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Tales from a Bomb Shelter
I really thought I knew.
I mean, I had written about it, raised hell, and described it to the world. During Operation Pillar of Defense, I held a rally in support of Israel and gave a passionate speech: “15 seconds,” I said, ’15 seconds to make sure that you and the people you love are safe”. Imagine the terror, imagine the fear, and imagine not knowing the outcome. And I thought I knew — because I had seen it on YouTube, because I had read about it, and because I had spoken to those who lived it. How much more could there be to it? Turns out quite a lot more.
A week ago, I boarded a plane to Israel with my two sons. It was their first visit, and the excitement was palpable. We had rented a small house in TLV, just between the beach and Shuk HaCarmel, and for five straight days my kids called every day the best of their lives.
I was preparing dinner on the eve of the sixth day, waiting for my friends to arrive for one last night of food, wine, and talking all night. My children were sitting at the table watching a movie. Then I heard the sound — like the entire city was wailing with pain. The loudness of it is so frightening that it takes a few seconds before I even understand what I am hearing.
My first thought is that I have no idea what to do. I throw a bottle of water and a bag of chips in my purse and tell the kids we have to leave. They ask why but I can’t answer. I just keep saying “we have to leave, we have to leave, we have to leave’. We run into the street and I see hordes of people running in the same direction. A group of men from the shul down the street, an old woman carrying a pink bag heavy with vegetables, a small family just coming back from a day at the beach. They disappear into the building across the street, so I grab the kids by the hand and I follow them.
The room is cool — or maybe it’s just me shaking with chills. Children are sitting on the floor. A young man is on the phone with his mother. My own children are quiet and the oldest is fighting back tears, watching my face as to see how scared he is supposed to be. I am just about to try and tell them something when I hear the boom. It’s so much louder than I had expected. I feel it in the floor, the impact traveling through my entire body. There’s a young man nervously laughing. He’s one of those guys I’ve seen at the beach, flirting with girls and wrestling his friends in some ancient macho display. I watch his face and see that this is still someone’s child. He is scared but he can’t show it. I am too — and I can’t either. I know I have to keep it together for my children. I know I need to have a plan. We leave the shelter after about 15 minutes. My children are talking, but I can’t hear them. I am trying so hard to figure out what has just happened and what it means for the hours to come. Fortunately, I’m not allowed to indulge that neurosis for too long. Soon my garden is full of friends. We hug and laugh and go on with our lives just as too many in Israel have to do all too often.
It’s one of the strangest nights I have ever experienced. Now and then we hear blasts, stop to check our phones, and relay our position and status via various forms of social media — then we grab another drink and tell another story. My friend gets a phone call. Her son is being called into service. There’s a shadow running across her face and I want to hug her but I am not sure that I should. She knows this life — and her son does too. She is the strongest woman I know. She is a fighter and a survivor and she chose the life that her son is now being sent to defend. She must hurt, but she doesn’t show it. So I don’t hug her, but I let her finish her story, pretending that this was somehow normal in any imaginable way. There was no sleep that night. I stayed up, watching my children sleep next to me, frantically checking the news. We’re supposed to get on a plane back to Sweden the next day, but at this point I just don’t know anything apart from the fact that we’re safe right here, right now.
At 8 AM the next morning, I was fully packed and ready to leave. The kids and I were having breakfast, waiting for the cab when the siren went off again. We ran into the shelter across the street. The boys were weirdly ready for it that time. I was too, with the bag ready to go, standing by the door. The kids found a dog to play with and somehow they made it into playtime while I flinched at every loud boom that followed. We went straight from the bomb shelter to the airport. I was upside down and inside out and all I could think was that I shouldn’t be leaving. Not now, not ever. This is my home and leaving in the midst of crisis felt like ripping my heart out piece by piece.
I thought I knew but I didn’t. I thought I had felt fear but I hadn’t. I had 15 seconds to grab my children and get to safety. I felt the fear, I knew the terror — and I didn’t know the outcome. When I got back to Sweden and put my kids to bed I went out to the balcony, sipping on a glass of wine. Suddenly there’s a boom, and I flinch, spilling the wine all over myself. A child across the courtyard had thrown a box of toys from her balcony and now she was looking at me, startled by my reaction.
And for the first time since all of this happened, I cried.
I cried for my children having to go through that. I cried for having left my true home in its time of need. I cried for my brothers and sisters, still there, still grabbing their kids by the hand to find safety in less than 15 seconds.
When we got off the flight to Sweden the first words out of my youngest son’s mouth was, “Mom, I miss Israel, when can we go back?’ And I knew we would be ok. Their memory of the first trip to our homeland would not be the shelter or the siren. It would be how they walked around feeling normal and accepted as Jewish kids; it would be the smoothies at the shuk; playing in the waves in Tel Aviv and petting a cute dog in what happened to be a bomb shelter on Daniel Street. We will all be ok. Because the strength of Israel is not only its army, it’s the people, making a life and building a world where others would surely crumble. It’s the love and the strength and the will to survive, embedded in our very core.
I thought I knew, but I didn’t — and now I know so much more. Yes, I know the fear and the panic, but I also know that, while I was scared for a while in Israel, I am frightened in Sweden all the time. Israel is home, and it is the only place I want to be now, in good times and bad times and in all the times in between. In its darkest time, it showed me and my sons more love, humor, and compassion than they have ever seen in their “peaceful” place of birth.
