Dear Betty,

I just wanted to let you know about what is going on here. This is part of a letter which I wrote to my friends:

I don't know how many of you listen to the news, but early Sunday morning Palestinians attacked an Israeli tank, on Israeli soil, killing 2 of the soldiers, seriously injuring a third, and kidnapping the fourth. They had tunneled under the border fence, come up behind the tank, and then attacked it with explosives. The Israeli experience with captured soldiers is very grim. Nearly all of them have been murdered at some point, after having been tortured extensively first. There are still soldiers missing who were known to have been captured alive in Lebanon in 1982, a navigator who was captured in 1986 (it was rumored that he was transported to Iran, but the family doesn't know if is alive or dead to this day, although he was alive when captured), and the most recent occurrance was when 3 soldiers were kidnapped on the Northern border by people driving a United Nations vehicle. For over 3 years they played cat and mouse with the families, until Israel finally released several hundred terrorists, at which point we learned that all 3 were dead and had been since the start. At least the families got the bodies back after three years of literal hell. So the outlook for this poor soldier is not good.

The reason that Israel has tanks on the border with Gaza is that despite Israel's complete withdrawal from Gaza last summer, the Palestinians continue to attack Israel daily. An average of 50-60 rockets are fired on Israel's Southern population centers daily, and it is often more. One of the places where the rockets land more than any other is an elementary school. The parents haven't sent their children for weeks. Lately the type of rocket used has become more sophisticated, and the range and accuracy much better. If that weren't enough, the Palestinians are using the ruins of the Jewish settlements that were evacuated last year as the launching areas for these rockets. All Israel accomplished by withdrawing from Gaza was to give them closer access.

For those of you who know Sonia Malel (the Uruguayan sister in our branch), her grandson Leonardo is in the same tank unit as the captured soldier, and was in the immediate area when the attack occurred. The soldiers in the unit were allowed to come home for one day, but they have to go back tomorrow. Please realize that Israel is already moving tanks, etc. to the border, and there is a very real possibility that Israel will attack soon. My son Bryan is a squad commander on the Northern border, and if / when Israel attacks in Gaza, the Hisballa will probably attack our Northern border as well, as it did a couple of weeks ago. We also have 3 other Galilee branch members currently in the army: Alexi Rivkin (from the Ukraine), and Fausto and German Gutman (brothers from Argentina; German is an RM). Two are in combat units and the third is a truck driver.

Depending on the size of the conflict, all 5 of the soldiers from our branch could be involved in some way. It could also very well be that another member would be recalled to reserve duty.

My request is, no matter what your political leanings are, to please keep Leonardo, Bryan, Alexi, Fausto, German and the kidnapped soldier Gilead Shavit (and his family) in your prayers. I would also like to ask that those of you near a temple please put their names in the prayer rolls.

With my heart-felt thanks,

Ann

I live in Israel, on a little rise at the Northwest end of the Sea of Galilee. I have dual US - Israeli citizenship, as do my children. Therefore, all of my children will be drafted into the Israeli army, although they could get out of it if they chose to do so.

My missionary son (in Rostov, Russia) served first in the Israeli navy before going on a mission. My second son has 5 months left in a 3-year term of service. He is in an elite paratroop unit which is a volunteer-only unit. After his release in November he will serve at least a month reserve duty until he is about 50.

My daughter already has her draft date for next summer, as soon as she finishes high school. She will serve for 2 years. My husband came in 1973 as an immigrant with his family. He served in the tank corp (he was in the same tank brigade as those whom I wrote about) and then did 18 years reserve duty, much of it during the first intifada, and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon the summer we were engaged.

The Galilee branch is different than the Tel Aviv / Jerusalem branch groups in that most of our members are Israeli citizens, and our children serve in the Israeli army. As I wrote, we currently have 5 soldiers serving.

