Tuesday. We enjoyed our respite in Jerusalem, but as you have probably heard, Sunday was a terrible day here in Haifa. Eight missiles fell in Haifa on Sunday, two people were killed and tens of people were injured. People who were here in our neighborhood said that the "booms" rattled the windows and shook the houses. It certainly brings it home that this war is being fought here, in Israel, in Haifa even. I have the feeling that people in the US don't fully understand that. We watch CNN and SkyNews at least once a day, and what we see is what is happening in Lebanon -- the horrifying destruction of buildings and the thousands of refugees that have been created by this war. But we rarely see much about what is happening here. CNN reports on it (Fannoula Sweeney has been in Haifa for a couple of weeks now) but it doesn't show it. Perhaps it did show what happened in Haifa because it was quiet dramatic, but the majority of the reports shown are from Lebanon. Incidentally, the CNN that you see in the US is not the same CNN that the rest of the world sees; in Israel and Europe and probably all over the world people watch CNN-International, which is actually a far, far better source of news than CNN in the US...

I have been paying attention to some information set to me regarding the Cfar Qana incident. There is some very good evidence that this "massacre" was actually a set-up by Hezbollah, carefully orchestrated and directed. Reuters' recently retracted a picture of explosions in Lebanon which were doctored in photoshop to look much worse than the actual event. No one knows for sure what happened in Cfar Qana, and at this point no one cares very much either; the point is, however, that this incident, and the reporting of it, turned the tide of public opinion against Israel, labeling Israel as not caring about civilian casualties (and implying that Israel, not Hezbollah, is way responsible for the war). This is an opinion that I am not sympathetic with. For any holding this opinion, let me remind you that it Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel, intended to terrorize and injure civilians. Hezbollah was responsible for the train bombings in Madrid and the hotel bombing in Bali. They are bad guys. They are not good guys.

There is a lot of talk about cease-fire now and who knows what will happen and when. Of course it will be marvelous to have this over and done with. But there are those in power in Israel who think that the soldiers need to keep fighting to gain more ground from Hezbollah to insure that they are weakened and that their ability to launch rockets into Israel will be greatly reduced. So the immediate future is uncertain. You know as much as I do.

I spent some time taking pictures when we were in Jerusalem. I'll add a few digital shots. I'm not taking nearly as many pictures as I planned to -- but perhaps this will be over soon and I can go out again.

Love,
Pat