We first heard sirens on Saturday, November 10. They weren't directly in Gedera, but just south, where a rocket landed in I believe Gan Yavne or near the highway near us. We huddled into the safe room, even though we hesitated at first because we weren't sure what it was. Even though we had had the test the week before and talked about it, you still aren't sure if what you hear is the siren. Since then, there were more rockets fired at southern Israel, and we followed the news to see what was going on. We were shaken, but thought things were okay since we were on the periphery of the zone deemed to be targets for the rockets.
On Wednesday, we traveled to Jerusalem for the Sigd celebration. My blog about that will be up on the Yahel blog early next week (I will link to it). After getting back to Gedera, we heard about Operation Pillar of Defense. Southern cities of Sderot, Beer Sheva, and Ashkelon, along with cities closer to us like Gan Yavne, Kiryat Malachi, and Ashdod, have been hearing sirens and suffering from rockets. Numbers of rockets falling in Israel are cited at 120 just last week and over 800 since the beginning of the year.
Wednesday night, we didn't really think about what was going on south of us, but sometime after 11pm on Wednesday we heard another siren. We went back into the safe room. It stopped after less than 30 seconds but our program coordinator said to stay for at least 10 minutes after the sirens stopped. We were better prepared this time, but still unnerved. My adrenaline was rushing that night and I stayed up longer than I wanted to, though I was tired. That night, we could hear a lot of Air Force airplanes going over head. Gedera is next to an Air Force base. At 6am, I woke up to the sound of an airplane and checked the news, then finally went back to sleep around 7. We were woken to the sound of louder sirens at around 8:15 and went into the safe room. Those were the Gedera sirens, but nothing fell near us. We were scheduled to have learning sessions at the house (a lively discussion on Zionism went as planned but our second was cancelled). We heard more sirens again later that morning and booms that were probably the sound of the Iron Dome shooting down rockets, but they were definitely farther away. We were tense, mainly because every sound outside was perceived to be a siren, even when they weren't.
MASA and our program staff made the decision to have us leave the area as a precaution, since we didn't know what was going to happen and we were in the so-called grey zone. MASA programs south of us had been evacuated already. I'm now staying in Akko and we are waiting to hear what happens next.
Here are my thoughts on the situation:
1. The media in the US is so skewed. It keeps talking about Israeli aggression, but only down at the bottom of the article, if even, do they mention rockets coming from Gaza.
2. Things are more complicated than they seem. Yes there are issues from and on both sides, but please don't see one side as being completely correct or completely wrong. I have tons of questions and some skepticism around news reports, but I also know what has happened here in the last few weeks.
3. Now that rocket fire from Gaza has been reaching closer to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, I think this will be a bigger thing than we had anticipated. Even so, I want my friends reading this from outside of Israel to know that rockets coming to Israel are not targeted in certain places. It isn't like they are pointing rockets at military bases, etc. The IDF is at least trying to take out ammunition stockpiles. The sad thing is that the rockets are appearing to be launched from areas with high population density.
4. I'm hoping that things calm down soon. I'm concerned for our friends in Gedera and I don't want to leave Israel yet.
Feel free to email me or message me with any questions about what is going on here. If you are interested in reading the news, check international news sources, such as ynet news, Times of Israel, and others. Always check multiple sources to see what the facts are and read critically.
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