Today's drill

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Here's one of the shelters in one of the schools in town (Meitar).

It is adjoining the classrooms, as you can see.
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 The Education Ministry, in cooperation with the army's  Home Front Command, rescue services, and local councils, held a drill in Israel’s schools and kindergartens this morning. 

Here is my video of the air raid siren.
You see a big public bomb shelter next to the municipal pre-kindergarten in my neighborhood, but the kids have there own fortified room inside their own building.  Which is a good thing since here we have only one minute to take cover from any in-coming rockets from Gaza.
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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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This is a drill

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We are in the middle of a 5-day targil. The exercise, code-named Turning Point Four, is Israel's largest civil defense operation since it first launched the annual drill four years ago in the wake of the Lebanon war, during which Hizbullah fired thousands of rockets into northern Israel.


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Let's look at how the Jerusalem Post describes the practice scenario, beginning last Sunday:
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"Israel came under heavy simulated missile fire in what would be the 15th day of a mock all-out regional war with Hizbullah [who are in Lebanon], Syria, Hamas [i.e. Gaza Strip], and Iran.
. . . close to 200 rockets and missiles, included ones with chemical warheads launched from Syria, landed in the center of the country.
The focus of the drill is on 38 local councils, mostly from the center of the country, which are undergoing a series of simulations to test their ability to continue providing basic services [e.g. water supply] for their residents at a time of war.
Under the scenario, most of the missiles were landing in the Gush Dan region in the center of the country, from which about 200,000 residents decided to flee south. The Eilat Municipality was asked, in the drill, to prepare a plan to absorb some of the refugees."
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Just a few months ago these sirens were installed one block from my house.

This Wednesday at 11:00 we will get to hear them.

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The whole country will have a siren wailing then, and we are supposed to go immediately to whatever our bomb shelter or safe place is and to stay there about ten minutes.

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Is that a little solar power source I see? Good idea.

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In all this seriousness I had to laugh to read this at the Israel Defense Force blog:

"The exercise will also examine warning systems on cellular phones, and civilians in certain areas may therefore receive text messages that read “Have a nice day” signed by the IDF Home Front Command."

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The IDF Spokesman put up some photos of yesterday's search and rescue practice operation. So many girl soldiers!

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You can also see previous posts:

http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2009/06/time-factor-and-turning-point-three.html and

http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2009/09/special-report-on-todays-targil.html

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For more about the incoming missiles warning on cell phone and computers, do see my

http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2009/06/facts-of-israeli-life.html

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Let us hope that none of this ever really happens!

But, such as it is, that is my world for That's My World Tuesday.

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O the Chimneys

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The siren just now sounded for Holocaust Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Day.
The shorter, blunter name we usually call this day is Yom HaShoah.

When I lived in Switzerland as a volunteer, this was the view from my window.
It is nothing more sinister than an incinerator that burns people's garbage in order to heat their water.
But there at the foot of the Jura Mountains, I discovered that my sense of the Jewish collective memory is strong and unavoidable.
I could never see the smoke and the chimney without being reminded of Nobel Prize winner Nelly Sach's poem "O the Chimneys."
Here are its opening lines:
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O die Schornsteine
Auf den sinnreich erdachten Wohnungen des Todes,
Als Israels Leib zog aufgelöst in Rauch
Durch die Luft –
.Oh those smokestacks
Above the abodes of death, so ingeniously devised,
When Israel’s body, dissolved into smoke, was drifting
Through the air--

(translated by Reinhold Grimm)
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The entire poem, in German and English, appears in the book German 20th Century Poetry.
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Time factor and Turning Point Three targil

Today ABC Wednesday's T is for Turning Point Three.
This is the code name for the week-long nation-wide preparedness targil (Hebrew for drill/exercise) being run by Israel's Home Front Command.

At 11:00 this morning the country's 2,300 air raid sirens sounded.
 I made it a point to be at a public place just then, namely, my Kupat Cholim medical clinic in Jerusalem.
Sure enough, we the public and the staff were instructed to go down the stairs to the basement. I never knew there was a bomb shelter there.
Here is the metal, air-tight door in the picture.
As you can see, the staff had turned the protected space into a kitchen and break room.

