Shot from the Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem’s Central Market, this morning at 11 am when the annual Memorial Day air raid siren sounded. Officially known as Yom Hazikaron or יום הזכרון לחללי מערכות ישראל ולנפגעי פעולות האיבה it is day when Israelis commemorate their fallen, 24,293 soldiers and counting. Later tonight we will break out of our sombre mood and celebrate Israel Independence Day. Till then, well… remember.

Speaking of memory, below is a guest post by writer Sara K. Eisen:

On Memory
Is a memory something you have or something you’ve lost? – Woody Allen (Spoken by Gena Rowlands (as Marion) in ‘Another Woman’)

Today we think of who we do not have and why, and then what that lack demands of us.

Tomorrow, about how we celebrate being alive to meet those demands.

Today is Memorial Day in Israel, honoring fallen soldiers and victims of terror, observed here a day before Independence Day. The connection is essential since it is widely recognized that without the former, celebrating the latter would be impossible, while always hoping that one day, this will not be the case. That there will be no more names on next year’s list of the fallen. It is, in other words, a sacred day we wish with all our hearts we didn’t need to observe, and in fact grapple with its necessity all the time.

Here’s something I wrote about potential loss and war when my husband was commanding an APC in Lebanon II. I was essentially the least supportive war wife ever, because I didn’t believe in the war. I later learned, from the Disney franchise of all places, that Hassan Nasrallah was counting on people like me to behave exactly as I did. (What does Disney have to do with the IDF and Hezbollah? Think Mufasa / Scar / Simba / Pridelands / Hakuna Matata / Circle of Life… Or just read the essay.)

In any event, Israel is not quite Western and also has a very small population – death by war is not something distant and abstract, since everyone has either lost someone or knows someone who has. As such, there are no Memorial Day sales and no Memorial Day home games and no Memorial Day picnics. There are, instead (not in addition), countless public ceremonies, school observances, lots of sad TV documentaries (and little else on) and public moments of silence when traffic stops all along the nation’s highways. It’s not a case where some of the country mourns its fallen sons and daughters and some of the country shops or watches baseball.

Memory is pervasive around here, fraught. It is as much something as it is a lack of something.

The mood shifts dramatically sometime around 5 pm, as people get ready for Independence Day, an out and out celebration, complete with picnics, barbecues, parties, fireworks, etc. Much like the Fourth of July.

(But stores: Still closed.)

It seems that Israeli memory is about a conscious decision to always be remembering and forgetting all the time, in the same instant, a constant argument between absence and presence that sometimes results in the type of massive virtual memory overload that can causes one to freeze. Independence Day is, to continue that metaphor, like one big national reboot.

In truth, I sometimes miss the days of memory being something you celebrate at Macy’s, unless, of course, you had someone die in Vietnam or Iraq, in which case your day might look a little Israeli.

In any event, this silence and seriousness and restraint and celebration of life that nearly everyone does around here is very intense and it makes me want to hide some days.

But then I forget that I need to. Memory is like that.

Photo: Anav Silverman, Sderot Media Center

There have been many questions bouncing around in the media this week. Why is Israel at war? Why are there so many Hamas men dead? Why are Hamas firing rockets at Israel? A war of resistance, some say. Israel is holding a siege against Gaza. Palestinians are starving and suffering.

And who is to blame?

Israel of course. At least that is the conclusion that emerges within the headlines of AP and Reuters news reports, European news media, and countless Internet blogs on the current fighting.

For those who seek objective answers to those questions, the unfolding tragedy of Sderot and the western Negev must be taken into account.

There has been a war of terror on Sderot from more than eight years now. During this time period, an estimated 8,000-10,000 Palestinian rockets have been fired at Sderot and the western Negev from the Gaza Strip. There was not one serious long-term military response from Israel to the rocket attacks during that time besides the closing of crossings and checkpoints.

In the meantime, hundreds of Israelis homes and properties have been destroyed, over 700 Israelis wounded, and thousands psychologically traumatized by Palestinian rocket fire. Periodically, schools in Sderot and the western Negev have been forced to close, as normal life cruelly transforms into a marathon of 15 seconds, (the number of seconds one has to escape to shelter when the Tzeva Adom, or Red Color alert is set off by an impending Palestinian rocket).

