Living in Translation: The Israel Edition: An expat's take on culture, chaos, and confusion

Well, that last post aged like milk. All the nightly prep work and my ready-set-go posturing seemed rather premature, eh, because guess what?! Tuesday evening’s ‘ballistic missile’ love letter from Iran kinda blew any composure I might have had out the window … and btw, why does every saying seem so on the nose? “Blew” “take a stab” “shoot the messenger” “fire off this email” — I’ve used these and more as of late. Where my peace metaphors be?

Yeah, so Tuesday, October 1, was just bizarre all around. At about 11 am, sirens started popping off on my students’ phones in class, as most of them lived in Hertzilya and missiles were flying all over the Sharon, notably there. After a few seconds of debating whether or not I should be taking my class to the mamad next door — I mean, there was no alarm where we were technically — the loudspeaker came on from the school’s security head telling us to move to the nearest shelter, out of “an abundance of caution.” Though not violent, that phrase enrages me so, mostly because it was uttered so liberally in Hong Kong during Covid, one of the most draconian places ever for policy enforcement. Everything the government dictated was out of an abundance of caution — from the three-week hotel quarantine to the Covid coffin mandatory leave to taking your pet away, etc. fucking etc.

Anyway after the shelter incident at school, during the last block of the day, Home Front Command all of a sudden issued a bunch of restrictions and the admin told us to head home immediately, all afterschool clubs and activities cancelled. As I ambled to the parking lot, it occurred to me that, shit, today might be my initiation into driving-with-siren, the real litmus test of how Israeli tough you are. Because running to a shelter’s got nothing on getting out of your car in the middle of the highway and throwing your soft animal body (tm Mary Oliver) on the ground. So a friend came up with the brilliant plan of hey, let’s leave your car here at work and I drive us home because, you know, misery loves company and all that jazz.

The drive was event free. But once home, I was immediately bombarded with headlines of imminent Iran missiles NOW! No wait, YESTERDAY! Get thee close to a shelter, not in one, and … well, just wait. This warning came from a rather unusual SMS from the Israeli government, supposedly the first of its kind successfully transmitted to all 8 million citizens. So I crammed more crap into my go bag — a bar of Ritter Sport chocolate, coffee flavored, rawhide treats for doggo, water bottles, then proceeded down to the square to sit next the underground parking lot, which housed an enormous sprawl of a shelter two levels deep. Legend has it every one of these municipal shelters comes stocked with water and supplies and WC stalls. Twenty minutes go by and I’m thinking, no one is milling around like me, no whiff of panic in the air, what am I doing obeying the alarm about an alarm. Thus, doggo and I hauled our asses back up to the apartment to wait. But yeah, not even 20 minutes later, the real siren blasted in the air and the Red Alert on my phone blew up, and I screamed to my dog, Let’s gooooo.

The rest is a blur to be honest, an hour’s worth of painful waiting and hearing things exploding above me. Deep underground it was stiflingly hard to breathe. Turns out the water tank hadn’t been filled by the city, so folks started filling up their bottles with tap water, which in Israel is drinkable anyway. Doggo did great and resisted the urge to go up to the dozen or so other dogs. Neighbors tried being neighborly, those of us less traumatized which was most of us (Israelis are made of steel or are just blase about it all). Honey cakes harkening the upcoming Rosh Hashanah were passed about, and a few folks initiated small talk with me in English, their curiosity got the better of them. I mean, in this doomsday scenario, how unusual to see a non-Israeli looking person just sitting there all by her lonesome, trying to hold her wits about.

Now that I’ve processed the night a bit, I find it unreal that 181 ballistic missiles were launched from Iran. Even more unreal were the immediate calls to Israel to deescalate afterwards. As Douglas Murray said, sometimes the only way to peace is through war, the only way to end a war is to win it, and the only way to win it is to escalate. The west is drunk on peace. His words, not mine. But I concur, Dougie, I concur.

I know if the US or France or the UK were surrounded by rockets and missiles ad nauseam and fighting an existential war, no way they’d deescalate. It is a basic human desire — nay, right — to survive, whether individually or as a nation.

After the ballistic ball, this Cinderella booked herself into a hotel room with a shelter on the same floor. Why not? My nerves were shot, but my bank account was hot. I’d just gotten paid.