Room With A View

Safed, Israel on misty morning. Looking through a remaining arch and olive tree towards distant Mt. Meron to the west. Photo: Dave Bender All Rights Reserved.

"Ana B'coah:" Ancient Hebrew Melody - With Rockets

"Ana of B'coah:" Ancient Hebrew Melody - With Rockets

       

'Dusk falls over Jerusalem' (original photo)

Zoom in to see the Kotel (shot this with my "so - so" zoom lens, from the Haas Promenade to the south).

'Dusk falls over Jerusalem' (original photo)

Zoom in to see the Kotel (shot this with my "so - so" zoom lens, from the Haas Promenade to the south).

'Safed: Wall-to-wall kedusha' (photo)

Photo: Dave Bender, All Rights Reserved.

Fallen Stars at the Tower of David in Jerusalem (Original photo)

Photo: Dave Bender (All Rights Reserved)

Guest Post: 'Unique Twentysomethings Israel Program in Tzfat'

(I took part in the third-ever three-month session of this program back in the 80s, and I strongly recommend it for the reasons listed below - DB)

Unique Twentysomethings Israel Program in Tzfat

Livnot U’Lehibanot is a unique experiential Israel Experience Program which operates in the Northern City of Tzfat. Livnot offers participants an opportunity to get to know the real Israel through programs that incorporate hiking, volunteering, archaeological excavations, workshops and experiential seminars.

There are a variety of program options at Livnot including the intensive four-week Galilee Fellowship alternative and one-week post-Birthright Northern Exposure extension programs. Each program is a holistic experience that allows participants to encounter Israeli life, the people, the Land of Israel and their own Jewish heritage.

The goals of Livnot U’Lehibanot – “To Build and Be Built” -- involve offering tools and resources to participants which can help them to further understand elements of Jewish beliefs and philosophies as well as Jewish history and the impact that this has on today’s Jewish World and on Israel. Livnot provides participants aged 21 - 30 with an open environment which allows them to delve into different aspects of Judaism as they experience an immersive Israeli and Jewish community living experience.

The Livnot program is not “religious.” Rather it presents information about different aspects of Jewish practices and believes which allow each person the opportunity to consider their own connection to the Jewish community and to their own Jewish heritage. 
Some recent quotes from 5Summer 2012 follow the video:

“I have learned that Judaism is not an all or nothing commitment and that my path in Judaism can differ from the norm and still be incredible.” R.B.

“Everything we have done has reconnected me with my Jewish identity..” J.R.

“As far as extension programs go, Livnot was absolutely amazing. I got to enjoy the benefits of a program without feeling suffocated, and it was more than just sight-seeing. My week there was definitely one of the high points for my trip.” J.E.

“Before the program I felt a Jewish identity but didn’t know how to express it because I didn’t understand Hebrew or the Torah. However, after Livnot I’ve learned that none of this matters and there are many ways to have a strong Jewish identity. I’m so excited to bring what I learned at Livnot home with me and share it with my family.” R.K.

“This really was the most amazing and eye-opening experience for me. Everyone on the program and all the staff made this week so enjoyable and created such a loving and safe community. I am beyond grateful for this experience.” L.B.

“Amazing. Without question the highlight of my trip. I’ve done a great deal of programs regarding Judaism and none come close to this one.” S.G.

Southern Israel: like bomb shelters with revolving doors

Southern Israel: Like bomb shelters with revolving doors
(I penned this comprehensive feature in early 2012 during a day-long visit to cities and towns adjacent to the border with the Gaza Strip in the wake of yet another series of terrorist-launched rocket salvos on Israeli cities, towns and villages in a 40-kilometer radius of the coastal enclave. 

Due to the significant differences in the version that was eventually published elsewhere, I'm reproducing the original here in light of the near-constant steel rain on southern Israel since then, including two to three rockets on Sunday, Aug. 26th, which slammed into two factories in Sderot.