Sderot and western Negev residents have been forced to sit and endure Palestinian rocket terror to the point that there is now a generation of Sderot children who are showing signs of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as early as age three.

In a recent report in the major Israeli newspaper, Ma’ariv, Yaron Sasson writes of children in Sderot being born into a period of siren alerts, or Tzeva Adoms and the sound of Kassam explosions. These sounds of war have become part of the psychological makeup of Sderot children. It is not surprising then that psychological research conducted among Sderot residents has produced some very disturbing findings.

According to research done by Sderot’s Hosen Center, a treatment center that offers support and counseling to Sderot residents during times of emergency, there is a major problem appearing in young Sderot children, the generation born into Kassams.

Clinical psychologists working at the center discovered that many Sderot children are not developing speaking skills at a rate appropriate to their age. A normal child learns to speak around the age of one. But many children in Sderot have not even begun to speak by the age of three or even four. Those who are able to speak, stutter and cannot complete words.

Dalia Yosef, director of the Sderot Hosen Center, explains that the constant rocket fire upon Sderot has created a state of stress and panic that has dramatically impacted the development of young Sderot children.

Yosef and the clinical psychologists who work with her, counsel Sderot children from the ages of one to 18, offering treatment for a wide variety of issues.

“It is important to note,” says Yosef, “that these Sderot children have been born into a reality of constant rocket fire. The world, as it appears to them, is unsafe and scary, full of insecurity and chaos. Their sense of security has been shattered by the continuous rocket attacks.”

“These children develop symptoms of PTSD early on, suffering from sleeping disorders, nightmares and anxiety attacks. Many experience regression, going back to wetting their beds,” says Yosef.

Those children whose parents suffer from signs of post traumatic stress disorder, have even more complicated issues. According to Yosef, children of parents diagnosed with PTSD sense that their parents cannot protect them. “These kids’ problems are even more severe than kids whose parents are more psychologically stable,” says Youssef. In Sderot, 30% of adults have been diagnosed with PTSD.

Yosef explains that a young child hears the rapid breathing of his parent, when the Tzeva Adom sound and understands that his parent is frightened. “Once the child understands this, then he perceives that the world is unsafe and that his parent is unable to properly protect him,” adds Yosef. “The parent feels threatened and so does the child. Later on, this feeling of insecurity and stress affects the child in areas like speech, hindering normal speech development.”

Younger children go back to the bottle, to the pacifier, and have extreme difficulty separating from the parents. “Kids are scared to go to the bathroom or to the shower by themselves, because of the fear of a rocket strike,” says Yosef. “The situation has created unhealthy relationships within the family unit. Children as old as 12 sleep with their parents.”

Even during the recent ceasefire or days where Kassams don’t fall regularly on Sderot, the trauma and stress continue because people continue to anticipate rocket attacks. “Only a permanent long term quiet will help these children and their parents recover,” says Yosef. “The moment there is a siren alert and a rocket explosion, all the progress we have made in the treatment is destroyed.”

The Sderot Hosen Center offers treatment for children and parents together. “We give parents the tools and skills need to maintain a sense of calm in situations of terror,” explains Yosef. “Because parents are the authority figures in the family, we focus on them and try to identify ways in which they can be more relaxed in this tense environment.”

Livnat Shaubi, a lifelong resident of Sderot and the oldest in a family of 11 children, recently spent an entire day with her younger siblings, helping them find ways to cope with the Hamas war on southern Israel. After spending four days at home, exhausting Lego, board games, and playing balls, the Shaubi boy–Hananel, David, and Yehuda, ages 5, 7 and 11, respectively, created Kassam rockets from plastic bottles they found lying in the house.