You may post my letter if you wish. The news is current as of a couple of hours ago. Since I wrote, Israel has conducted 2 air strikes at bridges out of Gaza. If we go in, it will probably be in about 3 hours, which would be just about dawn here. The news has just said that Israeli missiles have just knocked out the main power station in Gaza, so it looks like the attack will be very soon.

I know that the concept of terrorism is fairly new in the US, but for us it is a fact of life and has been since even before the creation of the country in 1948. If you read David O. McKay's writings, he writes about the massive anti-Jewish riots which broke out while he was in Jerusalem in the 1920's. The history is long and very bloody.

The situation in Palestine right now is that the president is from one faction, the prime minister from another. They hate each others guts, and have been engaged in horrific civil war. Their way of attracting support is to attack Israel, or Jewish targets. And whatever they do in the West Bank and in Gaza, the Hisballah have to outdo from Lebanon onto Israel's Northern border. My son was involved in a very nasty battle there a couple of weeks ago.

What is so hard for Europeans and Americans to understand is that it doesn't matter what Israel does in the name of peace, or how much they give into the Palestinian demands, it is never enough. The other side always takes every concession as a sign of weakness and they attack us more.

What you see in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the suicide bombings, roadside bombs. and kidnappings, is what we live with. In fact, since the US invaded Iraq the second time, the rate of successful terrorist attacks here has gone way down.

There was a period of about 5 years when there were 3-4 successful suicide bombings a day here, and the targets were always civilian. One was actually at my son's school (the one who is now a soldier). He is a volunteer medic and was the first one at the scene.

When you read in the Book of Mormon about various groups teaching their children to hate the Nephites, this is exactly what they were talking about. Children are being taught hatred and blood lust at a very early age, and suicide-bomber training summer camps are even held yearly for kindergarten kids. It takes generations to end this kind of hatred, and the desire to do so. Unfortunately, the desire is sadly lacking.

I am going to try to get to sleep for a bit. Thanks for listening.

Ann Hansen Galilee, Israel

"...please forward this short paragraph of thanks to all those who responded so warmly to my appeal for their prayers. I am literally overwhelmed by the love and concern expressed by so many for people they have never met in this life, simply because I asked for their prayers. I have passed on these messages to the families of those involved, and we have cried together in joy and humility at the extent of your love. I thank you with all my heart. I was reading a verse in Alma that fit the situation:

. . . let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you. (Alma 34:27)

You have all certainly done this, and we are strengthened by it.

The situation here continues to deteriorate. The terrorists holding the kidnapped soldier have set a deadline which will expire in a few hours. If Israel does not release the terrorists they are holding, this young man will be murdered. If Israel does release prisoners, then it just sets the ground for more kidnappings. Most of the prisoners on the list (including the women and "children") are termed those "with blood on their hands", i.e., someone who has planned or participated in a terrorist attack which has targeted and killed Israeli or Jewish civilians. Gilad's family, especially his father, continue to hope and to pray for their son's return, but as the father says, time is not on their side. He is an incredible man. In a heart-breaking interview tonight when he was asked how he could remain so strong, he nearly broke down. His reply: "I have to be strong. My son needs me." I can't even imagine what they are going through tonight.

Ann,
Galilee, Israel

Ann's email (12th):

It is now 2:25 am and I am obviously not sleeping. Another name of a soldier killed today was just released. He was 19 years old and in Bryan's unit. He was killed while the unit was trying to rescue the crew of the tank hit by a missile this afternoon. All four members of the tank crew were killed.

Also, because the bodies were so badly burned, the forensics people have only just been able to identify the remains of those killed in the hummers this morning. It was at first thought that the Druze soldiers were kidnapped, but it now turns out that they were killed. The Hisballah had actually taken the body of one of them with them, but ditched it soon after because it was slowing them down.

As I said, they will even bargain with bodies, and allow the families to think their sons are alive. The two soldiers who were kidnapped are Jewish, from Nahariya and Kiryat Motskin, and were just completing their annual reserve duty. They are both in their 20s. All together, 8 Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting in the North today. The civilians on the border are still in bomb shelters.

