Day 26 of the War

I just signed up for FOX News last week through my satellite company because my friends in the old country told me that it was the most balanced of the major non-Israeli networks. I already want to give it back to them. One problem is that the other news channels that come with the package - CNN and BBC are completely and totally insane. Those guys are actually worse than Al Jazeera because they wrap their anti-semitism in cloaks of objective journalism.

I don't know what it is, but even with FOX it gets me way more uptight than when I watch Israeli TV. Now I know why my friends in Canada are more nervous than I am.

I think there are two reasons for this:
1) My Hebrew isn't so great so I only understand what my sub-conscious allows to filter on Israeli televison :)
2) I like FOX and they do present the events fairly but it is still an outsider's view.

I preferred watching channel 10 tonight. It shows the big picture as well as the little picture. There was the composed mother from Nahariya start off by calmly saying that she's decided that the situation is such that she should head South and she then completely breaks down, crying - "I'm so scared for my children". They also interviewed little kids in Ra'anana Park who were refugees from the North. Four year olds should not be able to tell you about the different types of sounds that Katusha rockets make. Still you get a sense that even though it is terrible, we'll all get through this together somehow.

Even the commercials remind you of where you are. Orange, a cell phone company, let us know that people from the North and those in the Southern communities within rocket range of Gaza now enjoy an 80% price cut as a gesture of unity. Other companies are taking similiar actions.

Today was a terrible day. I was in Ulpan and when I called a guy I work with at a break. He told me the horrible news of the miluimniks who were killed. Then tonight it was Haifa.

Ulpan is so weird. The teacher asked each of us what we did on the weekend. My face sunk as Sarah from Catelonia decribed going to a Jews for Jesus Service on Saturday. She hangs out with another woman in our class - Maria Grazia from Italy - a Christian woman who walks around with a Star of David around her neck and just happens to want to learn to speak Hebrew. My mind spins - I see nefarious plots forming around me - they are coming here to learn Hebrew so that they can convince the hapless Russians Jews to pray to Jesus. Oy vey.

Then later in the morning we had an assembly where they were teaching us Hebrew songs from the 50's and 60's. Songs that are deep in my bones from when I was a child here. The assembly ended with a moving rendition of Ha'Tikvah - the Israeli National Anthem. All stood except for the Israeli Arabs who are being subsidized by the state to learn to speak Hebrew. Go figure. To be fair, there were two Muslim women who rose to their feet. They are both in my class - Manar and Ranan. They moved here from Kuwait four years ago. I came up to Manar afterward and thanked her. I said that 'It must have been hard for you to stand when you saw that the others would not'. She replied 'Anachnu midina echad' - We are one nation. I've read on YNET that many of the Arab residents of Haifa who had their homes blown up this evening by Nasrallah share her sentiments.

Yihee'ye Tov.