Friday. We came back from Be'er Sheva yesterday on the train -- the train was packed with soldiers. Even after all these years in Israel, I am still slightly shocked to see large numbers of young people moving around the cities, bus stations, train stations, with guns on their backs. We had a very nice time with Alan and Shiela Warshawsky. They are the consummate hosts, even lending us a car for the day on Tuesday. We drove down to Mitzpe Ramon which overlooks a huge crater in the desert. Not a crater made by a meteor, but rather one made by normal geological processes. It is huge and tremendously impressive. Pictures below.

Israel is now like living in two different states. Here in the North, from Haifa to the Lebanon border, people are more or less living in or very near to bomb shelters or protected rooms with threats of rockets more or less frequently during the day. For people living in Kyriat Shmona up near the border, they hardly ever come out of the shelters. For us in Haifa, we just stay close to cover. But in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be'er Sheva, you could be in another country. Everything is quite normal there -- heavy traffic, people filling the streets and the shopping malls, entertainment, etc. Everyone in the country is justifiably quite upset, but from my own experience I can surmise that people in the South don't actually know what it feels like for people in the North. I have new respect and appreciation for the people in Sderot who are under attack with Qassam missles from Gaza every day. My friend Batsheva Hill-Mizrachi, her husband, and her three children live in Tivon, a town just outside Haifa which is kind of like a suburb of Haifa. A rocket landed in the wadi behind her house about a week ago and the family fled. They have been wandering around Israel, staying with assorted friends, ever since. Today she told me they found a room in a kibbutz where they can stay until Hezbollah stops shelling us in the North. Her family is one of thousands who are refugees from the North.

There are huge economic costs for some people too. We have friends who support themselves with a B&B in the far north of the country. They are always full and busy in the summer but now everyone has cancelled. This means no income. Batsheva and her husband have a business in Haifa -- they train people for job interviews and help them to find jobs. But no one is coming. Their office is down by the "checkpost" in Haifa where a number of rockets have fallen.

There is no doubt in my mind that war is stupid -- that war itself represents a huge failure of human endeavor. The deaths and injuries and destruction cannot be justified. At the same time, I am finding it terribly difficult now because there are so many opinions on what would be the right thing to do at this point. The national consensus that has been developed here through speeches by government and military officials and opinion makers in the press is that Israel has to "finish the job" -- that the very existence of the State is threatened because Hezbollah is an arm of Iran with encouragement from Syria, and if we don't destroy Hezbollah's capability to attack us now (e.g., if we were to implement a cease-fire now before "the job is done,") then they will just come back again stronger. Ze'ev Schiff, a colunnist I admire and trust, is of this mind. He says that Israel has good relations with Egypt and Jordon because of it's proven deterrent power, and if we have a cease-fire that is premature, then both Hezbollah and the Palestinians (and Iran and Syria and Israel's other enemies) will be encouraged because Israel will not have demonstrated its deterrent power again.

There are others, of course, equally smart and thoughtful, who say that we need to have a cease-fire immediately in order to stop the bloodshed and destruction both in Lebanon and here, and they go on to say that we cannot defeat Hezbollah anyway because they are a legitimate party in the Lebanese government and because they have long-range rockets supplied by Iran and Syria so we really can't destroy their capability to attack.

There is very strong pressure towards unity. In Haifa there are Israeli flags now flying all along the main street and people sport flags on their cars, much as Carolina flags flutter from cars during football season. It reminds me of the patriotic display of American flags during the early days of the war in Iraq. People who speak against the government policy are suspect. However, there is now the beginning of a left-wing protest movement and there have been a few rallies in Jerusalem; there is supposed to be one tomorrow night in Tel Aviv. There is a new movement, Women Against War, that holds a vigil in front of the President's house every night.

People are frightened. It is a very different thing to wage war across your borders than to wage it in a country many thousands of miles away. Stay tuned.

Love,
Pat