So yeah, I know now. Not just the terror and panic part, but also that there is no way my people are not going to be OK.
My children in the bomb shelter, Wednesday morning.
Published in General
Israeli resiliency is an amazing thing and it’s surely due to the legacy of Jewish history and Jewish values. I’m continually impressed by the will to not just survive but thrive as well. I was lucky to never need a bomb shelter when I was in Israel in late 1991–things were very quiet–but my teacher once showed our class his young daughter’s tiny gas mask and it was a chilling sight. To imagine a world where you need to mass produce such items is appalling.
All that said, Israelis should have dealt with this problem decades ago. Just because you can survive in such circumstances doesn’t mean you should accept it and I wonder if Israeli resiliency and ingenuity are partly to blame for the fact that Israel continues to successfully react and adapt rather than deal with the core problem. I know it’s a complicated situation and there are no easy answers, but no one should have to live this way.
However, it’s clear from the picture of your boys that a dog does everyone good. I’m glad that you and yours got through such a scary situation whole.
Thank you for writing this.
Your post reminds us of the fragility of life. These are unreasonable times filled with unreasonable people. No child should ever have to fear from war. No adult either. I am thankful to hear that you and your sons were unharmed while there.
It is always amazing to see how children come to quickly accept situations as “normal”. It will not be until they hit adulthood, and have witnessed the ways that others live, that they will be able to recognize the extraordinary or the esoteric in their own lives and upbringing.
Your story reminds me of WWII accounts from England or Germany, and the ways in which citizens came to adapt and adopt the strange survival dances of the air raids.
Powerful.
A people forever at war. Sad, but also inspirational in how they carry on.
I’m glad that Jews around the world continue to have a home away from home, for when host countries become inhospitable.
Your story makes me cry, for you and your sons, for Israel and all her people, and for Jews world wide. What ever in this world have we done, for over 3 millennia to make the world hate us so? We rejected their false gods, and brought an idea of justice for the world to live by that would bring peace to all. Most of us Jews have stuck to that idea for thousands of years, and we still survive while other civilizations have destroyed themselves. Our survival is what they hate? I have no doubt that when the current civilizations, as well as the savages in our midst are gone, we will still be here.
Thank you, Annika, for taking the time and effort to describe your experiences under fire in Israel here for us Ricochet readers. It is very important for all of us to hear about this.
It breaks my heart, all of it. I know we will stand strong, but I am heartbroken over the fact that we have to.
We will remain heartbroken Annika, because we have to, for our survival.
I was in Haifa in 2002 when a car bomb pulled up next to a bus full of IDF soldiers and set itself off, killing many on the bus, and of course, the death-loving Palestinians in the car. I thought there must be no madness harder to understand. But when I got back in the U.S. and saw that so many of my Lefty liberal American Jewish friends were wholly unmoved and were more angry at Israel than the people trying to murder Jews simply for being Jewish, I realized just how much madness there is in this world. It’s easier to understand Palestinian savagery than 73% of American Jews voting for the anti-semitic, Israel-loathing, Radical Islamist-sympathizing Barack Obama in 2012.
The American Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, is a friend of Obama’s. Daniel’s friends, family, In-laws and their friends and family, with contact, bundled a bundle for Obama. In other words bought his Ambassadorship. Wouldn’t bother me a bit to see that building destroyed, and an embassy built in Jerusalem where it belongs. Hopefully, next time around get an ambassador that is pro-Israel, not a pro Obama and his marxist, islamist ideology.
I can’t tell you who you are quoting, but I’ve read that someplace before. Thank you for repeating it. Caroline Glick stated in one of her speeches, “We answer to a higher authority and Obama isn’t Him.”
“The Jew reveals the tyrant.”
I need to keep that in mind, to constantly repeat.
You should get your kids a dog before Sweden bans it as non-Hallal.
Europe has a much greater immigration problem than America has.
Annika,
Thank you for taking the time and emotional energy is must have required to write this. Your words are haunting and will stay with me…especially as I tuck in my two boys tonight.
Poignant and powerful, evidently just like the author. Thank you so much for writing this.
Doesn’t it depend how it’s butchered? Oh, wait, wrong country.
Annika, thank you for your moving post. The average Palestinian in Gaza should give thanks–but won’t–that the government and people of Israel value human life so much more highly than the Hamas terrorist next door.
Not all the world, Kay. I am not Jewish, but I have visited Israel several times and feel drawn to it for the spirit and courage and kindness of its people. In other words, it reminded me of home.
@Annika: I am frightened in Sweden all the time.
If you would, please explain in more depth.
I posted a video by Pat Condell on Annika’s first post, about what is going on in Sweden. He could have used a better title, but he does explain why Annika is afraid all the time.
http://www.patcondell.net/sweden-goes-insane/
If you watch Pat’s video, you will see it isn’t even safe for her to discuss the problem.
I’m flabbergasted. Knew that this was a huge problem in Amsterdam and in the outskirts of Paris, but outside of Malmö, didn’t realize the extent of the problem in Sweden.
It’s very easy to fail to appreciate the uniqueness of America, but I suspect you’d find moving to Eastern Europe less and less comfortable as the years went by, for similar reasons (although visiting should remain pleasant).
You don’t know how right you are.. :) My kids are now pestering me about getting a dog, after all of this I find it harder to say no..