Thank you for listening, and for your prayers.

Morning (13th):

I had meant to write earlier, but this is what has happened today. We woke up this morning to a literal rain of katushya rockets all along the Northern border. A woman in Nahariya was killed inside her house by a katushya, and about 25 others were injured. Extensive damage has been done in several places. The Nahariya hospital has evacuated the top floors (labor and delivery, ICU, pediatrics) and moved everything into the basement floors. Several katushyas have started brush fires, which are being fanned by strong winds. A fire on Mt. Meron is raging out of control. More than 10 rockets fell around Mt. Meron (there is an air force communications base on top).

What is even more disturbing is that the Hisballah are using a new type of katushya which can reach more than 20 miles, instead of the 5-mile range the old rockets had. So today for the first time katushyas fell on Sfat (where Spencer lives and I teach), Hatzor (where I used to live and work now, and where Yvonne lives), Mishmar HaYarden (where Michael's parents used to live), Kfar Hanassi, Rosh Pinna and Kibbutz Mahanaim. The security forces have drawn a line from Akko to Ammiad and asked everyone North of there to stay in the bomb shelters.

I just saw a picture on the news and one of the rockets that fell in Sfat fell on the building where my teacher's room is at the college. Another katushya fell on the wadi above our old apartment in Hatzor, and Mt. Canaan is on fire.

Israel destroyed the Beirut airport and most of the roads. Hisballa has said that if Israel continues to bomb Beirut, they will bomb Haifa.

I went up to Hatzor this afternoon and picked up Yvonne, Michael's sister. She will stay with us for the time being.

Until later,

Ann

One more email from MM, Ann in Galilee:

More developments. Just a short while ago we heard booms and just learned that an area close to us (just North of the Mount of Beattitudes) has now been hit with katushas. Haifa (the main city and port in the North) has also been hit with missiles, in the area of my missionary son's former base.

The authorities have just asked everyone in Haifa, Acco and all the places between to go down into bomb shelters. We have two families in Haifa, one with young children, and a young mother with a 2-week old baby in a neighboring community. I've called and checked with all of them. Tomorrow if it is necessary we will get Vika and her baby and bring them here to us.

We have a bomb shelter in the house, and we are in such a small community we probably won't be a target. It isn't safe to go tonight. We may end up having a slumber party with wall-to-wall people! I already picked up Michael's sister this afternoon and she is staying with us. She is partially blind. Several friends and church members in the Tel Aviv area have offered their homes to us as well.

I've been in contact with the families of all the soldiers. They have all heard from their soldiers and all are safe. I don't expect to hear from mine since he is probably in Southern Lebanon. In any event, we haven't heard from him and his phone is off, of course. It will be another sleepless night.

Ann in Galilee

Dear Betty,

Thank you for sending the article. I am not at all surprised by the Vatican's comments. The Vatican has always detested Israel and it was only under orders from the former Pope, John Paul II, that the Vatican even recognized Israel's existence. Israel became a nation in 1948 and the Vatican only recognized our existence in the year 2000, and that was only because the pope at that time was an exceptional human being. The current pope is nothing like him. Whereas John Paul II hid Jewish children and helped others to escape from Poland during World War II, the current pope was an active member of Hitler's Youth in Germany. The pope at the time of world war II actively collaborated with the Nazis. I don't expect the Vatican's opinion to change substantially.

If I were in a debate meet, I would point out that Israel is also a sovereign nation whose civilians were the targets of an unprovoked attack from forces outside of our borders, and have been for years. However, when it comes to world opinion Israel is always the nasty aggressor and never the victim. Much of the world have the mentality of Governor Boggs. My family survived him and we will survive this. (That sounded quite dramatic, didn't it!)

Just an update. First, we are in contact with all the branch members every day, with the exception of my son, of course. All are safe and we are still planning to have church meetings in the morning, unless something changes during the night.

