The shelter, the siren, and the check please

(Originally published in The Times of Israel)

Three weeks into the war and I'd say we are tired, weary, worried, united, committed, sometimes uplifted, and resolute.  We have a routine of sorts.  We've adapted.

Me: Want to go to dinner? Restaurant A or Restaurant B?

Wife: B. It's less expensive and less formal.  I'd rather be interrupted and run for shelter from there.

Waitress:  Can I have your phone number?

Us:  Sure. Why?

Waitress:  In case of a Tzeva Adom (red alert).  Some customers "forget" to come back and pay after spending time in the shelter.

I've been reading an 880 page book, the biography of William F. Buckley, Jr., a seminal figure in America's modern conservative movement.  I've gotten through 550 pages. Three-fourths of my reading has been done in 15 minute timeframes while sitting in the shelter up the block from our apartment.  Neighbors have asked about this big, heavy book I lug up to the shelter night and day. Now there is interest in what will be finished first: the book or the war.

One of the neighbors we have gotten to know in the shelter, an upbeat woman with a Ph.D. in a science, likes to take long showers, a risky endeavor these days.  She's figured out that, based on the history, the most unlikely time for missiles being aimed at us is 4:00 a.m.  So she got up at 4:00 a.m. to take a long shower.  A smart, or a mad, scientist.

Everyone has his or her own way of adapting to the situation. Everyone has their own tolerance for risk, for what makes them uncomfortable, and for what doesn't.  It is not all logical.

We take walks in the neighborthood.  We are always cognizant of where the nearest public shelter is, what apartment building might have a shelter we could use, how long it would take to run to a shelter.

It helps to use an app that plots out the nearest public shelter and how far away it is.  I have it on my phone.  It is red and has a person sitting under a roof with three missiles pointing down at it.  It is called "Bomb Shelter."  Very subtle.

I've driven short distances on city streets.  I always have in mind where and how I could drive up onto the sidewalk or into a driveway and run for shelter.  Driving between cities and on more major highways where there are no buildings is another story.  You just stop the car, get out, and crouch or lie down somewhere.

Some people drive on highways and go between cities. Many do not.  We haven't.  But our daughter had to drive to another city to attend a funeral.  I put a picnic blanket in the back seat and told her she could lie on it if she needed to, or she could pull it over her to help cushion the blow of missile fragments or glass and concrete.  A somewhat futile measure, but a father's protective instinct under ridiculous circumstances.

The people who really have it difficult are young families.  Kids are out of school. In the middle of the night parents carry babies and young kids, asleep or half awake, to shelters.  Several times a night.  For three weeks.

Many parents are working, some remotely, others going into workplaces. Many spouses are in the reserves, leaving the parental duties to one spouse.  Grandparents have been put to work.

The elderly are warned repeatedly: don't fall while running to a shelter.  The odds of an older person being injured while trying to get to a shelter are probably greater than the odds of being hit by a missile.  Still, you run.  You tighten up.  It is hard to relax when the siren is going off, when you are hearing loud booms above you.

The subject of discussion for many is Passover plans.  Or, more accurately, disappointment over Passover plans. People planning to go abroad to spend Passover with family.  People expecting sons and daughters and daughters and grandchildren to come for Passover. All cancelled.

Another subject of discussion for olim (people who have moved from other countries to make a life here):  Which old friends and relatives have called and written and which have not.  Who, when you next see them, will greet you warmly, like nothing has happened despite the fact they never reached out.

Some olim are deeply hurt, disappointed, even bitter.  Others take it as a matter of course.  That's life. It of course depends on personality type, but generally I think people who have lived here longer are easier about it.  They have resigned themselves to it.

What is remarkable is how quickly life goes back to "normal" after an alert and even after a hit, of which the country has had several in the last 36 hours.  Hundreds have been hurt.  Buildings have been destroyed.

