"With no end to war in sight, how are Israelis coping with October 7, nine months on?"
Almost nine months into the war, the JPost ‘Magazine’ takes the nation’s pulse [...and flattered to be featured in this well-written, comprehensive article].
“DAVE BENDER, a veteran American Israeli journalist, also lives in the North. A resident of Kfar Hananya, he is a long-term volunteer with the regional Tzahi community resilience/first-responders team, which includes the emergency standby squad.
“We’re as armed as we can be for a community that is just one step back from being a front-line community,” he told the Magazine.
Asked how he and others in his neighborhood are coping with the situation, he said, “Life goes on. There’s a war going on, and we also have our lives going on.
“In our community, people are coping, and life is going on pretty much as usual. People are aware of what’s going on. Many, many people are in [IDF] reserve duty and in active service on the borders North and South. In our daily lives, there is real concern, but we have to function, and we do function.”
Still, “every family is affected. I have a close friend in his late 60s who’s a volunteer at the Northern Command. Most mornings, he’s in uniform. And that’s common. We have evacuees who are living here; some have moved here long term.
“Businesses are not functioning as usual,” he added. “Another friend is an electrician whose shop has come under regular, hard-core fire and exploding drone attacks.... Obviously, the war has impacted so many people’s careers and businesses.
“My wife and I are beekeepers. We’re going to a farmer’s market in the central square in Safed, and the threat of coming under a rocket attack there is not small. It’s a major threat, but we’re going on with our lives. It’s the third time we’re going, and there has been a phenomenal turnout. People want to share in a public venue that we’re alive, surviving, thriving, and not giving in.
“I’m a volunteer member of two groups of civilians – of evacuated communities and non-evacuated communities in the North – and I must admit that there, the people are beside themselves. The feeling is widely shared that the government has totally abandoned them.... There are villages and towns that are ghost towns. It will take billions, not millions, of shekels to rebuild afterwards unless, as some people have said very cynically, Highway 85 will be the new border. Many people say they will not move back – over 60%, according to some surveys – until they know that the threat by Hezbollah has been destroyed – not pushed back, not negotiated, but destroyed, because there’s no future in waiting for Oct. 7 to happen again.
“I’ve done 18 and a half years in the IDF, although I’ve been demobilized and am beyond reserve duty age, but we’re worried, among other things, about our children and our grandchildren who live in Safed. We have two daughters living on the Golan Heights who have also come under fire numerous times; we have a son, daughter, and granddaughter in Beersheba, who have come under massive rocket barrages before Oct. 7.
“I think it’s important to point out that we’re not newbies at this. This has been going on [in the South] for almost 19 years, since the [2005] pullout from Gaza,” he said, referring to the 2005 Disengagement, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and expelled all 9,000 Israeli residents.
Read the rest of Atara Nurenberger Beck’s coverage, here: https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/mind-and-spirit/article-808909
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