I just sent this by email to a few colleagues.
This is a brief note to colleagues who have written (and to some who haven’t). Thank you for your concern. Here in Rehovot things have been largely uneventful: many sirens Saturday morning starting at around 6:30, a few Saturday night, and one last night at around 23:30, but (a) we have between 45 and 60 seconds to get to safety, which in our building is time enough) and (b) Iron Dome did what it was designed to do. Although on Saturday night while on an unsuccessful mission to get diapers for the grandkids, I passed a burned out car on the street we lived on from 1993 to 2000, about 3/4 of a mile from where we live now, so apparently something fell.
So confident was I (and our youngest son) in the unlikelihood of something actually falling on Saturday morning that during a lull we went to the synagogue. As this shabbat coincided with the festival of Shmini Atzeret, on which it has become traditional to complete the annual cycle of the reading of the Torah, normally there would have been a lot of singing and dancing, but obviously things were subdued because of the missiles (which continued every few minutes until around 9 AM), and attendance was sparse. When I returned home I found that one daughter had been called up for reserve duty. This wasn’t wholly surprising, as her job until 14 months ago had been to help coordinate activities in northern Gaza, and she had done reserve duty a few times, and so while we normally we leave our phones off on Shabbat, as soon as the sirens sounded she turned her phone on knowing she might get a call. Her husband was not going to leave her, so, again doing something we would normally not do on shabbat, he drove her south. He himself would be called up for reserve duty later in the day. (Her keychain is sitting in our living room, and their clothes are still in the guest room.)
It was only later that we learned that there had been a massive incursion along the border, and that the missiles were just a cover for that.
Since our daughter was called up, my wife turned on her phone – again doing something she would never otherwise do – in case that daughter called us. By-the-by, the phone received several calls from the same unknown number, and eventually I told my wife to answer it – pikuach nefesh dokheh shabbat, saving a life takes precedence over Shabbat, and clearly someone was trying to get through to this number. It was the commander of another daughter who is currently in compulsory service but who was off for the weekend. My wife explained that the reason he was unable to reach her was because she was away with her phone off. (Her job in any event is less critical for what’s currently happening.)
Before lunch I went to visit our oldest daughter and her family, who live nearby. She moved into this place in July, in part because, unlike her old place, it has a mama”d, a reinforced room (required in all new buildings in Israel since the Gulf War in 1991) to protect against missile strikes, so she made that her kids’ room. It’s preferable to having to run downstairs to a bomb shelter, as is the case our 1989 building, or outside to the bomb shelter, as was the case in the building in which she used to live.
Our older son, who has been out of compulsory service for over five years but served in an elite recon unit and likewise does reserve duty, was also called up on Saturday. He’s the one we’re most concerned about, as his unit is doing sweeps of the one of the border enclaves that was overrun by terrorists, making sure there are no stragglers. Thus in addition to being exposed to gunfire, he’s also exposed to rockets, which take only a few seconds to get from Gaza to where he is.
At this point, a good part of the reserve units have been called up. My wife’s nephew got called up yesterday, as did many of our friends’ kids. Schools were closed yesterday and today (our youngest was supposed to be on a two-day field trip today and tomorrow but now is doing Zoom classes), cultural events have obviously been cancelled, there’s very little traffic on our street. On Saturday there was some concern that terrorists might have tried to infiltrate Tel Aviv, so there were roadblocks set up all over, but I don’t know what the current situation is as far as that goes. Yesterday morning I was able to get the sought-after diapers as shopping centers in Rehovot were open, but it’s obvious things are not running as they normally would.
In our line of work, the Patent Office sent out a notice yesterday that it would be closed to the public until further notice but would do what it could to extend deadlines or revive abandonments that result from applicants and patent and trademark practitioners being unable to meet deadlines due to the war.
(As I’m writing this, my wife has just told me that our son is in a battle right now – she knows this b/c one of the parents from his unit revived the parents’ Whatsapp group – and that they killed the terrorists. One our boys was shot in the hand, but nothing worse. Baruch Hashem and Hodu lashem ki tov, but of course if someone was killed they wouldn’t be allowed to tell us anyway – the army has a unit to notify family of deaths.)
My wife is a researcher at the Weizmann Institute. One of her students lives in one of the Gaza border communities. No one in the lab was able to reach her throughout Saturday or Sunday morning. Yesterday afternoon, she called the lab when someone happened to be there. She spent the previous day in the mama”d in her family’s home with her sister and sister’s newborn, without food. Her father stayed outside and single-handedly fought off terrorists. Many of her neighbors were taken captive.
I have read the names of the dead, at least those names that have been released, and I’ve cried – so many young kids who hadn’t even started life, or young fathers with young kids. I have not known any of them personally, but there’s at least one killed, Staff Seargent Naveh Lax, for which there’s only one degree of separation – his grandparents are members of our synagogue. The names of those murdered for sport by the Moslems are not being released so much by the official news channels as through social media.
I have not watched the clips of the terrorists with captives – I can’t bring myself to do so, because I know who these guys are, I have known for years, so watching the videos would be watching barbarism for the heck of it. I am confident that we will prevail, because, for the umpteenth time, Jews love life (what do we say when we make a toast? L’khaim, to life) and Hamas loves death (who makes a video of himself torturing or killing someone?!). There have been efforts all over the country to donate things to soldiers to help the war effort.
I hope that THIS time, Israel’s political and military leaders understand that the war with Hamas won’t end until Israel does to Gaza what the US did to Dresden or Hiroshima. Complete and total victory, even if it means killing every last living thing in Gaza – עד בלתי השאיר לו שריד (Num 21:35, Deut. 3:3). There is no compromise with evil.