In case of chemical or biological attack . . .

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This parking area and roadway is where ambulances race in, where Shaare Zedek Hospital's emergency room doors open.

But it can also double as the decontamination area--see those water hoses above?
This being a religious hospital where modesty is respected, those green tarps can be unrolled to give a modicum of privacy, separating the naked men from the naked women. 

In the event (God forbid) of non-conventional warfare or terrorist attacks, victims must be washed off  before they enter the hospital, using water under pressure, to prevent chemical or biological agents from spreading to other patients.
The area can be converted in less than 30 minutes to a fully functional decontamination facility that can treat hundreds of victims per hour.
Shaare Zedek acts as the on-call facility for the entire Jerusalem area to respond to chemical warfare attacks.
 The decontamination area is the largest in Israel and is believed to be the largest in the world.

 Staff members have carried out a number of simulation exercises with the IDF's  Home Front Command.
Many foreign delegations also come to witness and to learn from these drills.
Our guide said such a demonstration can cost the hospital 20,000 shekels, but they are seldom reimbursed;  he shrugged his shoulders, meaning something like  "We do it as a mitsvah, a good and holy deed." 

 

Photo: Agencies

http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/photo/2014-09/16/content_18604628.htm

On September 15 some 20 senior Chinese officials took part in one of Shaare Zedek's drills, part of a disaster management workshop organised by the Emergency Medicine department at Ben Gurion University.
This is the first of many such workshops planned for the coming years, a statement from the university said.

See 3 more photos of the Chinese visitors at the ChinaDaily.
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Oi, may we never know such actual troubles.
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(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)

First World War -- 100 years ago, in Gaza

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Today marks 100 years since the outbreak of World War I.

Many do not realize that thousands, many thousands, of young Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in that war are buried in Israel.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains four cemeteries in our region.

One is in Ramleh, not far from Ben Gurion Airport.
Recently I posted about the British Cemetery in Beer Sheva  here and also about the yearly  Australian Light Horse commemoration.
Please see ANZAC Day for my posts about the World War I cemetery in Jerusalem.

But the fourth cemetery is one I will never be able to visit.
It is in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
So here are two photos from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, on the Find A Cemetery page.

Gaza War Cemetery contains 3,217 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 781 of them unidentified. 
Second World War burials number 210. There are also 30 post war burials and 234 war graves of other nationalities.

The CWGC gives this:

Historical Information

Gaza was bombarded by French warships in April 1915. 
At the end of March 1917, it was attacked and surrounded by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the First Battle of Gaza, but the attack was broken off when Turkish reinforcements appeared. 
The Second Battle of Gaza, 17-19 April, left the Turks in possession and the Third Battle of Gaza, begun on 27 October, ended with the capture of the ruined and deserted city on 7 November 1917. 
Casualty Clearing Stations arrived later that month and General and Stationary hospitals in 1918.

Some of the earliest burials were made by the troops that captured the city. About two-thirds of the total were brought into the cemetery from the battlefields after the Armistice. The remainder were made by medical units after the Third Battle of Gaza, or, in some cases, represent reburials from the battlefields by the troops who captured the city. Of the British Soldiers, the great majority belong to the 52nd (Lowland), the 53rd (Welsh), the 54th (East Anglian) and the 74th (Yeomanry) Divisions.

During the Second World War, Gaza was an Australian hospital base, and the AIF Headquarters were posted there. Among the military hospitals in Gaza were 2/1st Australian General Hospital, 2/6th Australian General Hospital, 8th Australian Special Hospital, and from July 1943 until May 1945, 91 British General Hospital. There was a Royal Air Force aerodrome at Gaza, which was considerably developed from 1941 onwards.

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(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)
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Plowshares or swords?

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"And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares  and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,"  is what Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 2:3-4.

The prophet Joel, in contrast, said this:
"Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears;  let the weak say: 'I am strong.' "

Chapter 4 of the biblical book of Joel is sounding very modern right now.
It is worth a read.

The Oliver model plow, USA, 1860,  was lovingly restored for the Tractor Museum in Ein Vered.
I saw it in Tel Aviv at the 2012 AgriTech fair.
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Australian Light Horse annual commemoration in Beer Sheva

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Yesterday I found my way through the streets of Beer Sheva  to the Park of the Australian Soldier.
My first time to see the annual commemoration and to see the new park, and both were very impressive.

