2022-08-14 JTOD org update: My village was attacked with Molotov cocktails this Shabbat (11:30 pm on the 12th). Nobody is reported injured. I probably wouldn’t have even known, except that a dear friend overseas (who visits Israel occasionally and watches and prays) picked up this story from the news media and alerted me. This morning I biked over and took this photo, on the security road which encircles my village.
So, here’s the layout: The Jewish homes on one side, and extra-high / extra-secure version of the security fence on my other side. (See here for the type of security fence we have on the other side of town). Near the fence pictured, the neighbors have told me previously that sometimes the Arabs throw stones at them, right over that fence. So, this is probably the section of wall where they threw the Molotov cocktails. It’s near the street that was in the reports. So – I assume that at least one Molotov landed in at least one yard and exploded uselessly. Of course, that means that nobody was sitting in the yard at that time, to enjoy the Shabbat evening breeze.
Behind this fence next to me, the hill is quite steep leading up to the Arab homes in the Arab village next door, so, I think that hill makes it a bit easy for people to toss things over the fence and aim for the Jewish homes. At this point, I’m upset about this; I’m trying to calm down. I reached out to some of the neighbors who are my friends, and heard back from one. The affected street is not far from her mother’s house. So, she and I were able to trade back and forth some dark humor, which takes the edge off a bit. I know that many people would say to me, “It’s all YOUR fault! You deserve to be killed by Arabs!” Whatever.
Today there’s an increased presence of Israeli military activity in town. In the bakery three soldiers came in for lunch, they are tall, strong, and armed to the teeth, and very relaxed, with their sandwiches and iced coffees. These guys are bigger than the regular everyday soldiers I see around town. Also unusual: There’s a field hospital set up on the edge of town, it’s housed inside a converted city bus. So it’s like an ambulance and rolling hospital, combined. I saw a tractor smoothing out the sand on the ground right next to the security fence. That means the Army can easily spot the footprints in the sand, if Arabs had cut thru the fence somewhere. More and more I’m slowly getting over it. That’s part of the Israeli experience, to get normalized to terror, and carry on with life as if nothing happened.