“Like other Sderot kids, my mom cannot allow my younger siblings to play outside during these periods of rocket attacks. “My brothers are cooped up all day and therefore these art projects, an important outlet for their creativity, simply reflects the reality around them” says Shaubi

Shaubi told Sderot Media Center that the first words her five-year-old brother, Hananel learned to say, along with Daddy and Mommy, were ‘Tzeva Adom’ (Red Color, the name for the siren alert).

“These kids know war,” she adds. “Soon it will be the children in Be’er Sheva, Ashkelon and Ashdod, who will join them.”

And this is exactly why Israel is currently engaged in this war–to prevent the tragedy of Sderot from spreading to one million other Israelis who are currently experiencing for their first time the impact of Palestinian rocket fire in some of Israel’s major cities. Israel’s children and Gaza’s children deserve a quiet future, one with normal childhood experiences, where threats in the form of Palestinian rockets are finally laid to rest.

It was Tuesday, December 30. We had been running in and out of the bomb shelter behind our Sderot Media Center office throughout the day, as Palestinian rockets exploded all around. Usually, when we enter the shelter, it is just us–the SMC office staff–and sometimes a few strangers off the street. This time, when we raced into the shelter, there was a group of Arab construction workers inside who had made it before us.

Ironically, the Arab construction workers were working on building a new bomb shelter nearby. In any case, there were two groups of us, Israelis and Arabs facing each other, when an unarmed Israeli soldier ran into the shelter and stood between us–right in the middle!

The situation was so ridiculous that one of my co-workers burst out saying–”now we can all talk about peace!–we’re all in here together.”

The Arab construction workers looked at us and we looked at them and just burst out laughing. The tension of the day was broken for just a few seconds.

We ended up talking about the rocket attacks and how frightening the day had been. One of the construction workers proudly told us that the bomb shelters would stand against those Palestinian rockets without any problem. “The rocket is nothing compared to this shelter,” he told us in Hebrew.

After we waited for the seconds to be over and the rocket to explode, we said goodbye to our new friends, the Arab construction workers and the quiet Israeli soldier, in a day filled with the terror and absurdities of war.

I flew over Southern Israel with Israel spokesperson Miri Eisen. Check out the video for a bird’s eye view of Gaza City, Gush Katif and Sderot. The strategic reality of the situation is much clearer from this perspctive:

Here’s an aerial view of Tel Aviv, presented here just because it’s cool.

Beware! The video below is shocking. Taken in Gaza City on December 3, 2008 it shows scenes of horror, death an deprivation that rival archival footage taken by the Nazis of Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto.

Did you see? That shopkeeper smoking a cigarette was smoking Egyptian Cleopatra brand cigarettes instead of his usual Marlboro Reds. For shame Israel, for shame. Long live Hamas! Long live the Palestinian revolution and the brave freedom fighters launching Qassams (with non-explosive war heads apparently – thanks PA legal advisor Diane Buttu!). Keep up the fight O ye brave soldiers of Palestine! Fight till you get your Marlboros!

Hat tip Aussie Dave who has been tirelessly live blogging from Israellycool.

My experience on the border yesterday really shook me up. I had a hard time falling asleep; the images of the day – the sights, smells and sounds spiraling in my head. I also watched two hours of Sky News before going to bed, which probably did not work in my favor. At around 5 am, I woke to the rumbles of F-16’s. I live in Tel Aviv and I could hear the fighter jets flying low over my apartment. I always remember my friends, who lived here during the first Gulf War, telling me how war is always the scariest at night. I couldn’t help but think what it must feel like in Gaza City or in Sderot.

My insider on the other side, Haled in Gaza City, told me that he finally made it home and spent the night huddled in the dark with his family around one lit candle. They had lost two cousins and an aunt since the fighting began. They attended a funeral and then ate a can of tuna for dinner. Explosions continued to boom throughout the night.

Just 20 km over the border, Sderot residents were experiencing a similar type of fright. The Rosenkrantz family had to call the family doctor over, because their youngest son, Amir was having uncontrollable panic attacks. He ended up strangling the family dog. Amir spent most of today undergoing counseling – in a bomb shelter. His mother begged her husband to pack up the house so that they could go and stay with family in Jerusalem.