The e-mail read "The Pratt Foundation and the Municipality of Be’er Sheva invite you to the commemoration of the 96th anniversary of the Battle of Be’er Sheva, marking the fall of the Ottoman controlled city of Be’er Sheva to ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) and British troops on 31 October 1917."

After morning tea the many guests took their seats and the ceremony opened with a long blast of a long and curling shofar.
The nice new Ambassador to Israel, H.E. Dave Sharma, gave a good speech about the great importance of the Battle of Beersheva.
BTW, he is Australia's youngest ambassador anywhere in the world.

Military representatives  of Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and the United Nations were there.
Many Zionist youth movements attended, as did classes of high school students.

Dr. Apple, Rabbi Emeritus of Sydney's Great Synagogue, was expected to give a memorial prayer but he spoke instead about the recent attack on five Jews at Bondi beach.

The Australian youth groups joined in singing Advance Australia Fair and Hatikva.

Please enlarge the sign to read the story of the famous battle, history's last great cavalry charge. 

The U.N. men from UNTSO and MFO  were happy to pose for anyone with a camera.
Israelis are not used to seeing fancy dress uniforms and medals.

Everyone then went across town to the Beersheba War Cemetery.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission says their cemetery contains 1,241 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 67 of them unidentified.

In the Light Horse charge on Beersheva, 31 Australians were killed.
At least 70 horses were also killed in the audacious battle. 

 Again there was the laying of wreaths.

I asked for a poppy and the digger asked  to put it by a soldier's grave.

I found a Jewish grave.
There are many more at the Jerusalem War Cemetery on Mt. Scopus.

 The morning's ceremonies concluded a block away, at Atatürk Plaza, at the obelisk.
Carved in its stone:

1914-1918

THIS MONUMENT IS DEDICATED TO 298 HONOURABLE TURKISH ARMY SOLDIERS FALLEN AT THE BE'ER SHEVA FRONT FOR THE SAKE OF THEIR COUNTRY

The distinguished representative of Turkey spoke (in English) about the martyrs who died defending the then-Ottoman town of Beer Sheva.
He was proud to see the old Turkish train station behind him, part of the famous Hijaz Railway,  being carefully restored as he spoke.

We stood for the Turkish and the Israeli national anthems. 

Wreaths were placed at the foot of the tall obelisk, which was built in 2002.

With the strained Israel-Turkey  relations in the last few years, it was very special to see the two flags flying side by side.

Let's hope Atatürk's motto, "Peace at home, peace in the world," will someday be true for all countries in the Middle East. 
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For more see Australian blogger-teacher Hels' post http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/australian-and-new-zealand-light.html
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Tense days as rhetoric heats up

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Continuing yesterday's post about this summer's public art exhibit of Cool Globes, here are some more of the 18 globes in Jerusalem that present ideas to combat global warming.

Enlarge this accompanying sign to read about religions' attitudes to global warming.
"Is your faith calling you to act?"  it asks. 

I fear that as early as Thursday night our  Middle East part of the globe will  suddenly be  heating up from the fire power that  men will unleash on one another.
If only it could be stopped before it begins.
I hope these are not my final words to you from this blog . . .
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God help us

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Psalm 83 today for the weekly meme PsalmChallenge.
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1. A song. A psalm. Of Asaph.

2. O God, do not be silent; do not be mute; do not be quiet, O Deity!

3. For Your enemies rage; those who hate You rear their heads.

4. Against Your people they plot craftily, conspire against Your treasured ones.

5. They say, “Come let us wipe them out as a nation; Israel’s name will be remembered no more.”
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    (photo credit: AP/Hasan Sarbakhshian,
      in The Times of Israel) 

6. Indeed they have conspired as one, making an alliance against You—  

7. the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites,

8. Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre.

9. Assyria too joins with them, serving as an arm for the sons of Lot.       Selah.

10. Treat them as You did Midian, with Sisera, with Jabin, at the brook Kishon—

11. they were destroyed at En-dor; they became fertilizing refuse for the ground.

12. Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,

13. those who said, “Let us take as our possession the pasturelands of God.”
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14. O my God, make them like tumbleweed, like chaff before the wind.

15. As a fire burns a forest, and as a flame sets the mountains ablaze,

16. so pursue them with Your tempest, terrify them with Your windstorm.

17. Fill their faces with shame, so that they seek Your name, O LORD.   

18. May they be abashed and terrified forever, may they be disgraced and doomed.

19. May they know that it is You whose name is the LORD, You are exclusively supreme over all the earth.

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Translation by Rabbi Benjamin J. Segal.  See also his notes. 

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A map of  Israel and the surrounding countries: see Atlapedia.

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The Burmese then and now. Hope.

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Two strong things came together today.
No, I don't refer to Iron Dome intercepting a Grad missile.
Instead, the two things were in my mind.

One was the traumatic memory of the month and a half of being bombarded by Saddam Hussein's huge Scud missiles, the ones he threatened to arm with poison gas, during the 1991 Gulf War. 

It was a Shabbat morning when my employers called my home and said, "Dina, please come quickly. Our office was hit by a missile and we must salvage our equipment and move before the next barrage!"

This was when my family lived near Tel Aviv, the city that  was being targeted by Iraq.
The office where I worked for several years  was an old house in nearby Ramat Gan which was housing  the Embassy of the Union of Myanmar.

His Excellency the Ambassador, in suit and tie,  kept busy all day giving interviews to the countless foreign reporters in the yard while the First Secretary, the other two Burmese staff members, their wives, the Israeli chauffeur, and I salvaged things from the rubble and packed the old typewriter, fax, china, files, etc. into boxes.

My son, who was home from the army that weekend, collected small pieces of the Scud as souvenirs.
We worked without stopping until the kind Japanese ambassador came to visit, bringing Hawaiian pizza with pineapple on it. Bless his heart.

On the day I completed the two-year post-grad course in Translation Studies at Bar-Ilan University, the ad appeared in the paper: "Hebrew-English translator/interpreter wanted for small embassy."
That is how I came to work for the  embassy of a country under a military junta.
It was right after Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest in Yangon.

So imagine how thrilled I am today, November 19, 2012, to see President Obama visiting Burma, the first sitting American president to do so.
And to see him welcomed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, now free, now a Member of Parliament!
What a woman, so noble, so humble, so strong of will!

The long-imposed and self-imposed isolation of Burma/Myanmar is easing up.
The world seems ready to welcome Burma back. 

See CNN's  beautiful pictures from the visit today.
And watch  Aung San Suu Kyi's acceptance speech for the Congressional Gold Medal.

What I learned today, even as Israel and Gaza are under fire, is that true leaders can eventually emerge and change their nation, and that change is actually possible in this world.
There is HOPE.
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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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A pillar of cloud, and danger in the skies

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Who changed the name to Operation Pillar of Defense?
Our IDF Israel Defense Forces?

In Hebrew this strike against the Gaza rocket launching is called Amud Anan, literally Pillar of Cloud.
I wish they had kept the original name, straight from the Bible epics.

By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.
--Exodus 13:21

 Then the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel's army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them . . .
--Exodus 14:19

As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the LORD spoke with Moses.
--Exodus 33:9

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A post for Sky Watch Friday. This week we watch the sky over southern Israel and now even over Tel Aviv for Qassams, Grads, and long-range Fajr missiles and hope that the Iron Dome batteries will intercept them.
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"The last great cavalry charge in history"

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These are pictures I took in Sydney, Australia,  in 2009.
Written in the concrete wall is

TO THE HORSES OF THE DESERT MOUNTED CORPS 

Erected by members of the Desert Mounted Corps 
and friends 
to the gallant horses who carried them 
over Sinai Desert  into Palestine
1915 - 1918

They suffered wounds, thirst, hunger and 
weakness almost beyond endurance but never failed.
They did not come home. [*]

We will never forget them.

There is also a plaque in the ground, unveiled on October 31, 2007,

"commemorating the 90th anniversary of the charge at Beersheba which took place at 4.30 pm on Wednesday 31 October 1917.
The success of the charge led to an earlier conclusion of the Desert Campaign in the Middle East in World War I.

             In memory of
the gallant men and horses of the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments that took part in the charge and those that made the supreme sacrifice."

