Tuesday October 10

TUESDAY OCTOBER 10

I was living in San Diego in September of 2001 when airplanes hit the twin towers and 3000 people were murdered. I watched the news clips, struggling to mentally process what had happened, while my 9 month old ran around the house playing with his action figures. Even 2700 km away, seeing the horror and terror on the faces of both victims and their families frantically searching for news about them, I felt gutted, violated: I could almost feel the thick smoky air in my lungs and the race of adrenaline fuelled by stunned panic. Although we didn’t talk much, everyone else around my apartment seemed to feel the same, the shock and pain hanging in the air outside my door as people went almost catatonically about their business. The sounds of our children shouting and jumping around in the playground were almost grating.

On the third day after New York was attacked I needed groceries, so I finally left the complex. The same atmosphere pervaded the store, but the cashier told me that this was the first day that there were actually even shoppers there. She said everything had been deserted, making it even more eery in the stores than outside. But now on the third day, people were emerging from wherever they had gone inside themselves to process what had happened, and were slowly awakening to the “new normal,” to the reality that there was an enemy out there that hated us so much, simply because we were American, that they not only carried out the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands going about their daily business in Manhattan, but were glorying and reveling in this “great victory.” Or maybe we were all just numb at this point, as we watched the celebrations in the streets of London, Paris, Nablus, and East Jerusalem, saw the political cartoons being disseminated by Palestinian supporters, and listened to Iraq’s official response: "The American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity."

This morning outside my window there was a single windsurfer in the bay, and a couple of fishermen on the rocks. People on the boardwalk with their dogs and children in tow were stopping to talk to each other, and more elderly men and women were setting up chairs on the beach for their usual daily vigil. Three days after the horror had unfolded, many were seeking the quiet comfort of the beach, and the company of others.

Yesterday I still had the rental car that I had arranged both for the archaeological site visits I’d planned in the Negev and to facilitate my daughter’s move-in a million life-times ago, because it – and I – weren’t due back in Haifa until today. Feeling the same urge for the comfort of a larger community, we drove to the kibbutz to have tea with A. and R. Their heavily pregnant daughter M. and her husband and two young children were also there – they had moved in because their house doesn’t have a panic room and the closest bomb shelter is too far for her to get to quickly (we have 15-90 seconds from the time we hear air raid sirens to get to a reinforced shelter) in her present state. (In case you’re wondering, the second bedroom in my rented apartment is a panic room – pretty common in Israeli architecture - so we’re ok for that here.) The children were riding their bikes with other kibbutz children in the basketball court when we arrived. Their dog (everyone has a dog) came and greeted us, before M. sauntered over. “Why are you here?” she asked as she hugged us. “Like, why are you still here?”

I tried to explain myself while she stared at me in disbelief. Eventually she accepted that for the time being we can’t get a flight out; the part where we said that we weren’t looking to leave anyway, clearly didn’t register. “If I had somewhere to go, I’d be out of here,” she said to me. But we both knew she was lying.

Back at their 2-bedroom apartment, we sipped tea with A. and R. His phone never out of sight, A. interrupted his own discussion of current events to text a happy birthday message to a soldier on the front. He explained that the soldier was the twenty-year old son of a good friend, a Bedouin who had worked side by side with him on the kibbutz as a farm-hand for decades. The son, also a Muslim Bedouin, was proudly serving in the south, clearing the border towns of terrorists and freeing the hostages who were holed up in their own homes. He replied to the text with thanks, a heart and a peace sign. A. told me that the boy’s mother was beside herself with worry.

A. and R. recounted how their oldest son T. has been busy bringing personal items south to A. and R.’s neighbor – a man that A. had grown up with from the time he was born, who was in the hospital in Ashkelon to be with his own son after his son’s emergency surgery. An army reservist called up for duty, the son had been shot in the neck while defending one of the southern towns from terrorists, but he was recovering. His children and wife were staying next door with his mother. T. was also bringing boxes of food and water to the surviving refugees from the overrun southern border towns, and was busy arranging for them to have places to stay on the kibbutz here in the north.

Back at the apartment yesterday evening we hunkered down, as we have been, with our computers to scan headlines, updates, and social media. We read about the “conflict” in “Israel-Palestine” and the fact that despite the “blockade” enforced by the military on the Gaza border, an unknown number of “militants” still roamed the south. I finally turned off CBC for the last time during an interview with the president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba, when he earnestly stated that he wasn’t surprised by Hamas’ violence because “When you treat people like that, when you back them into a corner, it’s just a matter of time before they get fed up and they fight back.” Instead I looked up how to set up an easy and quick blog as I finally decided that I was, in fact, going to share my thoughts with friends and colleagues in Canada, because I can’t sit here anymore in silence.

A good friend texted with her daily query as to our well-being. She asked about the situation and said she was feeling so sad about the hostages and their families. She asked what I thought the government will do to get them back. I said I didn’t know, but I doubted that they would be coming home. I told her what I had been seeing in the headlines: that the border towns had been re-captured by Israel, they were processing the bodies of those who had been massacred – many so far beyond recognition that the IDF was requesting that the families of missing people bring toothbrushes to a central location so that DNA tests could be used to identify the remains. I told her that there were still unknown numbers of terrorists roaming the southern countryside. She said that sounded so scary, and asked, is the army trained to hunt down intruders in civilian garb that can hide anywhere? They are all just kids; same age as our students. I replied that I heard many stories this afternoon of those 'kids' and what they're going through. Trust me, they aren't kids anymore, I told her. They may be the same age as our students but they are decades older.

This morning I opened my email over breakfast, as I usually do. As I scanned the daily "top 5" newsletter from my university employer - "Temporary Road Closure for Pride Festival Ceremony," "Finance and Administration Strategic Plan Launched," "Faculty Registration - Fall Convocation," it struck me hard that when Russia invaded the Ukraine, when terrorist bands roamed Nigeria raping and pillaging, when there have been earthquakes and floods and crises anywhere else in the world, there has been a strong message condemning it and an offer for counseling services for affected students, followed up by a letter from the president of the university. Today was the fourth day into the attack on Israel from Hamas, and not a peep from the university newsroom, nor a letter in my inbox from the president. I wrote a note to a couple of colleagues in a position to do something about this, and they wrote back right away that they would be immediately in touch with the administration. [Update: all university members received a letter this evening about the "conflict" from the president, which I've pasted below. You can make of it what you will, but here's an interesting take on this phenomenon across North America.]

A little later my daughter and I returned the rental car. The office was virtually empty and the clerk who had been so chatty the week before spoke tersely but politely. As we left he told us to stay safe. We got on a bus heading back to our apartment, and watched people of all ages, races, and religions silently getting on and off as we traveled along the coast. Again, I thought about taking a photo, for proof to send back home, but didn’t want to invade anyone’s privacy. I looked out the window and saw Israeli flags waving as we passed empty fields, and more and more hustle and bustle as we drove through the central station and shopping districts. People were out and about and the sun was shining after yesterday’s rain, but the noise, the expressions, the air itself – none of it was back to normal, and I have the strong feeling that what passed for normal last week, never will again.