Be'er Sheva: Cloudy With A Chance Of Rockets

I know that the past few weeks I haven't posted, and apologize for the lack of dedication I have had to keep you all up to date on my whereabouts. Some fair warning about what is written below; there was a missile attack in Be'er Sheva today while I was at school and this is my rant regarding how I feel in the recent aftermath.

Last night we were warned that relations with Gaza were "heating up" and tension was growing. As a result, we were on rocket-alert all night and expected to be woken up in the early morning hours to air raid sirens--luckily no attack came. During those hours some of my fellow volunteers were nervous, but I value keeping a level head in emergency situations ("I must not fear, fear is the mind killer" -Dune) and pushed the danger to the back of my mind. Although I awoke suddenly a few times throughout the night, but that represented the extent of my discomfort from that knowledge.

The day proceeded much as any other; waking up mere minutes before dashing out the door for my bus. In honor of an Ethiopian holiday, my school had some special activities planned (I got to make a coil pot!) and I  only taught two students. Other than the normal insanity that is an Israeli school everything was normal, and I had all but forgotten about the previous nights warnings--but that was only a wish. We heard the sirens during the seventh hour....and nothing could have prepared me for what came next.

Since I have lived in Israeli, which is just over two months, there have been three missile warnings and one of those was a false-alarm. But seeing children as young as 6 years old crying for their mothers ("ema! Ema!") and clutching my hand as if their lives depended on it is too much for me to handle. Neither of my previous two missile encounters have solicited so much as a frown from me, but this put me over the edge. I almost broke down in tears myself seeing the absolute terror that gripped these children, but I had to choke back my own tears for their sake. After it was all over, about 15 minutes in total, there was a parade of parents arriving to swoop down and smother their kids in a warm embrace; during this time I made it a point to give smiley face stickers to every kid and teacher I saw for their bravery--anything to take their mind off things.

So this is where the rant comes in. A majority of the worlds population sits in their living rooms and sees all the "horrors" perpetrated by the evil country Israel. They sit idly by while tens of rockets are launched at civilians, targeting highly populated areas and schools, and then raise hell when Israel strikes back and a few terrorists are killed. But nobody ever shows pictures on the international media of Israeli children bawling in their school's bomb shelter, nor any mention that Israeli strikes target known terror operatives and even drop leaflets warning of the attack. 

Luckily here in Be'er Sheva and other Israeli cities we have the Iron Dome missile defense system, but even that is not a 100% effective solution. All I ask is that in the future, whenever you see a post about Israel or just in your daily life, think about the kids here and what they endure every day just for the right to live a peaceful existence.