If you choose to reproduce this, I ask that you use it all, without additions, and with my full name and website: http://www.davidbrianbender.com. Thanks, DB) 

---

Southern Israel: Like bomb shelters with revolving doors

Two school boys, residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz near the Gaza Strip, examine pockmarks on a kindergarten's reinforced security wall from a Kassam rocket attack against their small farming community.
(Photo: Dave Bender: All Rights Reserved) 

Southern Israel: life in bomb shelters with revolving doors

by Dave Bender

One of three Grad rockets fired by Gaza militants at Beersheba Wednesday evening evaded the Israeli army's Iron Dome anti-missile system, wounding one resident and sending 20 others into traumatic shock. The other two were downed in open areas outside the city.

Air Force craft later hit a rocket launching pad in northern Gaza, and an arms smuggling tunnel in the south, the army said, confirming direct hits. There were no reports of Palestinian casualties.

Despite attempts by Israelis within a 40 kilometers radius of the Gaza Strip to return to the “new normal,” rocket attacks since Tuesday's informal Egyptian-brokered “cease fire” between Israel and Palestinian militants left many wondering just when the first half of the term “cease fire” would actually begin.

Seven mortars hit coastal Ashkelon and Ashdod that morning, and a Grad-model Katyusha slammed down in Netivot, east of the coastal enclave, the same night.

By Wednesday evening, officials in the three cities rescinded an announcement a day earlier for close to 200,000 students to return to school, closed since Sunday.

An editorial cartoon in the morning's Maariv Hebrew daily may have summed up dizzying violence best: A family is seen exiting a building's revolving door, above which a sign reads: “Protected Space” – a bomb shelter.

Assessing both internal and external damage

One Beersheba resident I spoke with on Monday was so distressed over the 200-plus rockets fired into her city since last Friday, that she broke into tears just enumerating her experiences.

“What I feel right now is just totally, totally drained,” Barbara Carter said after Wednesday's salvo.

“We were eating pizza when the siren sounded, and when we came back upstairs (from taking shelter on a lower floor of her apartment building) I said I felt like I was going to throw up,” said Carter, who is a retired American immigrant.

“I'm very discouraged and disappointed that our government isn't doing something; but at the same time I understand the ramifications of going into Gaza,” she said of a possible ground foray to halt the rocket fire made by army southern Command chief, Maj.-Gen. Tal Russo.

"There is no magic solution to the rocket fire from Gaza,” Russo said, noting that, “There might be situations in which we would need to launch a larger operation,” according to the Ynet news site.

Reporters visiting the region Wednesday saw glaziers replacing blown out shop windows from Grad strikes just days earlier, heard city officials describe near-90 percent drops in business revenues since last Friday, and toured rocket-pockmarked kibbutz kindergartens with shrapnel-holed inch-thick security glass windows.

Distances and time needed to reach safety when a rocket from Gaza is fired into southern Israel (Courtesy).

The current round of violence began on Friday when Israeli Air Force craft struck and killed a senior operative of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, preempting a major terrorist attack along the Israeli-Egyptian border, the army said.

Guns versus butter

In a board room at Ashkelon's city hall complex, Mayor Benny Vaknin sits before a PowerPoint slide showing dotted locations of every rocket hit across his city over the last few years. The map looks like it contracted the measles. He offers a thumbnail overview of the steel rain's economic storm on the city's 120,000 residents.

“For the last four days – I don't have the exact [figures] … almost 20, 25 percent of the people didn't go to their factories. This morning I had meetings with all of the heads of the commercial shopping centers … they told me that all the revenue – their income – decreased maybe 80 – 85, maybe 90 percent,” Vaknin said.

Smaller “mom and pop” shops were especially hard hit by the sharp drop in walk-in customers.

“We have here hundreds of small businesses; from what they sell, they eat. A lot of small businesses, small shops, they don't have a reserve,” he says, recalling a similar situation during the month-long Operation Cast Lead in Dec. 2008, “when hundreds of families were in a very poor situation,” and businesses saw, “tens of millions” in losses.

