Israeli Politics: The Carpenter Without His Saw – Covering The News Without The Proper Tools.

Since removing to Ma’aleh Levona from Jerusalem a few days ago, I’ve been concentrating most of my attention on moving in, rather than on the news, the news of war that dominates the papers and broadcasts. I don’t waste my money on newspapers to buy yesterday’s news. We do not have a TV, and we rarely listen to the radio. People tell me I don’t want to know what's going on. Maybe I shouldn’t want to know. But I do.

As I’ve mentioned in a different article, it is really quiet here. You can hear vehicles throughout the entire village. And on a really clear day, you can see the snow capped peak of Mount Hermon, the highest mountain in the country.

But there are other noises as well. In the distance, you can hear the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. When Arabs get married, they either shoot off fireworks, or they fire rifles in the air. Since firing rifles in the air is not the wisest thing to do around here, we see bonfires and fireworks. And several times a day, you can hear planes traveling overhead. They strain, these planes. They are loaded, and you can hear the engines working hard to carry the cargo.

These planes are loaded with bombs and with missiles. They travel from the south to bomb Lebanon and try to weaken the enemy that has bombarded us with missiles in our northern cities. In this part of the world, the weather comes from the north. Last week when we visited here for Sabbath, the sky was clear in the northern distance. Now, the sky is not clear in the northern distance; there is a haze far to the north. This haze is the fog of war.

For the most part I have been cut off from the news. I do not have the equipment to connect to the internet from my cell phone, so until I get a land line, I’ll not be able to really look at what is going on. I know there is a war going on here. But I also know how puerile the mainstream media is in reporting on that war.

But the news comes in other ways. For our first Sabbath as residents, we were invited to the home of a physical therapist and her several children. But we were not the only guests for Sabbath lunch. There was a nervous couple with twin girls who have come here for refuge from the missile attacks on the north, along with a number of other families. They come from a town in the north that was the victim of a terrible terror attack some thirty years ago that destroyed a school and killed many children. And now they have fled the missile attacks on that same city. Their details are sparse, and of course, personal to them, but the basic story is that this part of the country, Judea and Samaria, whose Jewish residents were called a cancer on the body politic by the chief executive of a leading dairy cooperative a while ago, a vile cancer that needed to be removed, are now providing refuge for the residents of the north.

Article Author: Ruvy

Ruvy was born in Brooklyn and lived in Minnesota for a number of years. There he managed restaurants and wrote stories. He moved with his family to Israel where they now reside. He is published by Jewish Indy, as well as by Desicritics.org.

Visit Ruvy's author page — Ruvy's Blog