ran outside and made my husband come into the apartment. We didn’t know where the bomb shelter was; we didn’t know where to go. The apartment owner came to us right away and we asked what to do. He took us deeper into his house and told us to stay in the stairwell – it was the most protected area of the house, he said, while he went to check what was happening. We heard the army order people into bomb shelters and here we were in the house.

The owner explained that the bomb shelters weren’t cleaned out and the best place was where we were. We tried to believe he was right, that we were being responsible. Within 30 minutes, the army gave the all clear to let people resume what they were doing. The vast majority of the tourists (Israelis visiting from central and southern Israel who regularly fill Israel’s northern areas in the heat of the summer – like us), went scrambling home as fast as they could. The north was virtually evacuated of visitors; the residents remained. You could almost see them shaking their heads in wonder as to why people had left.

We decided to spend the night – but compromised by pulling mattresses into the stairwell. All camped out, trying to make it fun; Elie began telling us he wanted to go home.

There are moments in your life you remember. Crystal clear. You know this is a turning moment – I hope for Elie, certainly for me. No, we told him. No, we won’t run. The army says it is safe; the people who live here all the time say it is safe. We aren’t running. Would you run if it was your home? Why is this less your home than where we live. No.

What we did – without telling the children – was switch our plans. The next day, rather than stay in the Galilee area, we drove north and east into the Golan Heights, hoping that if more rockets fell, they wouldn’t be able to target the Golan, which lay so much higher than the Galilee fields and hills. When we returned home later that week no further rockets had been fired other than the one…no, it wasn’t two. What I took for two was the sound of it being fired – outgoing from Lebanon, and the sound of it landing – incoming to one of Israel’s cities where damage was caused…close to where we’d made our purchases just 15 or so minutes before.

We also came back to some very unhappy relatives who felt we should have left after the rocket attack. They’d heard about it – even in the States, and felt we were irresponsible parents. Why this whole story?

Because I feel a clock is ticking with Iran and I don’t have passports for my children…and I don’t want to get them. I don’t want my children leaving Israel. I can close my eyes and see horrible war scenes, smoke in the streets. Would this be the Jewish people’s last stand? Where else should it be but Israel? No, I do not believe it will happen – it comes back to my overly active imagination. I can see things, smell them, feel them – if my brain only thinks it.

Another quick story – when my oldest daughter completed the advanced ambulance training program for handling multiple casualty incidents, they invited the parents to a demonstration. At the time, buses were exploding regularly and so the simulation was a terrorist attack. The kids – all around 16 years old, simulated setting up a triage area, bringing in the wounded (more kids carried on stretchers by other kids). The day was clear and bright; the kids were laughing because some “patients” fell off the stretchers while over-acting. Parents were smiling, and I was standing there crying. I was so embarrassed. I was yelling silently to my brain – stop, stop thinking this is real. There’s no black smoke. The sirens are just part of it. Stop.

So at times, I do this with Iran – what would happen if Iran really did fire a nuclear weapon at Israel? I don’t really have much faith in most of the world. The French will moan; even the Germans and the English will do little. The Swedes and Norwegians might actually cheer. The Americans might come…but it would be too late, wouldn’t it? And if there were some war scene with hundreds of Americans trying to get out – trying to approach the American embassy…as I’ve seen in some foreign countries…I have no passport to prove who we are…and even if I did…would I want to.

I have no other land, no other place but here. I don’t want to leave…this is where, hopefully way way in the future, I want to die and be buried. Am I being an irresponsible parent?

And this brings me to something Elie said recently. Israel is, as far as I know, the only place in the world that during a war, there are more people flying into the war zone than out of it. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Israelis all over the world will come home as fast as the planes can bring them. Even those who live abroad, fly home to fight. I wonder if they feel the clock ticking?

4 Comments

  1. My passport has been expired for over two years and I have absolutely no desire to renew it. My mother keeps yelling at me and saying I should take care of it, just in case. But I don’t feel like wasting a day in Tel Aviv filling out paperwork and waiting on line when I don’t plan on leaving this country anyway…

  2. I don’t get it. Iran’s not going to be dropping leaflets telling civilians to flee because next Tuesday we’re going to nuke you. There aren’t going to be any planes flying in or out. America’s not going to come and rescue you. God will do nothing yet again. You’ll all be dead. So for what do you need a passport?

  3. >> You’ll all be dead

    don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched, Barbara. Smarter chix than you have been wrong before, about the same prediction.

    Having said that, the “nationalist camp” doesn’t have the strongest known “survivalist” instincts…. the American Mountain State people do ten times better. Case in point: the Fogel family.

    – US Navy Officer

  4. Alan, I am not a member of the “nationalist” camp, but perhaps you are a member of the Neville Chamberlain camp, yes? And shame on you, a US military officer, referring to a woman as a chick. Would I be a “chick” if I agreed with your point of view?

    Iran said: we want to acquire nuclear weapons BECAUSE we want to destroy the nation of Israel. Not for protection from Iraq, not because the Taliban are going to get their hands on the nukes in Pakistan, but BECAUSE we don’t want any Jews in our part of the world. Then they set about making this happen, just like they said they would. They are working very hard at it, non-stop. Russia, China, France, and Germany are helping them. Nothing and no one has deterred them, only slowed them down a little. It is fatally stupid to underestimate their commitment or their power, or to ignore the lack of resolve to stop them. Have we still not learned the lessons of WWII? That wasn’t very long ago. What evidence do we have that this is all smoke and mirrors, none. I believe them.

    The Israeli people cannot survive a nuclear war. (The world’s precious Palestinians will be collateral damage, but I haven’t noticed anyone making a fuss about that, which just goes to show they are tools of Anti-Semitism, nothing more.) Paula is saying, we know we will die here if Iran attacks us with nuclear weapons, but no one is going to make us flee, we are done with that, this is our home. My son feels the same way and he lives in Tel Aviv, not in some little settlement over the Green Line. I respect that. You make a stand against the monsters of this world, even if it kills you. I don’t mean you sit around dithering with your head in the sand, making excuses to do nothing like the Jews of Germany in the 1930’s who had a chance to escape and didn’t take it. I mean you make a stand, like Paula and her family and my son and so many others are doing. These are ordinary people who for every day of their lives stand up against evil no matter the cost. Isn’t that why you are in the Navy, Alan, for that very same reason? You are just better protected than they are.

    But, I’ve come back around to my point again. Dead people do not need passports. It’s meaningless to contemplate, unless you are getting out now.

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