After a night of missiles on the south of Israel, I got up to a new day, full of missiles.
My nerves were frazzled. But why? Nothing happened to me. At night I had reset the RED ALERT app so that it wouldn’t alert me of allthe missiles on my country, it would only sound the alarm if missiles came to Haifa.
Only.
I allowed myself the luxury of sleep – something the people of southern Israel did not have. Everyone who lives in proximity to Gaza has safe rooms in their homes but can you really sleep when you have to move your entire family into one room and you hear sirens and explosions around you all night long? Can you sleep knowing that the Iron Dome missile defense system works most of the time but not always? It knocks most of Hamas rockets out of the sky but no system is perfect, sometimes it misses and every missile interception means the missile explodes in the air, dropping boiling hot shrapnel from the sky. Wherever it hits, it hits.
What right do I have to have frazzled nerves?! Watching your people suffer is not the same as suffering yourself.
I cry when my friend in Be’eri tells me how hard it is for her to breathe because of the arson terrorism. The smoke permeates the air, so much so that she needs to use an asthma inhalator, something she hasn’t had to do for years. I lived through one day of arson terrorism and I will never forget the fear and the choking stench of the smoke. She has lived through months of it, with no end in sight. I cry but it is she, not me, who is having a hard time breathing. It is she, not me, who is worried about the long-term health damage to her family, constantly breathing air that, to some extent or another, depending on the whims of Hamas and the direction of the wind, is poisoned.
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