Life in an Orwellian universe By Charles Krauthammer
Israel's moral scrupulousness is being paid in blood - and
yet they're still branded as evil personifiedWhat other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?
What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities — every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians — and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering? Read it all
Here is the surreal survival of one man and his family in the north;
It's Sunday night... I have not had much time on the computer as we are packing up our house, literally under fire, putting all of our belongings in storage at a neighbors and preparing for the next journey.[...]
We are not sure where we are going to live next. Our plan is to travel to the States for the month on August and part of September, as I said to help my mom, and to hopefully have some exhibitions where I can sell some work to make up for the lost business due to the fact that Tzfat has become like a ghost town because of the bombings. It has been quite surreal these past few weeks. When we are in Moshav Amirim, where we have been living for the past 3 years, we hear, mostly distant, booms. It seems far away but then I find myself saying to myself, "Hmmmm...artillery? Katyushas?" Can you imagine...i can't hardly. On this past Friday afternoon, as we were preparing to go to my wife Nili's aunt's Moshav in the south, there was a very loud explosion, very close to us,,,like a really loud "CRACK!" and "BOOM!" all together...that scared me...then there was another one a few seconds later. Yeah, that was 2 Katyushas hitting close to Amirim. I didn't see any smoke or fire nor did I hear any "SHRIEK" before the explosion, so maybe they weren't as close as I thought, or it seemed. Anyway, I went into the secure room with Nili, Sanchez (our dog) and Issac (Nili's mom's partner). Pretty freaky...and after I went outside to look around for the smoke...A weird part of me is very curious to actually see the rockets, but the more rational part of me tells myself, "Are you nuts...get out of there!".
We drove through the town of Afula on the way down south. I found out later that a few minutes before we got to Afula, one of the so-called "Fajr" rockets had landed just outside of town, thank G-d not causing any damage to life or property.
I had gone to Tzfat on Tuesday (I think it was Tuesday) to close up things at my gallery and check on the situation. While I was there, 4 air raid sirens went off, but no actual rockets landed where I was. The first siren was scary...imagine waiting for a rocket to hit...after that, not as scary. I took a bunch of pictures of some damage which I will post soon. THe most miraculous damage related weirdness was at my friend Avraham Lowenthal's Gallery of Mystical Art (kabbalahart.com). He created art based on Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticis, (to put it simply). I went to check on their house for them and found that bunch of the house and gallery windows were smashed from a nearby explosion. Upstairs in the gallery, in his work space, the 3 part windows were completely smashed yet a piece of art, based on the sounds of the shofar, which is framed completely in glass, on both sides and transparent, which was leaning up right on the smashed window, wasn't even scratched (I also will post a picture of that-stay tuned). It's amazing...and not one other piece of art was damaged...lots of originals and fragile pieces there. Tomorrow I am off to Tzfat again to deal with some things at the gallery and document some of the relief efforts that volunteers with Livnot u'Lhibanot are organizing (livnot.com). Bringing people food, fixing things in shelters , playing music for people...
It's 1 am now and there are stills distant booms.. We have a friend in New YOrk helping to set up a Tzfat Refugee Artist show in Manhattan in Sept. If anyone has any contacts, especially at the federation there, that could help out with covering expenses for getting art and artists over there, please let me know.
Even in these dangerous times, there is a lot of good coming out...mostly about how people are being good to each other, really coming together and taking care of each other, just being nice, opening their homes and all kinds of things...
