Sunday, November 18, 2012

Rockets from Gaza targeted at Tel Aviv

Thanks  everyone who has reached out to see how we're doing.  As you might expect, the US media paints a less than accurate picture of the experience here.  Here's what I understand of my personal experience so far:

In general, most of the rockets from Gaza are short range, only able to make it 40km, which is less than half the distance from there to Tel Aviv. However, the Iranian's have supplied longer range missiles to Hamas which has allowed them to reach Jerusalem and Tel Aviv a few times in the past few days. We have had 4 sirens here in Tel Aviv, one per day the past 4 days. (Just finished my morning visit to our bunker here, so hopefully that's it for today).  We know the drill, which is to go to our bunker immediately until the siren ends. It is only a couple minutes. We have heard the boom (like fireworks) each time, near the end of the siren. No one has been hurt up here as the IDF moved one of their 4 Iron Dome trucks up to our region (these are counter-missile technology, in which rockets intercept and explode the incoming rockets in the air so no one on the ground gets hurt). This costs $50,000 per use, so you can imagine how expensive it is for the IDF to defend citizens this way, but it seems to be the only thing that doesn't draw international criticism. I have a new appreciation for how Israel is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Doing nothing is not an option, because the rockets just keep coming, and there would be many more casualties here, but anything they do to defend us against the attacks is getting them criticized by international media.

Thanks to the Iron Dome, I feel relatively safe/"normal" or whatever you might call it.  I heard, however, that 40% of the people living further south have moved up to friends and relatives homes in Tel Aviv or further north.  And I know a number of women who's husbands have been called into reserve duty, especially the women from my pre-natal yoga and birthing classes, making this a particularly hard time for them. 

As for me, I have 3.5 weeks to go until my due date on 12-12-12. 

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