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Israel's South Holds On, But How Much More Must We Take?

(San Francisco Jewish Weekly) Faye Bittker - For the past year or two, missiles have come raining down on southern Israel every few months. We, the residents of southern Israel who live within a 60-mile radius of Gaza, learned to drive with our car windows open so that we could hear sirens while on the open road. We taught our children how to fall asleep again once they were moved into the safe room in the middle of the night. We developed a whole slew of coping mechanisms including "dressing for missiles" - no heels or straight skirts allowed. We got to make jokes about how children of the Negev Desert are more familiar with the sound of falling Grad missiles than actual rain. We became old war heroes, exchanging stories of close calls from the missiles of 2009 versus those of 2010 and '11. But as time has gone on, our kids are showing signs of severe stress. Our blood pressure goes up as we count off the locations where missiles have fallen, sometimes when we were only a few hundred meters away. The unified, resilient front is still there, but it is being propped up by a million people living under threat of missile fire. As I sit here at home, listening to the booms of the endless barrage of missiles falling over Beersheba, I want to make myself heard. Missiles are not something that we have to learn to live with.
2012-11-30 00:00:00
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