I am going to bed. I hope there will not be any more alarms tonight.

A rocket landed next to my dorms today. Our dorms are in a circle surrounded by a fence. The rocket fell just inside the fence, fifty feet from one of the buildings.

I was in the library when it happened. My roommate called me because she had seen on the news a picture of where it fell. I hadn't known that it hit so close. Everything is muffled in the library.
I got really excited on the phone with her, was picturing it having fallen inside the courtyard of the dorms rather than on the outside. Was picturing where I would have been if I had stayed in my room all day like I did yesterday rather than go to the library. Mother fucker, another couple of feet and it would have hit someone's room. Mother fucker, I could have been in my room but I wasn't.

A guy who was here said it shook the foundations of his building.

Enough of that. I am calmed down.
I am keeping my door unlocked tonight and my shoes out next to the door. If an alarm goes off I will go all the way to the shelter. The problem is I have to run through open areas to get to the shelter. But really, They never hit the same place twice. Ever. So though it seems crazy to stay here it's not really.
And also, it's interesting I just said I had to run through "open areas". I have always joked that our dorms are like a fortress -- tiny windows, lot's of concrete, and these strange multi sided buildings that seem to hunker together against whatever onslaught could come from the outside. Well, now there is an onslaught, and I have taken for granted how protective the dorms are, and now feel that the tiny bit of space that isn't enclosed by walls is "open" and not secure.
The architects knew better that I, I guess. I really thought that these dorms were an example of the Israeli subconscious obsessed with self defense. Maybe they are, but it works in times like this.

I went to the doctor today after the rocket hit and the doctor wouldn't see me. He and this other woman yelled at me in hebrew. Basically it is because I had missed two appointments. One of them I had gone to an hour early and had gotten in early, so they didn't think I had gone to it. The other one my relative had made for me last week but then I left Beer Sheva to go to Tel Aviv to get away from the rockets. And I didn't know the number to call and cancel. Nor did I want to bother. It's different here, no one respects the appointment times, you have to fight to get in to the doctor whether you have an appointment or not. So I thought they didn't keep track. They do apparently. And I still have this rash all over my body that makes me feel like shit.

After walking out of the doctor I started to cry. I knew that my relatives would tell me to go away from Beer Sheva but I couldn't take it. I really feel like a hag with this rash all over my neck, plus I've been wanting to buy new clothes, last week in Tel Aviv I only had one pair of pants and all the girls there always look so good. I felt like such a mess and I didn't even have anywhere to go and rest and try to get better. No where to just take a shower damnit without feeling bad for doing it in someone else's apartment.
Anyway, the thought of having to pick up and go again, while feeling sick and not knowing where to go, and now worrying about all the school work I was missing, and the whole reason I had come back to Beer Sheva - to go to the doctor- being thwarted, it was just too much.

We just had another alarm. I am still dressed so I sprinted to the bomb shelter. At first I was running, jogging, but then I started full out sprinting. I feel different now that it's hit so close.

As we walked out of the shelter, some guys were walking around the other side of the courtyard. One of them was yelling. Apparently they were yelling in Arabic. A guy with us jumps up on a bench to see them better. Then he starts running after them because they are heading towards our rooms. Other people start running too. I walked behind with another girl. Apparently they were worried about these two Arabs in the dorms.
I go around a corner and up some stairs and see the guy who was running talking to two guys a floor above him. Now I recognize the two guys. They live where they are now sitting. They are students here like us. They are Arabs but they are students. They had gone to the other shelter in the dorms when the alarm sounded.

How is this going to get better if the people running for shelter with us are suspects themselves?

Everyone assumed they were terrorists or something. The prejudice is so automatic. I followed because everyone seemed so sure it was something, and I assumed they knew better than I, but really they heard arabic and they jumped. And truth is I wasn't thinking clearly either. I saw the two guys and didn't think anything, but when I saw everyone else's expressions of worry and fear, I thought, "oh no, this must be something."
Though at the same time but weaker in my head was, "but we're running from rockets, not from people right now. What can these guys have to do with anything?"
Then as I started following behind I thought maybe everyone thought the guys were coming to rob the buildings we had just left.

Usually we sit in the computer labs together -- Jews and Arabs -- and there seems to be no problem. Something like this happens and we see there is a problem.