Vaknin says the uncertainty over where the next volley of rockets will hit makes “people prefer to stay home; they are afraid. You know, in October – in the previous cycle of violence – a man in Ashkelon was killed. [Moshe Ami] was very famous culturally.”As well, “Tens of people were wounded; they were outside, so most of the people [now] prefer to stay home.”

But, despite the glum present, Vaknin remains undaunted and recalls agreements reached with Gaza City officials in the 1990s for mutual municipal infrastructure, and distance-learning projects.

On a trip with Gaza's mayor to the United States and Germany to raise matching funds for both cities, “We succeeded to collect one million dollars in donations from former Israeli Jews in the U.S., and started a youth-training project for Gaza and for Ashkelon.”

He says still holds out hope that such goodwill will not remain a tattered memory.

“'I don't despair,'” he told me, 'because I believe that this way, we can prepare the people for peace.'”

Dr. Alan Marcus, Ashkelon's Director of Strategic Planning agrees, despite the complexities of the present “fire-cease-fire” reality between Israel, and Gaza militants.

“The minute the feeling is that it is more important to do better for your own people, instead of killing the other side – whether you have a formal peace or not – we can do great things for both sides,” Marcus told me after Vaknin's presentation.

Remains of detonated Kassam rocket, Sderot police station .

(Photo: Dave Bender: All Rights Reserved)

Israeli hospitals: healing both sides

Not far from Vaknin's office, Naomi Maximov, a religious woman in her late 60s sits in her room at the city's Barzilai Hospital.

She says dozens of missile alerts since last week alone have left her traumatized, and points to a heavily bandaged leg.

Her apartment building doesn't have a bomb shelter, so when there are missile warning sirens she and neighbors take refuge in the stairwell – the innermost and safest place in the structure. But during one alert, she tripped and fell running for cover, causing her injury and hospitalization.

“I am afraid – terrified,” she tells me.

"Even at the hospital?" I ask.

“Absolutely,” she insists, “I'm going to another hospital for rehabilitation, and if they don't provide me with a 'safe' room, otherwise I won't sleep there.”

Maximov, who covers her hair out of religious modesty, says that “Every night – and I mean EVERY night, I prepare a nightgown, a hair covering, slippers, and then get into bed. The moment there's a siren, I run...”

Her broken hip may heal sooner than her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, brought on by the around-the-clock sirens and explosions.

“I'm always stressed breathless – 'what will be, what will be, what will be?' – I'm always tense,” she says.

Meanwhile, several floors above, Muhammad Abudana tends to his wife, Kamla, a cancer patient in her forties who was hospitalized at Barzilai 16 days ago. The two are from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

Muhammad requested that Kamla be operated on in Israel rather than at a Gaza hospital. Authorities on both sides agreed, and the two traveled to Barzilai for her treatment.

As a humanitarian gesture, Israel annually accepts thousands of Gazan and West Bank Palestinians for medical treatment at no cost at hospitals throughout the country.

Muhammad says the last few days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians was very difficult for him, especially when he had to run for shelter with everyone else during missile attacks on the city.

Ironically, because of those very missile attacks, the hospital is currently building a massive150 million dollar, 350 bed underground facility. The facility's four surgical floors will hold ten operating rooms and a 50-bed, mass-casualty emergency ward.

Coffee, Kassams, and kindergartens

Carol Simantov is the nurse at 300-member Kibbutz Nir Oz, next to southern Gaza. The community's stuccoed one-story homes and schools sit less than three kilometers (under two miles) from the heavily-guarded border fence, it's verdant fields lay even closer.

Missile have been slamming down by them for a decade, and Carol says one member lost both legs in a rocket attack, and a second died of wounds.

Standing in front of a pockmarked outer walls of one of the village's kindergartens, she points to where shrapnel from a nearby Kassam hit one morning a few days ago. Several steel shards ricocheted straight through an armored glass window, and sliced through the ceiling tiles – shortly before the mothers and children arrived.