But life goes on.  I am somewhat amazed everytime I walk out of the shelter with how quiet and peaceful things seem.  The tweeting of the birds seems magnified.

In between missiles, virtually all of which are aimed at civilians, often with cluster bombs, we are out and about, shopping, going to cafes, taking care of the elderly and children, seeing friends, going about life.  A common comment is that Israelis can handle missiles; it's rain that keeps them indoors.

Spirits are generally good. About ninety percent of Israelis across the political spectrum support this war because, while we fight about everything else, we cannot live with Iran threatening our existence, building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and supporting terrorism, and we can no longer live with terrorists on our borders.

The American focus on the cost of gas seems to override every other concern.  Everytime I turn on American news or read an American publication, there it is: how much has gas gone up.  One Facebook friend, a professor, seems to post each day how many pennies it has gone up in the last 24 hours.

Americans have been spoiled.  For decades they have been paying significantly less per gallon than Europeans, Israelis, and citizens of many other nations for decades.  Many of them drive gas-guzzling SUV's and pick-up trucks they do not need.

Even acknowledging that increases in the price of gas can be viewed as representative of an overall increase in the cost of living, the focus on it seems misplaced given what is happening in this region, and given that the objective here is to prevent a country that has declared its intention to destroy other countries from gaining the means to do it, and from preventing that country from supporting terrorism and destabilization through the region and the world.

The most cogent explanation of the rationale for the war, its objectives, its achievements, and the military and diplomatic problems and challenges it presents, has come from the most unlikely of sources: Al Jazeera.  It is highly doubtful that this op-ed would have been published without the approval of Qatari officials. It is evidence of the fact that Iran’s strategy of targeting the Gulf States in the hope that they would lean on the Trump Administration to back down backfired.

David Bois was the Democratic Party's attorney in Bush v. Gore.  His Democratic credentials are impeccable. He has written persuasively about why Democrats should put their disdain for President Trump aside and support the war.  His appeal hearkens back to a time when partisan differences ended at American shores. It is telling that his op-ed ran in the Wall Street Journal.  It is a pretty good bet that his first stop was The New York Times.

Regime change would be great, as would complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, complete elimination of all of its ballistic missiles, and the complete crippling of its terrorist proxies.

However, as I have written before, from an Israeli perspective, the war is worth fighting and sacrificing for even if we do not achieve the optimum.  If we can seriously diminish Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities and the military industry that supplies it, and if we can make it harder for them to support their proxies and to destabilize the region, that is a big win for us and the region.

If we can gain an advantage and relative calm for five or 10 years, we are ahead despite the tremendous sacrifices that are being made.  Plus, in this part of the world, showing your power and your willingness to use it counts for a lot.  It buys you deterrence and allies.

My fear is that because the U.S. was not under an imminent threat, many Americans do not see the necessity of the war the way Israelis do.  And as the author of the Al Jezeera piece writes, Trump’s incoherence and inconsistency with his explanations does not help.

Now President Trump has announced that negotiations with the Iranians have gone so well that he is suspending threatened attacks on energy targets.  He says that Israel will be happy with the deal being cooked up.

One of many problems: the Iranians say no such negotiations have taken place. And the U.S. apparently received no assurances on free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the suspension of attacks on its energy facilities.

Pressured by gas prices, by the fear of midterm election losses, and by some of his supporters on the far right, it appears that the President is in the process of caving. He’s blinked. Iranians know how to exploit weakness and vulnerability.  The President's latest statement will be viewed as weakness by the Iranians and in the Arab world.

This will confirm the fear amongst the Iranian people that they should not risk their lives because they could have the rug pulled out from them. The Gulf nations, who were originally against the war, have come around to strong support because they have seen the lengths Iran will go to in a dispute.  This will convince them that the United States is a paper tiger not to be relied on in this tough part of the world.

Israelis are committed.  We are sacrificing because Iran is an existential threat.  It appears, at least at this moment, that ultimately we will stand alone.