One Minute Warning

I heard the sirens as I left the library, thinking I would go find somewhere to get coffee. On the Ben Gurion University campus in Beer Sheva students started moving briskly towards the stairwell down to the safe room – I was alone, so I followed the traffic without question. It wasn’t scary, almost exciting, as we all crammed into a small basement which was occupied by some religious men praying. The students around me didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, and after two minutes they returned to their daily activities... it didn’t even seem as if anyone was talking about what happened. I heard the missile go off in the air as Israel’s Iron Dome defense system prevented it from hitting the city. However, some students on campus didn’t even know anything happened – one even asked me if it was a drill in the library, because she didn’t hear any sirens.

The night before I stayed with a friend in Beer Sheva. Before going to bed she showed me where the safe room in her house is. If the sirens go off it means we have exactly one minute to get to the safe room. Nothing happened that night, but tonight is a whole different story. Things are escalating in Gaza and rockets are going back and forth from both sides. We are no longer in Beer Sheva, and are totally safe here in the Bedouin village, but calling all our friends and updating the Haaretz news site every few minutes to follow what seems to be a serious situation. It feels very real, for the first time, and the complexity of the situation is so frustrating that I feel helpless. A Hamas leader said on television tonight that “tonight a rain of rockets will fall over Beer Sheva.” I don’t feel any danger will come my way during the program – we have even switched our plans for tomorrow to make sure we are extra safe going back to Lotan, but being here and feeling the heaviness that comes with the rockets really makes me feel connected to Israel. We commented this afternoon on how many airplanes were flying so low over where we are... little did we know that many of them were going to Gaza.

Interesting that our month of “social justice” ends with a real escalation. It feels nice to be returning “home” to Kibbutz Lotan tomorrow. I have learned so much this last month, and tonight makes me recognize that while I know SO MUCH more than I knew before (about the situation in Israel), the more I know the more complicated it becomes.