Across a footpath a few children play on a swing hung from branches of a tree that faces the kindergarten. Fist-sized shrapnel gouged deep into the trunk and roots, and on the walls of a home a few meters away.

What do you do when a rocket lands?

“What do we do?” she answers with a sigh, “... now that most of us have home shelters, it's not as frightening as if it was a war.” 

But, she continues, “If you're out on the streets, it's very difficult because you have about ten seconds from the siren – it kind of screams at us 'Color Red! Color Red!' – and that's our code warning. If we're close enough, we have spread out through the kibbutz oversize sewer pipes that we can hide in. We have bomb shelters for 'normal life,' – [but] there's no normal here anymore.” 

Simantov, who immigrated from Pennsylvania several decades ago, recounts a pastoral, yet jarring image she shares with friends back in the U.S.

“...I sit on my patio on a summer evening having my coffee, and listen to the sounds of war in the background,” she says, laconically.

But while she admits that life alongside a war zone certainly “isn't easy,” Simantov says she has no plans for pulling up stakes for quieter areas further away from the front.

“...they don't understand why I'm here,” she says of worried family and friends abroad.
“They keep saying, 'when are you coming home?' and I say 'I've been here for 38 years already – so sometime you have to accept that this is home."

An Israeli army tank, a porta-potty, and an unused lookout tower at a position facing the Gaza Strip across the road from a kibbutz, whose fields are seen in the lower part of the image (Photo: Dave Bender, All Rights Reserved)

Israeli army display of military-grade and homemade IED's used against troops and civilians along
roads and patrol paths adjacent to the Gaza Strip (Photo: Dave Bender: All Rights Reserved)

'Jerusalem Sunset' (original photo)

'Jerusalem Sunset' (Dave Bender, all rights reserved)

"Awakening into the Matrix"

"Awakening into the Matrix", a photo by Dave Bender on Flickr.

'Orbits Two'

'Orbits Two', a photo by Dave Bender on Flickr.

A study in black and white of architectural features of Holon, Israel's dramatic Design Museum.

'Orbits'

'Orbits', a photo by Dave Bender on Flickr.

The sun glints off architectural details at the Design Museum, Holon, Israel.
Samsung SII cellphone shot, lightly eqed.

'Neon Angel'

'Neon Angel', a photo by Dave Bender on Flickr.

Ghostly mannequin stands before a neon and metal light array, at the Yohji Yamamoto exhibit at Design Museum Holon, Israel.

Maestro of avant-garde fashion, Yohji Yamamoto remains one of the world's most influential and enigmatic designers and over the last forty years has made a vital contribution to fashion, challenging traditional norms of clothing with his style.

Samsung SII cellphone shot, lightly eqed.

Architectural study in B&W

Untitled, a photo by Dave Bender on Flickr.

Detail of exterior architectural feature at Design Museum Holon, Israel.

Samsung SII cellphone shot, twisted 90%, eqed, and cropped

'Fallen Angel'

'Fallen Angel', a photo by Dave Bender on Flickr.

Israeli Army Struts Desert Fighting Prowess

Thudding Israeli artillery shells and a dramatic F-16 jet and Apache helicopter-aided tank assault on a mock enemy desert encampment concluded a recent three-day conference on how digitally wired armies can process immense amounts of battlefield data, in real time, in order to win.

All photos: Dave Bender - All rights reserved

An Israeli Army MLRS rocket streaks across an open desert plain, as it homes in on an enemy stronghold in a mock assault display held at the Shivta Field Artillery Base, in southern Israel, Thursday, May 24, 2012.
(All photos: WWW.DAVEBRIANBENDER.COM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

Israel Air Force Apache Longbow attack helicopter takes a "nap-of-the-earth" shortcut, flying only meters above a wadi, in a mock assault on an enemy stronghold at the Shivta Field Artillery Base, in southern Israel, Thursday, May 24, 2012.
(All photos: WWW.DAVEBRIANBENDER.COM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