T is for time factor!

Israeli households (well, mine NOT included) recently received this handy and reassuring (LOL) refrigerator magnet.
Click to enlarge and you will see that we in and around Jerusalem are in the best location if the missiles begin in-coming from Gaza and/or Syria and Lebanon and/or Iran.
 We supposedly will have three whole minutes of warning. Yay!
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To see more about the Turning Point drill and other Facts of [Israeli] Life, please see my previous post. Toda (= thanks)!
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Facts of (Israeli) life

The bloggers of That's My World Tuesday invite you to their local world.
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All this week Israel is even stranger than it is normally.
We are having a preparedness drill named "Turning Point 3."
It is to practice what would (or should) be done by the authorities and the people in the worst-case scenario--simultaneous incoming missiles from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and even Iran, accompanied by terror attacks from the West Bank.

Every air raid siren in the country will go off at 11:00 a.m. Tuesday.
For the first time ever, the Home Front Command wants all citizens to practice taking cover inside the nearest shelter or protected space.

The black things you see above are built into all the new apartment buildings (since 1992).

The secure space's walls are made of steel reinforced concrete and the door has an air-tight seal.

There can be one inside the residence and also one on every floor of the building.

The old underground bomb shelters in the middle of my village. I think these public shelters are no longer in use.

The shelter next to our kindergarten does, however, look well maintained, even painted sky blue with clouds.

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I think the newest and most interesting innovation is this (in today's Jerusalem Post):

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"For the first time in such an exercise, the IDF Home Front Command will also test a new system that issues warning of incoming missile attacks to private cell phones. The IDF is also reviewing technology that would enable it to send little 'pop-up' screens to computers that are connected to the Internet.
Developed by Israeli hi-tech company eVigilo, the system connects to existing cellular antennas and is able to send messages to all phones that are being supported by the antenna. This enables the system to send warnings from areas as large as the entire country to just several city blocks, where the missile is predicted to land.
'Israelis have around 10 million cell phones and we plan to take advantage of them during an emergency,' explained OC Home Front Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan."

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Can you imagine, you are sitting and blogging when suddenly a box pops up on your computer screen saying "A missile is on its way to your neighborhood and will strike in X seconds (or X minutes)" !

Well friends, that's my world. Oi, such a world!

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Names, not numbers

Holocaust Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Day is the official name. The shorter, blunter name we usually call this day is Yom HaShoah.
At 10:00 this morning all movement stopped. Israelis got out of their car or chair or whatever and stood in silence for two long minutes. Only the chilling wail of every air-raid siren in the country was heard.
I happened to be out walking on the campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Flags were set out in the center of the plaza. Someone had just sung "Eli, Eli." Then the siren blared. Each young person went into his/her own thoughts and/or prayers but we all stood together, Jewish and Arab students, religious and secular, in uniform and in civilian. It felt right, standing with my people.
And, the greatest blessing--beside me stood my daughter and her two little sons--Jewish, Israeli, Hebrew-speakers, and very much alive! My grandkids have names: Dean and Eyal.
The 1,500,000 children killed in Hitler's death camps had learned to answer to the number tatooed on their arm. The emphasis of this year's Shoah Day is "Children in the Shoah."
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As I tried to contain my tears, our near-by siren blast came to an end. But still no one moved. We all remained motionless, listening as far-away sirens from all parts of Jerusalem tapered off and finally became silent. It was as if we all wanted to savor the feeling of standing together, united in the intensity of remembering.
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"Names, not numbers" is my contribution to today's ABC Wednesday.

Be prepared

The air raid siren wailed today for a very long minute and a half. Bloodcurdling. I hate it.
It stirs up the worst memories.
We are in day three of a five-day national exercise to practice responding to emergency scenarios. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006 we suddenly learned that the civilian population in what used to be the hinterland had become the frontline. So now we have a newly formed Home Front Command.
When the alarm sounded this morning school kids had to go quickly to their shelters or get under their desks.
The picture shows the old bomb shelter dug into the hill across the street from my house.