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Update 2024:  See more about this memorial in Sydney at 

https://historyservicesnswblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/australian-war-horses-remembered.html
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* Over 29,000 horses were shipped to the Middle East for the war but at war's end, they could not be returned to Australia.  See what was done with them here.

I tell you all this because October 31, 2012 will be the 95th anniversary.
The Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv kindly sent me the invitation partially copied below.

If anyone can attend, the Embassy would like you to RSVP by tomorrow.
I hope to be there for these very special events.

Be’er Sheva Commemoration

Annual Memorial Service

Wednesday 31 October 2012

 

The Australian Embassy and the Municipality of Be’er Sheva invite you to the commemoration of the 95th anniversary of the battle of Be’er Sheva.  The commemoration marks the fall of the Ottoman controlled city of Be’er Sheva to British and ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops on 31 October 1917. The historic charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade of the Australian Mounted Division played a critical part in this major battle.

 

 

The service will take place at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery

at 10:30 on 31 October. (Ha’atzmaut St. Be’er Sheva)

_________________________________________________

 Other commemorative events:

31 October

Pratt Foundation

8:45   Refreshments and morning tea

9:30  Tribute to the Australian Light Horse Brigade

Park of the Australian Soldier

(Abba Ahimeir St. Be’er Sheva)

Enquiries: Mr Peter Adler, Pratt Foundation 

Be'ersheva Municipality

11:30 Commemoration service

Turkish Memorial Monument

(Tuviyahu St. Be’er Sheva)

Enquiries: Ms Malka Reisner, Be'ersheva Municipality  08 6463910

Society for the Heritage of WWI

15:00 Re-enactment of the charge of the Australian Light Horse

Beit Eshel

Enquiries: Mr Ezra Pimental, Society for the Heritage of World War One -  054 9413155

Be'ersheva Archaelogy Museum

12:00 - 15:00 Temporary exhibition by Sgt. Thomas Henry Ivers, an artist who served in the Australian Light Horse

The Archaeology Museum

(60 HaAtzmaut St)

Enquiries: Mr Goel Drory, Museum Curator - 052 2767113

28th October 

Kinneret Academic College

16:00 Ceremony in Honour of The Australian Light Horsemen at the Battle of Semakh

(Kinneret College, the Sea of Galilee near the historic Semakh Train Station)

Enquiries: Mr Ziv Ofir, Deputy CEO, Kinneret Academic College
 ____________________________________________________

Dear readers, see also Beersheva's Park of the Australian Soldier 
and about this month's re-enactment: The Light Horsemen Ride Again.
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I hope to bring photos of the  war cemetery for Taphophile Tragics  in two weeks.
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Palmach, Parabellum, and pacem

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For ABC Wednesday, P is for Palmach, Parabellum, and peace.
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The Palmach Cave is a heritage site (and active tourist site) in Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek in the Jezreel Valley.

This cave became the training place for the Palmach's special units, for example, the German Unit.

Established in 1941, the Palmach was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate of Palestine.
By the outbreak of the War for Independence in 1948 it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units.

The display shows some of their various weapons.
Unfortunately there were not enough, and not every Palmachnik went into battle with a gun.

An old Pistol Parabellum is on the wall.

The pistol's name comes from the old Latin adage Si vis pacem, para bellum , meaning "If you wish for peace, be always ready for war."

As Wikipedia says, "this is usually interpreted as meaning peace through strength—a strong society being less likely to be attacked by enemies."
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Victory in Europe Day commemoration in Knesset today

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At noon today there was a special Knesset Plenum sitting to mark the 66th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
World War II veterans in the gallery (see photo) wore their old uniforms and many medals.
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These stones in a Tel Aviv park are dedicated to those veterans and their 1,500,000 Jewish comrades who fought in the Second World War.
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An estimated 300,000 of the Jewish soldiers and partisans were killed in the fighting.
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Please enlarge and read the plaque.

