I will feel guilty for writing this

This internet connection is really weak so I don't know if I will be able to post.

Am now in Tel Aviv. Came here yesterday to go to a wedding in the family and also to get out of Beer Sheva. There was a tzvei adom (siren) while I back in the dorms, packing to go to Tel Aviv. I decided to run all the way to the bomb shelter this time, something about being alone made me feel like not half assing it. And maybe it was also from seeing the pictures of the rockets making it through concrete walls on the news. Showed up down there wearing a skirt and lacy blouse for the wedding with long striped socks and clogs. Got some strange looks.

The dorms were so empty. One neighbor was there, he came out to say hi when he heard me going back into my room, so maybe there were more people who I didn't see, but it really felt like a ghost place.

I appreciated the wedding much more last night because of all the stress in Beer Sheva. It was so strange to walk into normal land after well, basically being under house arrest. People looked at me wide eyed when I tell them a rocket landed just a couple blocks from the dorms. Almost wanted to slap them because they seemed to have no idea of what it was like though they were so close. But that would be hypocritical of me on so many levels:
1) People in Sderot have been experiencing this and much worse for eight years. Eight Years. (People say this to me as part of their wild, vindictive, tirades about why Israel should just kick the shit out of Gaza and I usually ignore it because I hate their tone and their opinions) but if you take politics out of it, wow. I can't imagine it. And, the entire rest of the country has been going on as normal for eight years while these towns have been suffering. I was one of those people up until a couple days ago.
2) But then, on the more confusing level there's Gaza. They suffer more than we do and we ignore. They are people too and they are just as close to us as the towns in Israel that have received rockets (quassams) for years. But then of course they are the enemy.

New Years Eve I was in my relatives' house sleeping in their guest bedroom. They had a radiator in there but it didn't work. I was freezing. Plus this allergic reaction I have was spreading all over my body so I was itchy and feeling like I had leprosy or something. We went to bed at 11:30, I noticed that it was almost the new year but this celebrating the change from 11:59 to 12:00 seemed so irrelevant. No one else seemed to have even noticed.

(This makes me think about why some moments feel special and other times don't. It all has to do with popular consensus. This is obvious but sometimes the obvious we ignore. Even at home when I wasn't celebrating New Years, I would turn on the tv and see the fireworks and the parties around the world and on some level, knew or maybe tried to believe, it was a special moment. Obviously everyone else thought so. But in Omer on New Years we had only watched local tv all day, which is so insular that they do not even mention Gaza, that even is too far away to talk about. (Psychologically more than physically.) What they do show is only sites that have been hit in Israel: news reporters showing the damage in this school or this street, over and over again. And then the alerts when new rockets come. It puts your mind in a prison. To think about things like New Years seems not even pointless -- it barely occurs to you.)

I read a bit of something the other day that said Israelis have gotten too used to, or caught inside the patterns of war. I tell you it is true. It all seemed so natural for them -- the reports on tv from Beer Sheva and Ashkelon (towns being hit) were like reports from a war front. Right now, in Tel Aviv, that mentality seems crazy, but even when one is inside it it doesn't feel entirely feel honest. I mean believe you me if anything of half this magnitude were happening in a number of towns in the US the news stations would be having a ball with it. You can imagine: "The Home Front Under Attack" or "Freedom Under Fire" flashing In Red white and blue while someone talks to us in an overly serious tone. But regardless, how can one report so much on 20, maybe 30 rockets falling a day when your country is dropping I don't know, hundreds of bigger more powerful bombs a couple kilometers away?
I am not the best reporter for this though because I did not understand the newscasts they were in hebrew, nor did I watch the news casts in their entirety. Gaza was reported on, but to a very small extent (or so it seemed to me.) Ahh but we're all hypocrites. I guess it's just natural. We pay attention to what affects us.

Also, with things like this I am always aware that I am not Israeli. I have not taken that step of allegiance to this country and without doing so, my criticism is not bullshit, but it's not entirely fair. I am enjoying the hospitality, the universal health care, the kindness of this country, and I am giving nothing back. And now I want to criticize.
Yes, we all criticize what we think is wrong, but this somehow...

I stayed the night with some friends here in Tel Aviv last night. We were watching BBC in the morning. They had a report about Gaza (apparently less than they have been doing on it) . It was the first time I've seen international news reports on tv since the start of this. Started talking to the guy whose apartment I was in. We started off in agreement I think, in sympathy of what was going on in Gaza.
But then I said, "I don't think this will help Israel. It will just make more people angry."
He said, "They've been bombing us for eight years we need to crush Hamas."
I said, "Ok, but how do you know who is Hamas and who isn't? What are you going to do, kill everyone?"
He said, "If that's what it takes."
We were both not serious, with the killing everyone, at least I hope.
But truth is, my god, if "normal" people in Israel are extreme enough to say things like that, how can one expect the people of Gaza to be any less "extreme"?
ISraelis love to point out where Arab leaders have written in their statements of belief that they want to destroy Israel -- "push the Jews into the sea" is a common phrase. My friend said the same thing for Gaza today. I'm not saying this for you to hate him, only to show how easy it is to hate the other side here. Not even hate, just want nothing to do with. Gaza is a really sharp pain in Israel's back side. They have no idea how to deal with it. They are fed up. And this -- fullscale violence is the only thing they can think of. For so many reasons ISrael would be better off if Gaza just disappeared, and so statements like my friend's, of pushing them into the sea, are..... not rare but common. Ok, not common, but I think it is a sentiment that a lot of Israelis would silently agree with.
Anyway, I brought that whole thing up, because we ended in disagreement, and with me basically saying the Israel could not make the people of Gaza support the man ISrael wants them to support -- that one cannot make a people believe something because one wants them too. Outside interests cannot control peoples' minds the way they control bombs, machines etc. (Vietnam and Iraq for example). But for me to say that was basically to tell this guy that it was hopeless for Israel to get what it wants from Gaza. And that is a harsh blow.
We ended the conversation with me feeling sad and uncomfortable. I felt as if I had slapped him in the face. I don't know how to explain it, but politics are so personal here. They are so nice to me this couple and I didn't show solidarity.