For me, today was not spent dodging missiles or running for cover as the Red Dawn Alert emergency siren wailed. Today, I was stationed with the Channel One Arabic team, who told me war stories. Danny, a senior correspondent, reminisced about the multiple wars he had covered over the years. He told me about his time in Gaza City, traveling around the remote villages there. I asked him if he missed being a war reporter. He said, “Leah, every reporter deserves their chance to get in on the action, to be on the frontlines. My time is over for that, it’s your turn to see how dark and dirty this part of the world can truly be.”

My first interview of the day was with Education Minister Yuli Tamir. She was attending an educational conference in Tel Aviv on the provisions being made for those children in the south who will be spending their days in bomb shelters rather than at school.

Most Israeli schoolchildren will return to the classroom tomorrow following the Chanukah vacation, but not some 50,000 kids in communities surrounding Gaza. This, following a decision by Tamir and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to cancel school there even as the holiday break comes to an end. Tamir told me that the cabinet also decided to activate the National Emergency Authority, which places communities in the south in a special situation. This means that the Israel Defense Forces are granted extra authority in dealings with the civilian population. The IDF can issue orders for residents to remain in bomb shelters or not to go to school or work; to allow greater coordination between the army and local authorities; and to provide the civilian population with basic supplies if such a situation arises.

I asked Tamir how difficult it must be for the children of Ashkelon, Sderot, Netivot, as well as other students from the Gaza periphery. She hinted to me that it is even more difficult for the parents. (I thought about Amir and the dead family dog…) “The children just think they have an extended vacation,” she said. But she told me that they are not taking any chances. The Education Ministry has set up special online classrooms where kids can get their homework assignments and learn lesson plans so they do not fall behind. Also, some 300 female students who are performing national service as teachers will help children with their studies inside bomb shelters and protected spaces. Teachers in the area have also begun to locate students in distress, in order to provide them with extra lessons. Some parents are going as far to find families in the center of the country willing to adopt their children until things quiet down.

In my further research to find out how the Gaza periphery younger generation is doing, I stumbled upon a website that is making headlines in the country right now: joinmylife.co.il, a blog written by teens living in Sderot, Ashkelon and other southern Israeli cities. Readers of Hebrew can learn more in this article in Yediot Ahronot.

17-year-old “Andre” writes:

“6 אזעקות, 6 טילים, בסה”כ 120 שניות של פחד וחרדה. נכון, זה לא נראה הרבה רק 120 שניות מתוך 24 שעות שיש ביום, אבל תאמינו לי כל שניה נמשכת כנצח…”,

“6 sirens, 6 missiles in about 120 seconds of fear and anxiety. Right, it doesn’t seem like allot, only 120 seconds amongst 24 hours in a day, but believe me, every second feels like forever.”

In addition, Israel faces a huge PR battle throughout the world. I myself have been receiving several threatening messages from people who are convinced that I am one-sided in my reporting. I am by no means.

Yet reports are undeniable that the Muslim World is working hard to stir up anti- Israel sentiment by staging protests around the world. In London, police arrested ten demonstrators as Muslims tried to march on the Israeli embassy. Riot police were called in after protestors tore down the barriers holding them back from the embassy. Smaller, less violent demonstrations were also held in other European capitals.

The United States was not immune from protests; demonstrations were staged in Chicago, Houston, Phoenix and Los Angeles. And predictably, demonstrators in Muslim countries such as Egypt, Iran and Indonesia took to the streets, burning flags and chanting slogans denouncing Israel and the United States.

Israel’s Ambassador to Italy, Gideon Meir, admitted that the Hamas PR effort in Europe is causing problems for Israel’s ability to explain the reasons for starting “Operation Cast Lead.” According to Meir, Hamas presents Israel as a country which is starving Gaza residents and taking away their human rights.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has appointed former UN Ambassador Danny Gilelrman to head Israel’s PR efforts for the Gaza operation in the foreign media.

Leah Stern with Former UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni echoed Gillerman’s comments today, noting, “Our values are different. When we kill civilians we feel bad about it, but we are trying to target Hamas, who hide amongst civilians and don’t care who is murdered in the process.”