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I found this information in a web page about the booklet The Jewish Fighter in World War II:

"The estimated numbers of Jewish men and women who fought in the ranks of the various armies are

USA	550 000
Australia	3 900
Israel (Jewish Volunteers)	30 000
Britain	62 000
USSR	500 000
Yugoslavia	6000 (over 4000 in the Partisan army)
Greece	13 000
Poland	122 000
Czechoslovakia	5 500
France	35 000
Canada	17 000
South Africa	10 000

There are no facts and estimates on the number of Jews in the Belgian, Dutch, and New Zealand armies. A careful estimate puts the number of Jewish partisans in the occupied parts of the USSR at 20 000 - 25 000, and in the other European countries at another 10 000, including the anti-Nazi underground."

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An awful anniversary

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Something happened this week and also this week in 1991 that awakened a lot of A words for ABC Wednesday.
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Photo from the Home Front Command website

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How many of you could use the following words in one paragraph? --

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attack, anxiety, anger, atropine auto-injector, anti-anthrax

antidote, air-raid sirens, airtight, absurd, awful

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Fortunately, I think that Israelis over a certain age are the only ones in the world for whom these words push a button.

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It was in mid January, 20 years ago, that the First Gulf War started for us.

The first night a whole salvo of SCUD missiles were fired into Israel from Iraq.

In the next month and a half, a total of 39 SCUDs exploded.

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The worst was that Saddam Hussein threatened that the warheads would carry nerve gas, anthrax, etc.

The worst was worrying about my kids.

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Usually the air-raid sirens came at night and gave us a few seconds to run to our "sealed room," take cover under a table, put on the awful gas masks, and wait to hear our windows rattle and the 4-storey apartment building shake as the missiles exploded around us. (Our family lived near Tel Aviv then.)

Imagine, sealing the doors with masking tape, as if that would save us. ha!

Sometimes we had to wait a whole hour until the army checked the Scuds that had fallen and then sounded the all-clear siren, meaning no toxic agents in the warheads.

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For the sake of the kids I tried to act brave and cultivate coping skills during that dreadful time.

I really surprised myself yesterday when the TV news showed a few seconds of historical film.

Suddenly hearing the siren wail and seeing Scuds explode and set fire to houses set off an uncharacteristic reaction: I burst out crying!

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Apparently all that anxiety had been sitting just below the surface for these 20 years.

It was good to let it out.

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November 11 remembering

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For Armistice / Remembrance / Veterans Day let me show you where some of the soldiers of the Great War are buried or memorialized in Jerusalem.
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At the outbreak of the First World War, Israel (then called Palestine) was part of the Ottoman Empire, and it was not entered by Allied forces until December 1916.
The advance to Jerusalem took a further year.
The Turks surrendered the city to British General Allenby (but first to two British army cooks) in December 1917.
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The Jerusalem War Cemetery is the British military cemetery on Mount Scopus.
Of the 2,515 Commonwealth burials of the First World War in the cemetery, 100 of them are unidentified.
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For more about this beautiful place, see my posts under ANZAC.
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On Mt. Zion, in the backyard of Bishop Gobat School, under lock and key, is the Jerusalem Protestant Cemetery.

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It was owned by the British and German religious congregations and contained the graves of 114 British soldiers, buried from March to December 1917 by the enemy, and then, until February 1918, by the British forces.
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(Many famous Christian civilians are buried here as well.)

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The Protestant cemetery even has this (enlarge the photo if you can read German) for 15 members of the local congregations who joined the German-Austrian Wehrmacht and lost their life during World War I.

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In the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot, you will find (if you know what to look for) a small park in front of a playground.

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The Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission was set up only toward the end of World War I. Before they starting making centralized and uniform cemeteries, it was common for their soldiers to be buried near the battlefield where they fell.

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So, as Yad Ben-Zvi Walking Tour Guide explains about these markers shown in the photo above,

"In World War I, the bodies of 290 Turkish soldiers were buried nearby in a common grave. Between July 1918 and June 1920 Indian soldiers serving in the British army were interred close to the common grave of the Turks.

They were buried in two different common graves since 31 of them were Muslims and 47 were Hindus, Sikhs, and Gurkhas.

The tombstone over the Muslim grave bears an inscription from the Koran, while above the other common grave is an inscription in Sanskrit.

The names . . . are recorded in the chapel of the British cemetery on Mount Scopus."

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Sigh . . . so many young men, sent from far corners of the world to fight and die and be buried in the Holy Land.

Let us remember them.

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