Secondly, the rockets / missiles continue to fall. As of this afternoon, more than 800 missiles have fallen in Israel since Wednesday. (Please try to remember the words of the Vatican condemning attacks on civilians in sovereign countries, which naturally wouldn't apply in this case.) It will probably be well over 1,000 by the end of the sabbath tomorrow evening. More and more are falling farther South, and even our village was asked this afternoon to stay inside, close to our bomb-shelter rooms. It is just a precaution, but why take chances. Early this evening a missile fell into a house in the town of Meron, which is where our area council (like a county government) is. The grandmother and 5-year-old granddaughter were killed immediately, and several other family members injured.

The economic damage is considerable. Two major sources of income in the North are tourism and agriculture, both of which are impossible at the moment. This is going to be a very long, but necessary operation.

Thank you for your friendship, Betty and Karl. It has made a real difference to all of us here.

Ann in Galilee

Hi everyone,

First, condolences to Ann's sons for the trauma of losing a team mate. Even though he may never hear of this, (a colleague of mum's commiserating) I feel a stab of pain over every reported every death, as I know we all do.

Just to say that Flor phoned me immediately after the college was hit, and I turned on the TV pronto. There was Hevron (very photogentic I must say) giving a little speech; saying very dramatically that the library had been destroyed. Then we saw Nissim, Silvie (from Mador bechinot); Tsafie and Chaim from the office in front (opposite Rivkah's) and Mimi one of the librarians sitting in the back of an ambulance looking a little shocked with some blood on her arm. Remember what Andy Warhol said about being famous for 15 mins. Later on I got through to Rivkah who said that Chaim and Tsafie's office was damaged, as were the teachers' rooms on that side but "our" side wasn't. But the Katyusha evidently did land in the library. However everyone was in the shelter, I understand (so how did Mimi get her arm grazed?)

Back here on Malkiya we haven't had a katyusha fall (I suppose I should say 'yet'). There is a big battery of guns below us in Dishon which hammers away loudly, seemingly shooting right over our heads (the border is above us - well, here on the 'harhava kehilatit' we are on a hillside below the border). The theory seems to be that the Katyushas sail over our heads and fall lover down (though one fell very close for comfort in Avivim, the nextdoor moshav. There are also tanks stationed in various places around the kibbutz but I, being inherently lazy, have forgone my morning walk for the last 2 mornings out of sheer laziness so I haven't seen where the tanks are. Perhaps tomorrow I'll take a walk round the new kvish ma'arechet that goes down around the new section of the kibbutz (my section).

I am also taking this period of enforced inactivity to do gardening which I am enjoying immensely; having waited so long, I'm not going to let a war get in the way.

So while we wait this out team, lets send each other emails to say what we're doing to get through all of this. But Ann, please update your mailing list for Zefat - I noticed that Natalie and Sharon aren't on it. Finally, I've just heard on the evening news that Zahal knows that the hizbollah have missiles with a range of 150 km capable of reaching Tel Aviv. In view of the numerous invititations we're had to go down to the center, this sounds bizarrely ironic. Malkiya may well be the safest place iin the country - well okay, I'll concede that Eilat might be safer!

Keep in touch, all - may be a pleasant alternative to news overdoses.

Best to all,

Sandy.

Now a response from Ann:
----- Original Message -----
From: Ann
Subject: fun weekend?

Hello everyone. I just wanted to tell those of you who are a little closer to the news than they would like to be that I am thinking of you. We in Livnim were even told to go down into our bomb shelters this afternoon. At least mine is in my house. I understand that there is a steady exodus to the South, kind of like the first Gulf War in reverse.

By the way, my son is serving in Sandy's neighborhood and one of his men was killed trying to rerieve the bodies from the tank the other day. We haven't heard from Bryan and don't expect to. No news is good news in this case.

Seriously, eventhough there isn't anything of a concrete nature (I guess I was subconsciously thinking of concrete and the effect of katushas on it) I can do, you are all in my thoughts and prayers (there should be a good snort about this point from Sandy).

