Blazing sirens

Blazing sirens ringing in my head, realizing this was not a drill I jumped out of bed and dashed to the closest bomb shelter. Within seconds this empty room filled with American, Canadian and Israeli students, all here in fear of their lives. Boom one, that was close, boom two, that was closer, wait for it… boom three, I hope no one was hurt. This is when the phones begin to ring. Listening to hysterical Jewish mothers, and even frantic fathers, it’s now the childs’ role to calm down the parents.

200,000 children didn’t go to school today. All home bond with beleaguered parents trying to keep their kids occupied and minimize the psychological damage from the constant aired sirens and bombs dropping all around them. Yesterday, a school was hit, thank G-d it had already been evacuated.

I refuse to be afraid, for this is the terrorists’ goal. I’ll be safe, that’s all I can do. But I cannot deny that every time that siren goes off my heart drops. Not only does this happen when the siren goes off, but there is this sort of phantom siren which people hear when ever anything remotely similar sounds. Whether it’s a whistle or a car driving by, we all jump in apprehension of the siren.

I can hear the bombs dropping all around me, although they aren’t close enough for our siren to go off, we can hear all of the screaming sirens from the cities around us. After making sure that the sound is not ours, we go outside to watch and see if the iron dome will catch the rockets this time, if you’re lucky you might see some fireworks.

Helpless, all I can do is sit here in the bomb shelter and wait for the blaring siren to stop. Then we wait to hear the booms, for that ironically is the most calming sound, because it’s only then we know that the bombs have landed and we are momentarily safe.

Feeling the shock wave from a bomb near by, my mind in boggled by how crazy this situation is. America would never allow this to happen to her citizens. Could you imagine if Mexico were bombing San Deigo?  Hoping to wake up, perhaps this is just a bad dream; I still would not rather be in any other place. Israel is home, and I will not allow anyone to take her away from me. Netanyahu, do something! President Obama help us!

Although there has been an attempt at a cease fire and the area that I’m living in has been quiet, there have been at least nine rockets shot into Israel since. Cities like Sderot are still suffering the trauma of being showered by rockets. In Sderot, 86% of twelve to fourteen year olds wet their bed and 93% of seven to eleven year olds never play outside. We should not be expected to live like this. If this is peace I do not want to know what war is.