An IDF soldier hitches a ride on an "Alfa" artillery transporter heading back to base after taking part a mock assault on an enemy stronghold at the Shivta Field Artillery Base, in southern Israel, Thursday, May 24, 2012.
(All photos: WWW.DAVEBRIANBENDER.COM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

Two Israel Air Force Apache Longbow attack helicopters open machine gun fire, in a mock assault on an enemy stronghold at the Shivta Field Artillery Base, in southern Israel, Thursday, May 24, 2012.
(All photos: WWW.DAVEBRIANBENDER.COM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

An Israeli Army mobile howitzer artillery piece heads back to base, after an assault on a mock enemy stronghold in a display held at the Shivta Field Artillery Base, in southern Israel, Thursday, May 24, 2012.
(All photos: WWW.DAVEBRIANBENDER.COM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

Israel Air Force Apache Longbow helicopter goes in for the kill, in a mock assault on an enemy stronghold at the Shivta Field Artillery Base, in southern Israel, Thursday, May 24, 2012.
(All photos: WWW.DAVEBRIANBENDER.COM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

An Israeli soldier sits atop the open hatch of a mobile howitzer artillery piece headed back to base, after an assault on a mock enemy stronghold in a display held at the Shivta Field Artillery Base, in southern Israel, Thursday, May 24, 2012.
(All photos: WWW.DAVEBRIANBENDER.COM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

Southern Israel: like bomb shelters with revolving doors

(I penned this comprehensive feature a few months ago during a day-long visit to cities and towns adjacent to the border with the Gaza Strip in the wake of yet another series of terrorist-launched rocket salvos on Israeli cities, towns and villages on a 40-kilometer radius of the coastal enclave. Due to the significant differences between the versions, owing to external editing, I'm reproducing the original here in light of the near-constant steel rain on southern Israel since then, including two to three rockets on Sunday, Aug. 26th, which slammed into two factories in Sderot. If you choose to reproduce this, I kindly request you use it all, without additions, and with my full name and website: http://www.davidbrianbender.com - DB) 

Southern Israel: like bomb shelters with revolving doors

by Dave Bender

One of three Grad rockets fired by Gaza militants at Beersheba Wednesday evening evaded the Israeli army's Iron Dome anti-missile system, wounding one resident and sending 20 others into traumatic shock. The other two were downed in open areas outside the city.

Air Force craft later hit a rocket launching pad in northern Gaza, and an arms smuggling tunnel in the south, the army said, confirming direct hits. There were no reports of Palestinian casualties.

Despite attempts by Israelis within a 40 kilometers radius of the Gaza Strip to return to the “new normal,” rocket attacks since Tuesday's informal Egyptian-brokered “cease fire” between Israel and Palestinian militants left many wondering just when the first half of the term “cease fire” would actually begin.

Seven mortars hit coastal Ashkelon and Ashdod that morning, and a Grad-model Katyusha slammed down in Netivot, east of the coastal enclave, the same night night.

By Wednesday evening, officials in the three cities rescinded an announcement a day earlier for close to 200,000 students to return to school, closed since Sunday.

An editorial cartoon in the morning's Maariv Hebrew daily may have summed up dizzying violence best: A family is seen exiting a building's revolving door, above which a sign reads: “Protected Space” – a bomb shelter.

Assessing both internal and external damage

One Beersheba resident I spoke with on Monday was so distressed over the 200-plus rockets fired into her city since last Friday, that she broke into tears just enumerating her experiences.

“What I feel right now is just totally, totally drained,” Barbara Carter said after Wednesday's salvo.

“We were eating pizza when the siren sounded, and when we came back upstairs (from taking shelter on a lower floor of her apartment building) I said I felt like I was going to throw up,” said Carter, who is a retired American immigrant.

“I'm very discouraged and disappointed that our government isn't doing something; but at the same time I understand the ramifications of going into Gaza,” she said of a possible ground foray to halt the rocket fire made by army southern Command chief, Maj.-Gen. Tal Russo.