Keep well.

Ann

Hello everyone.

It has been an eventful day. First of all, my daughter managed to get through and talk to Bryan for a couple of minutes this afternoon. She said he sounded in good spirits. I didn't have the same luck, but at least we have had contact.

Well, today over 100 rockets fell on Israel, quite a few of them in our area. In the first couple of days the old katushyas were used, with a 20-pound war head and a range of about 5 miles. The holes they made on impact were about 2 feet in diameter. The ones being used now have a range of at least 40 miles, and Michael thinks the war head is about 65 pounds. As a former tank corp member and the one responsible for loading the shells, he knows his ordinance. If you watched the news at all yesterday or today, you will see that the hole they make is considerably larger than 2 feet. Today Carmiel, Margrar, Bet Jahn, Tuba-Zangaria, Amiad and a host of other places got hit. There were even a couple of places on the Northern Golan Heights which got hit (Ein Kenia, Merom Golan [by the bunkers and the Golan "key"], the Odem forest). Hatzor HaGlilit (where I work and where I used to live) got pounded. After the sabbath was over I called several friends. Someone's parked car got hit. One rocket fell on the street behind my old apartment (right in front of Mrs. Reinus's house, Eliana). Two more fell onto the house of the woman who took care of my three oldest children when they were in day care (Aliza Ben Zaken). Luckily she was in Jerusalem with her daughter, because there is almost nothing left of her house. She had started with two small rooms and has worked for 45 years to turn her house into a beautiful home. Now it is all gone, and it will be hard for her to start over again now that she is close to 70.

I spent the morning in church in Tiberius. We had quite a few people because the Bowden family have finished their assignment and are returning to Oregon soon. Scott is/was in the branch presidency and Tiffany is/was the YW president / teacher, so they needed to be released. We had a member of the district presidency, Brother Cox up from Jerusalem to do that. Michael and Anatole were called to replace Scott as counselors (it shows how much Scott did that it takes two men to replace him). After the meetings most everyone was upstairs preparing the monthly pot-luck supper, while I Yaron and I were downstairs while M and A were set apart. Towards the end of Anatole's blessing we heard two sharp, loud cracks, (like thunder, but much louder), the ground felt like it rolled, and the building started to shake. I was really praying the blessing would be over soon. Anyway, two rockets had landed about 2 blocks from the church building. Three more had landed nearby (they are fired in banks of 5 at a time). I had never imagined that Tiberius would ever be hit. Old timers said that the last time there was shelling in Tiberius was in 1970 by the Jordanians. For those of you who know Tiberius, one fell in the football stadium, another 3 just up the hill by the turn off to Kfar Hittim, and the fifth in a field by Kfar Hittim. We got everyone downstairs fast, put the children in the office (the most protected room), and President Whitehead offered a prayer. Afterwards the food got brought downstairs and we had our potluck in the chapel. Spencer had her emergency radio with her, which is what you would expect from a Relief Society president who has preached preparedness for as long as I have known her. About then we heard more booms close by and learned that another had fallen at the Mitspor restaurant on the hill above us, and another had hit a house. Luckily no one was home. We also heard lots of sirens. Everyone in the branch reacted a little differently, but it was beautiful to see the interaction between the members, and to watch how they tried to cheer each other up or calm them down.