Defense Minister Barak said, “We have nothing against the people of Gaza, but this is a war to the bitter end. Israel’s military campaign will go on and possibly intensify.”

On Fox News, Benyamin Netanyahu said, “If New York City had 7,000 rockets falling on its head what would you ask your government to do?”

So, what will happen tonight? That’s the scariest part. None of us know. All we can do is watch and wait. Will Haled and Amir sleep through the night? Probably not. Will the world hate Israel a little bit more tomorrow? Very likely.

But as Ambassador Gillerman put it, “War is not pretty. We’re not in the movie business. We’re here to make our children and our people safe. Hamas could have made Gaza pretty. Instead they turned it into a terror base.”

Cross posted at ROI120.

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Well, my friends, it may be that a new war between Israel and Hizbollah is looming in the near future. Since the so-called “Second Lebanon War” in 2006, Hizbollah has spent its time well, rebuilding its bunkers, recruiting new fighters, and rearming with new and improved rockets, with the help of Syria and Iran.

Major-General Gadi Eizenkot of the Israeli Defense Force Northern Command has warned Hizbollah that any future actions or attacks on Israel carried out would be met with “disproportionate” response. In the past, when Hizbollah fired rockets on Israel, it did so from so-called civilian villages. Eizenkot, in his interview, has made it clear that as far as the IDF is concerned, any village which is used to attack Israel will be viewed as a hostile base. He warns that enemy villages will meet the same fate as the Dahiya quarter of Beirut, Hizbollah’s base of operations in Beirut, which was completely flattened and destroyed during the war. Further, he suggests that Nasrallah think very carefully before messing with Israel again.

Hizbollah, in turn, has responded by calling Israel a “paper tiger”. Thus, this official states that Israel’s “threats” are nothing to fear. Hizbollah claims that it will continue its holy war against Israel until Israel withdraws from the Sheba Farms (which is sort of a lie, as Nasrallah has, also, promised that Hizbollah would continue its resistance until there is a Palestine from the “Sea to the Jordan”). Hizbollah believes it was victorious in both of the “Lebanon Wars” forcing Israel to withdraw in 2000, and not being defeated in 2006. After all, Hizbollah believes that its strategies have, thus far, been quite effective. A Hizbollah official has argued that while Hizbollah would be victorious in any battle, Israel has too many internal problems to really launch a war against Lebanon.

So now the question is: what does this mean? Is Hizbollah right? Is this “threat” by the Israeli military just a ploy, and a way for the Israeli government to distract its people from more pressing issues that if left to fester would lead to the destruction of the State’s very fabric? This theory sounds like a wonderful conspiracy, because that’s what it is. And like every conspiracy, facts can be provicded to support it and it cannot ever be really disproven. This being said, Israel has had internal conflicts since prior to its establishment; a fact which is unlikely to ever change. So, if we dismiss the governmental cover-up theory, we are left with the only reasonable conclusion. Someone believes that Hizbollah is planning something. Afterall, they have rebuilt their bunkers right under the noses of the incompetent U.N. Peace Keeping Troops, as they did last time, and have obtained weapons which ought to be able to hit farther into Israel (maybe even, as Nasrallah put it, “b3d b3d Haifa” – i.e. Tel Aviv). This being said, Hizbollah needs public support to function, as do any effective terrorist organizations. If villages don’t allow their villages to be used as strong holds, Hizbollah’s options will be limited, and if these villages know that they will be destroyed, not attacked, but actually flattened, maybe they will think twice. While Nasrallah may not care about the lives of ordinary Lebanese living in the South of their country, maybe others, such as the ordinary Lebanese do. So maybe this is just an idle threat trying to prevent an act of violence. But in any case, words are cheap, and the threat doesn’t hurt. Maybe it will convince Hizbollah to think twice about attacking Israel. And if it doesn’t, well, it seems that there will be an awful lot of rubble in the South of Lebanon. There is a great consensus in Israel that Israel was too soft in the last war; they won’t make that mistake twice.