"There is no magic solution to the rocket fire from Gaza,” Russo said, noting that, “There might be situations in which we would need to launch a larger operation,” according to the Ynet news site.

Reporters visiting the region Wednesday saw glaziers replacing blown out shop windows from Grad strikes just days earlier, heard city officials describe near-90 percent drops in business revenues since last Friday, and toured rocket-pockmarked kibbutz kindergartens with shrapnel-holed inch-thick security glass windows.

The current round of violence began on Friday when Israeli Air Force craft struck and killed a senior operative of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, preempting a major terrorist attack along the Israeli-Egyptian border, the army said.

Guns versus butter

In a board room at Ashkelon's city hall complex, Mayor Benny Vaknin sits before a PowerPoint slide showing dotted locations of every rocket hit across his city over the last few years. The map looks like it contracted the measles. He offers a thumbnail overview of the steel rain's economic storm on the city's 120,000 residents.

“For the last four days – I don't have the exact [figures] … almost 20, 25 percent of the people didn't go to their factories. This morning I had meetings with all of the heads of the commercial shopping centers … they told me that all the revenue – their income – decreased maybe 80 – 85, maybe 90 percent,” Vaknin said.

Smaller “mom and pop” shops were especially hard hit by the sharp drop in walk-in customers.

“We have here hundreds of small businesses; from what they sell, they eat. A lot of small businesses, small shops, they don't have a reserve,” he says, recalling a similar situation during the month-long Operation Cast Lead in Dec. 2008, “when hundreds of families were in a very poor situation,” and businesses saw, “tens of millions” in losses.

Vaknin says the uncertainty over where the next volley of rockets will hit makes “people prefer to stay home; they are afraid. You know, in October – in the previous cycle of violence – a man in Ashkelon was killed. [Moshe Ami] was very famous culturally.” As well, “Tens of people were wounded; they were outside, so most of the people [now] prefer to stay home.”

But, despite the glum present, Vaknin remains undaunted and recalls agreements reached with Gaza City officials in the 1990s for mutual municipal infrastructure, and distance-learning projects.

On a trip with Gaza's mayor to the United States and Germany to raise matching funds for both cities, “We succeeded to collect one million dollars in donations from former Israeli Jews in the U.S., and started a youth-training project for Gaza and for Ashkelon.”

He says still holds out hope that such goodwill will not remain a tattered memory.

“'I don't despair,'” he told me, 'because I believe that this way, we can prepare the people for peace.'”

Dr. Alan Marcus, Ashkelon's Director of Strategic Planning agrees, despite the complexities of the present “fire-cease-fire” reality between Israel, and Gaza militants.

“The minute the feeling is that it is more important to do better for your own people, instead of killing the other side – whether you have a formal peace or not – we can do great things for both sides,” Marcus told me after Vaknin's presentation.

Israeli hospitals: healing both sides

Not far from Vaknin's office, Naomi Maximov, a religious woman in her late 60s sits in her room at the city's Barzilai Hospital.

She says dozens of missile alerts since last week alone have left her traumatized, and points to a heavily bandaged leg.

Her apartment building doesn't have a bomb shelter, so when there are missile warning sirens she and neighbors take refuge in the stairwell – the innermost and safest place in the structure. But during one alert, she tripped and fell running for cover, causing her injury and hospitalization.

“I am afraid – terrified,” she tells me.

"Even at the hospital?" I ask.

“Absolutely,” she insists, “I'm going to another hospital for rehabilitation, and if they don't provide me with a 'safe' room, otherwise I won't sleep there.”

Maximov, who covers her hair out of religious modesty, says that “Every night – and I mean EVERY night, I prepare a nightgown, a hair covering, slippers, and then get into bed. The moment there's a siren, I run...”

Her broken hip may heal sooner than her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, brought on by the around-the-clock sirens and explosions.

