Life Under The Blitz

The Washington Post has a story today about the impact the Hezbollah rocket attacks are having on Israeli civilians. Many are finding that they have no choice but to evacuate and to try to get beyond the range of the rocket attacks.

MARGALIYOT, Israel, July 18 — Living in the shadow of an Israeli artillery battery, whose volleys have rattled their windows day and night for nearly a week, almost all 300 residents have fled this farming village that clings to a rocky ridge on the Lebanese border.

Pinchas Aplaton and his son Gal, a soldier home on leave, were among a handful remaining behind Monday, forced by economic necessity, they said, to tend their tidy rows of tomato and eggplant crops during the summer harvest.

Aplaton's wife, Irit, his daughter and two other sons left a day earlier on a bus bound for Netanya, a city 80 miles to the south and, until now, beyond the reach of rockets that have rained on northern Israel for nearly a week.

"Once we saw this was heating up, there was no choice but for the women and children to go," Pinchas Aplaton said, puffing his cheeks and shaking his head as yet another outgoing round resounded from a nearby hill. "So, for now, we live apart."

Later that afternoon, at the sprawling boarding school in Netanya where she and her children are waiting out the crisis, Irit Aplaton said she was "worried half to death" about her husband. In a period of less than 24 hours, they had spoken at least a dozen times, with most conversations lasting about as long as it takes him to say, "I'm still okay."

The snapshot of the Aplatons' life Monday is a window on the experience of thousands of Israelis living under bombardment across the country's north. According to military sources, about 50 percent of residents in this region, which includes Haifa, the country's third-largest city, have evacuated since cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon began last week, after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in an ambush.

Hundreds of business are shuttered, leaving downtowns eerily empty.

It's important to remember that Hezbollah is intentionally targeting civilians and that the Israeli government is not trying to keep civilians in the line of fire like the terrorists are reportedly doing. Read the whole article for a glimpse of what life is like living under a blitz.