We just had another alarm. Ran to the bomb shelter again.

You see how hard it is to have perspective? I keep trying to start talking about what's going on in Gaza and I keep getting pulled back into what is happening here.



I will not join one of the facebook groups arguing for "Israel's side". The "Truth about the Rockets Israel's story". A couple of my friends are joining this group, or they are posting articles arguing for the offensive against Gaza. I just wish there were something less partisan. It is true-- these rocket attacks in Israel are damn scary. But it is also true that whole streets are being leveled in Gaza right now. I read a report by an Associated PRess reporter that since there is no power for the water pumps, Gaza City has stopped pumping water. It is not just the military assault they are suffering from right now, it is a crisis of basic necessities - food and water.

Does it mean because I am a Jew and I am in Israel I cannot care about other people? I hope not.

Here are the Hard points that I see: (Or some of them)

1) Rockets have been falling on towns, on kibbutzim, on people in Israel for years. Today we had three alarms here and we are a mess. Some towns have had 30 alarms in a day. (And with each alarm there is a rocket).

2) The most basic purpose of a government is to protect its people. I think we can accept this as a premise.

Then Israel should protect its people. That's what it says it is doing with this offensive in Gaza.

So what is our argument with Israel?
That it is killing too many people, that it is attacking too hard?
Ok, but they have been doing small scale raids in Gaza for years and that has not stopped the rocket fire.
So what to do, when the small scale stuff isn't working?

1) Do nothing, just take the attacks.
BUt this means Israel's government is not performing its duty of protecting its people.
2) Do more - bomb more, kill more.
3) Negotiate.
Why aren't they negotiating? One, to Israel Hamas is a terrorist organization and thereby one they cannot negotiate with, and two, I think Hamas says it will not negotiate with Israel.

So really, Israel is doing what any other government would do if its country were attacked - it is fighting back.
The problem is it is a fight of first rate weapons and power against third or fourth rate weapons, power, and organization. Israel is the machine gun, and Gaza is... a dysfunctional, prehistoric musket maybe. This is what the world sees. We forget that the third and fourth rate weapons are still weapons and see only the power and destruction of the first rate weapons.

And yet, it is still more complicated.
1) A large portion of the population in Gaza are refugees. They came from what is now Israel. In 1948 about 700,000 Arabs left the areas that became Israel and resettled in what is now the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Some fled the violence of the war between Israel and Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, and many were expelled by the Israeli Army.
I just read something online (trustworthiness?) that says three quarters of the 1.4 million people living in Gaza are refugees. This is because the children of the refugees and the children's children are counted as refugees. Basically, these people have a large bone to pick with Israel.

2) The towns of Sderot, Ashkelon, and Ashdod, which are now part of Israel, were, under the UN Partition Plan for Palestine included in what was supposed to be the Arab state. (In 1947 UN made this plan to partition Palestine, Israel accepted partition, Palestinians didn't. Then Israel declared Independence, Arabs attacked, Israel won, AND conquered land outside what it had been given in the Partition plan. These areas conquered in 1948 are now considered Israel proper, by Israelis and by the International community. ) Hamas does not consider Sderot, Ashkelon, and Ashdod part of Israel. They call these towns the names they used to have - ARabic names. So, the last eight years of missile fire on Sderot can be seen an attempt to claim lost territory -- territory that should have been in the Arab state.

3) OR you can see the rocket fire as attempts to gain the larger lost territory -- all of Palestine. Because to well all Palestinians Israel is lost territory. The difference between moderate and extreme Palestinians is that the moderates, I think will accept that Israel exists, though they don't believe it should, and extreme Palestinians will not accept that Israel exists. They continue to fight and will continue to fight its existence. To Israel, anyone that says ISrael does not have a right to exist is a dangerous extremist. BUT, if one looks at how many towns in Israel once had arab names because they were once ARab towns (including the town where I live now) then you can see why many Arabs are not so quick to accept the existence of Israel.


My head hurts and I haven't said anything really new or noteworthy or even rational I think.
But that is some of why this thing is not so easy.
It is not merely the right of one state to defend itself, and the right of another to running water and electricity (though it is these things too). The fates of these two places are tied up in each other.