Rocketed "Driving-while-Israeli" in Tzfat - Reporter's Video Notebook
And how was your Sunday sports afternoon? We spent ours in vehicular dodgeball with exploding aerial munitions meant to kill us. Good times from the front.
Just had a heavy barrage of some 30 rockets over Tzfat and the vicinity, with many explosions overhead as we were tooling around Tzfat on errands... We're OK, and there are no initial reports of physical injuries or property damage, according to the Municipality Spokesman.
Some 15 fire crews were deployed, however, to snuff out brush fires from the falling debris on the city’s eastern slopes, near rows of residents’ homes, the Spokesman said.
Police bomb squad collecting shrapnel and remnants of the fallen munition. Photo: davebrianbender.com|Compelling Photography.
As of Oct. 20th, 14:00, the Lebanon-based terror group has fired over 200 rockets and exploding drones across Israel’s north - and the day is still young. We’ve been enduring over a year of such near-daily attacks across the north, which have forced some 80k Israelis from their homes and made them internal refugees, cratered the local tourism, business, and agricultural economies, and made smoking shell-shocked ghost towns out of once vibrant cities, towns, and villages.
Here's my initial report when the sirens and alerts started while we were driving in Tzfat:
Friend and colleague, Sarah Zehavi, shares her intimate take on coping with a second barrage that slammed down around the city shortly before 17:00 (5pm). In parallel, other rocket salvos were fired at the Tiberias area to the south, with several intercepted close to my home where I’m preparing this extended report (see video below).
Elsewhere in the north, there were heavy, repeated exploding drone and rocket attacks along the Haifa coast northward to the border town of Nahariya. Haifa resident and fellow SubStacker, Forest Rain Marcia, added a wearying telegraphic account:
Sirens
Run down to the shelter
BOOOM.
Wait 10 minutes.
Go back to the apartment.
And then again sirens.
Back to the shelter with all the neighbors.
A stranger comes in - he was on the way to an errand and the sirens caught him outside.
(Imagine what the same scenario would be like if there were also terrorists roaming the streets, trying to get into shelters to rape, maim and take hostages like they did on October 7th).
We waited 10 minutes.
He said "thank you for your hospitality" and went back to his car.
I, like the rest of the neighbors, went back to our apartments.
Found the cat. After the first siren she was relatively ok. Now she's so terrified she doesn't even want to be touched.
Update:
Leaving her alone for a while and then bribing her with treats helped. Still it took a very long time for her to unravel her tense muscles. What does that say about the stress we are all experiencing?
This report will be updated as events dictate. Meanwhile, please feel free to share this post, subscribe, and help support my efforts to bring you accurate, sourced reporting, and close-up-and-personal slice-of-life scenes here in northern Israel and our Life on the Border - thank you for your consideration:
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Warm regards,
David Bender