Thankful today for quiet in the sky

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Have no illusions, it is not the path to peace.
But today's ceasefire is a welcome relief from the week-long conflict.

Today the sky over my village  was so quiet!
No more fighter jets thundering,  no army helicopters to the hospital helipad, no rockets going over, no air raid sirens.
The quiet of the sky--a blessing to give thanks for day by day, not something to be taken for granted.

To all my family and friends and blog friends in America, happy Thanksgiving Day!
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(A post for SkyWatch Friday.)
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BTW, the photo shows the path I walk if I miss the infrequent bus to my moshav/village.  It is only 35-40  minutes brisk walk  from the city limits of Jerusalem to my home in the Jerusalem Hills.
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A hard week is over

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The bad news: a bomb went off in a Tel Aviv bus today.
The good news: the bus was not crowded, the bomb was small, no one was killed.

The best news: a ceasefire went into effect at 9:00 pm tonight.
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UPDATE:  I should clarify that "no one was killed" does not mean that no one on the bus was injured; more than 20  people were taken to the nearby hospital. 
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Thursday night update: Police is now announcing that the suspects were caught within a few hours of the bombing.
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Sirens, escalation, and transparency

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S is for second scary siren for ABC Wednesday.

This afternoon the Red Alert sirens went off again in my village and in Jerusalem and in the villages to her south and west .
From various tweets I understand that the missile exploded in an olive grove in or near a Palestinian village in the West Bank.

The new transparent escalator in Hadassah hospital made me want to title this post
ESCALATION AND TRANSPARENCY.

Despite, or maybe because of,  efforts for a ceasefire by tonight, the fighting seemed to escalate during the day.
And Operation Pillar of Defense is a conflict which, for the first time, is covered by minute-to-minute tweeting and live-blogs, with a lot of transparency.
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Tram travel getting less appealing

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Operation Pillar of Defense is our new tram's first experience with hostilities.
The Jerusalem  light rail has only been up and running for a little over one year.

So after Hamas aimed two missiles toward Jerusalem on Friday evening, the officials had to start thinking--what to do if the air raid siren goes off when I am in the tram?

I heard it announced only once on the radio, but apparently it was decided that the tram would stop and passengers would stay inside. 

And--get this!--the passengers are supposed to get below the level of the glass.
Yeah, sure.
Can you see how low the windows go?

And often people are packed in like vertical sardines, over 250 in each of the two cars of the tram.
Where would there be room to lie on the floor or sit on the floor or even just bend down??
And with all those glass doors and big windows, think of all the potential shrapnel that would go flying.   Oi . . .
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On Friday morning a fake bomb (wires sticking out of a bag or something) was planted in a tram near Mt. Herzl.
The entire line was stopped from 6:30 to 10 a.m.  while they brought in the police robot to investigate the "suspicious object."

Sometimes I wish we stilled used camels and donkeys.
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UPDATE: Another dummy bomb was put in the tram again this morning (Monday).
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Jerusalem as target

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The air raid sirens went off in my village, and in Jerusalem, and in her surrounding communities late this afternoon--for the first time!

Very surprising and very scary.

This is how the Muslims in Gaza show their love for the city they call holy, Al Kuds, by firing missiles at it??  

The missiles landed short of the city, thank God, in an open area.  Some say in Gush Etzion.

Some friends in my moshav heard a few booms.

So it is not only southern Israel and Tel Aviv, now we too are in range of Hamas. 

Shabbat shalom, in spite of the situation.   

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