A little about the fear of rockets

August 1, 2006

It was a strange day in Haifa. Yesterday's announcement of a ceasefire brought a day with no rockets or even sirens. Not even a false alarm. After three weeks of almost constant explosions and dancing down to the shelter to the tune of sirens, it seems absent somehow. I and a couple of other people I spoke to have said that in a strange way, they miss it. I know it seems bizzaar, but I think that there is a certain thrill in the fear. There is something about those few minutes where, once in the shelter, you listen quietly for the rockets and measure, by the strength of the blast, how far away they are. You consciously know you are safe in the shelter and the odds are tiny that it will be hit, but you wonder anyway if it might happen. If you have experienced some close ones as I have, you respect the power of the rockets, and there is something in their threat (again, as remote a possibility as it is) of death, that reminds you that you are alive. ALIVE!

A lot of people went to work today and there even reports of heavy traffic downtown. It seemed that life in Haifa seemed to return to normal. Almost. In addition to the missing of the sirens by some of us, we were also grateful for the quiet and what it meant - no one will be hurt or killed today. At least not in Israel. As I also drove through the city streets doing some errands, I didn't trust the quiet. I was sure that at any moment I would hear a siren and have to brake quickly and run into a building to wait it out.

I try to tell people who are really afraid of the rockets in Haif to look at it coldly. Statistically, I am sure one has more chance of dieing in a car accident than being hit by a rocket. I have said this to a few people, who listen to me very impatiently when I say it. The fear for them overrules cold logic. In a very tragic coincidence, today's Yediot newspaper front page has the story of a 16 year-old who came south to Tel Aviv from a kibbutz in the north. He was killed in a traffic accident.

May the quiet last on both sides and let there be peace.

Shalom.