Barrage of Rockets...and Visitors

According to this article, it was a record February for tourism in Israel. We did our best to contribute to the record—hosting three sets of visitors in approximately a one-month time frame. It was great fun to travel the Holy Land with my parents, Nicki’s sister and our brother in law, and our good friends from college—all who came to visit Sammy in February & March.

It wasn't only visitors barraging Israel this month. More than 200 rockets were fired upon Southern Israel a couple of weeks back (initial details here) in response to Israel assassinating a jihadist terror leader who was apparently planning a massive attack along the Egyptian border. Fortunately, however, Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense system was in full force.

Here’s my limited understanding of how the defense system works (more detail here): When a rocket is launched from Gaza by the terrorists, Iron Dome senses the projectile and determines where it is headed. If it is likely to land in an area deemed as sparsely populated, then no action is taken. If Iron Dome determines that the rocket may land in a populated area, the system triggers audible warning sirens in the potentially affected areas. It then fires an “interceptor missile”, whose goal is to destroy the rocket mid-air before it can wreak havoc on the already-determined populated areas. Each interceptor missile costs approximately $50k (USD), which is why the system is selective based on population.

As a citizen, this means that if you hear a siren it means that there is a good chance that a rocket is coming towards your neighborhood--and you have approximately 45 seconds (if you live in Ashdod, for example) to one minute (if you live in Beersheva, which is a bit farther from Gaza than is Ashdod) to run for a bomb shelter, assuming an Iron Dome “miss”. My co-workers commented that in the past, they’d hear a rumble each time a rocket “hit”, but now they mostly heard a “poof” in the air—a sure sign that Iron Dome was working.

Living in Tel-Aviv, we are out of rocket range from Gaza, so the impact on our lives was minimized to commuting to and working in the rocket zone. That being said, it seems that very few rockets are aimed at the town in which I work, even though it is within 15 miles of Gaza. Apparently the terrorists aim for cities with larger populations.

My dad informed me that during the “escalation(s)”, Israeli law prohibits gatherings of more than 500 people. I confirmed this with my co-workers, who clarified that the rule applies to gatherings in non-fortified buildings. Apparently the stairwells (among other areas) of our offices are reinforced as shelters, so we were without excuse. There are similar laws for schools. Schools within 0-7km of Gaza were open for business, since they are all fortified. Schools located 7-40km from Gaza were all closed, however, since they’re walls are not reinforced. This was evidenced by a large number of kids accompanying their parents to work that week—I could barely find a place to sit and eat lunch in the cafeteria!

In other news, we celebrated the Jewish holiday of Purim in early March. Purim is a celebration of the defeat of Haman’s (advisor to King of Persia) plot to destroy the Jews as recorded in the Book of Esther. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gave President Obama a decorated book of Esther during their meetings earlier this month (details here)—a nice Purim present probably used as propaganda to remind Obama that the Persian (Iranian) threat has a long history.

From our vantage point, Purim seemed to resemble Halloween. Many kids (and adults) dressed up in costumes and attended parties. At work, I was donned with a clown hat after stepping off of the shuttle bus and then enjoyed eating triangular-shaped treats which I later learned are named “Haman’s ears”. I also learned that when the name “Haman” is read in the synagogue during Bible reading, Jews use noisemakers and “boos” to block out this apparently pointy-eared villain’s name from being heard.

And now, some pictures. We covered so much ground in the last month that it’s difficult to know where to begin. I’ll start with some pics of our visitors…then a Sammy update. Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to add some details about our many adventures, including some of the "new" things we've now seen.

Sammy was in heaven with so many visitors (and so much attention). Here he is with his Grandpa and Grandma Baumer reading one of our, uh, I mean his favorite books.

 Here is Breanne, Travis, Nicki, and Sammy on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. That's the Dome of the Rock and Jerusalem Old City in the background. It was quite windy.

Here's Sammy standing in his playpen/bed. He's been pulling himself up and standing (aided) on a daily basis recently.

 This is Chad and Jessica standing in the Jordan River at the site where Jesus was baptized, just north of the Dead Sea. That's the country of Jordan on the far side of the river. I hope to write more about this soon--it was a meaningful place.

Some middle-eastern men on our balcony? Chad and I honed our bargaining skills while picking up these Palestinian keffiyehs while touring the West Bank.

 More proof of Sammy standing...

 He's also getting into EVERYTHING!

 Here is Sammy celebrating St Patrick's Day...our "Little Charmer".