“I'm always stressed breathless – 'what will be, what will be, what will be?' – I'm always tense,” she says.

Meanwhile, several floors above, Muhammad Abudana tends to his wife, Kamla, a cancer patient in her forties who was hospitalized at Barzilai 16 days ago. The two are from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

Muhammad requested that Kamla be operated on in Israel rather than at a Gaza hospital. Authorities on both sides agreed, and the two traveled to Barzilai for her treatment.

As a humanitarian gesture, Israel annually accepts thousands of Gazan and West Bank Palestinians for medical treatment at no cost at hospitals throughout the country.

Muhammad says the last few days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians was very difficult for him, especially when he had to run for shelter with everyone else during missile attacks on the city.

Ironically, because of those very missile attacks, the hospital is currently building a massive150 million dollar, 350 bed underground facility. The facility's four surgical floors will hold ten operating rooms and a 50-bed, mass-casualty emergency ward.

Coffee, Kassams, and kindergartens

Carol Simantov is the nurse at 300-member Kibbutz Nir Oz, next to southern Gaza. The community's stuccoed one-story homes and schools sit less than three kilometers (under two miles) from the heavily-guarded border fence, it's verdant fields lay even closer.

Missile have been slamming down by them for a decade, and Carol says one member lost both legs in a rocket attack, and a second died of wounds.

Standing in front of a pockmarked outer walls of one of the village's kindergartens, she points to where shrapnel from a nearby Kassam hit one morning a few days ago. Several steel shards ricocheted straight through an armored glass window, and sliced through the ceiling tiles – shortly before the mothers and children arrived.

Across a footpath a few children play on a swing hung from branches of a tree that faces the kindergarten. Fist-sized shrapnel gouged deep into the trunk and roots, and on the walls of a home a few meters away.

What do you do when a rocket lands?

“What do we do?” she answers with a sigh, “... now that most of us have home shelters, it's not as frightening as if it was a war.”But, she continues, “If you're out on the streets, it's very difficult because you have about ten seconds from the siren – it kind of screams at us 'Color Red! Color Red!' – and that's our code warning. If we're close enough, we have spread out through the kibbutz oversize sewer pipes that we can hide in. We have bomb shelters for 'normal life,' – [but] there's no normal here anymore.” 

Simantov, who immigrated from Pennsylvania several decades ago, recounts a pastoral, yet jarring image she shares with friends back in the U.S.

“...I sit on my patio on a summer evening having my coffee, and listen to the sounds of war in the background,” she says, laconically.

But while she admits that life alongside a war zone certainly “isn't easy,” Simantov says she has no plans for pulling up stakes for quieter areas further away from the front.

“...they don't understand why I'm here,” she says of worried family and friends abroad.
“They keep saying, 'when are you coming home?' and I say 'I've been here for 38 years already – so sometime you have to accept that this is home."

One Year Later: Terrorism , Triplets, And Growing Up An Israeli Teen

"In Jerusalem on Wednesday, March 23, 2011, the first thing you heard after the explosion was an instant of deafening silence.

"And after that, a sudden cacophony of car alarms set off by the blast’s pressure wave.

"And after that..."


Read the rest: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/one-year-later/

Jerusalem: The Friday Paper Chase

Dozens of passersby crowd around two women actually guarding the weekend section of the Israel Today freesheet, before the restive crowd snatches the incomplete newspaper.

Section 1 - headlines - is on the way, but some have no patience and argue and try to cajole the hawkers into divvying up what, remember, is a freesheet...

Medical Clowning in Israel - No Kidding

My latest feature for China's CNC World Television: Medical Clowning in Israel



I gratefully appreciate all those who took part in helping this production.

Comments welcome.

The Golan Heights In Shades Of Grey

 (All Rights Reserved: Dave Bender) Click here for my Flickr Photostream.

Mt. Hermon on the Golan Heights. I shot the original in color, and tried for a faux HDR effect. Punched up the contrast a bit, as well. I welcome your comments and suggestions for improvement.