After phoning the district president in Jerusalem, President Luthy, it was announced that those who wanted to could go and stay in Jerusalem at the BYU Center. In addition to the empty dorm rooms, there is a huge bomb shelter which can house a couple of hundred people. In the end, everyone who lives in Tiberius, except for Ulyssia, decided to go. The Cox were very patient in waiting for everyone to pack, then took them back down in the transit van to Jerusalem.The Sitonins and the Whiteheads drove down later. Vitali was in a truck that got hit broadside a couple of days ago. He now has a broken leg and both arms are quite cut up, so he can't use crutches yet. He is also about 6'5", so Anatole thought that it would be best if he were somewhere where he could get help if needed. Luba, Vika and Leor (her baby) are also now in Jerusalem. President Luthy was wonderful through it all. Spencer decided to stay in the building at least for tonight. We decided to stay at home, because we already have a bombshelter, the trip to Jerusalem is really hard physically on Michael, and I wanted someone to be home if Bryan ever gets off for a few hours. On our way home the police boat was even chasing everyone off the beaches. During the afternoon and early evening more rockets hit, a couple in the street behind the chapel and the rest in the neighborhood. If you see on the news a white multi-storied building with blue curved balconies, that building is very close to the Whiteheads' apartment. They have also been showing a house with fancy furniture which was destroyed by a rocket. That is also in the neighborhood of the chapel. Spencer said that in the aftenoon blast the windows at the back of the chapel (mainly in the kitchen) broke. This evening the Pagoda Chinese restaurant also got hit. It is down on the lake front next to the Lido and Decks.

Planes and helicopters have been flying low overhead most of the afternoon and still are now (it's 4:30 am). Also late in the evening I heard fairly regular booms for a few hours. The Defense Ministry has now officially declared a state of military emergency, which gives different government and military bodies the authority to close down businesses, schools, etc. and decide who needs to go to bomb shelters. They have already said that all summer camps and summer school activities for children will cease as of the morning, at least in the North (which now means from Haifa - Tiberius North). You probably also saw that one of our naval ships off the coast of Lebanon was hit by a drone loaded with explosives. One body was found, but three others are still missing. Israel has said that the type of missile used is produced and operated by Iranian military personnel.

So, that was our day. I expect Haifa to get hit again, as well as Tel Aviv. It will probably be tomorrow late morning, since it will be at about the time when most people will have just gotten to work and therefore provide lots of targets. I hope I am wrong. At least we are all still safe and sound.

Thank you for your continued prayers.

Ann

I am so sorry for making everyone worry even more than they already are. They place where we live is actually still pretty safe, although the rockets are falling closer and closer to where we live, and we can hear the booms throughout most of the day and evening. The planes and helicopters we hear all the time. I was talking to one of our members, whose house is on a rise above the main air force base where the planes take off to Lebanon. As of Sunday the AF had flown over one thousand missions, which also means one thousand landings. She says she is going deaf! And as much as I agree that these bombings need to happen, I still can't help thinking what it must be like for the mothers in Lebanon who are on the receiving end. How all of this must be breaking our Father's heart. This same member came from Argentina 3 years ago and has two sons serving, one in the West Bank (although he might have been moved this week), and one as a driver. She grew up in the Argentina of Peron, where the army had similar connotations to the Nazi SS, and where tens of thousands of civilians (including from their families) routinely disappeared and never returned home. Gloria and her husband are both profoundly anti-war, etc., and never allowed their sons to play with anything that even remotely resembled a war tool. They know that the army here is very different than what they grew up with, and that it is necessary for our survival, but Oligario (Gloria's husband) told me that everytime he sees one of his sons in uniform, his stomach instinctively clenches. This is hard on them, but they are doing remarkably well with everything.

As to our soldiers -- First of all, one of the reasons I didn't write yesterday was that yesterday evening I heard the dog barking, and looked around to see Bryan walking through the door. It was heaven to be able to hug him again! He looked scruffy and very tired, and as usual he had his gun and more than the normal number of clips with him. He told us that the artillery unit down the road was deafening them, and made another comment about "this mess", but other than that he didn't talk about anything army-related. He was definitely in shut-down mode. He didn't even want us to call his sister in the US. They are very close and she has a way of ferreting out of him exactly what is going on. So we fed him and did his laundry and made brownies (plus another batch to take back to his men today), and let him have the computer. He spent a lot of time planning his next overnight hike (he loves nature and frequently goes hiking on the Golan when he is on leave). And special thanks to you, Mary Abbot. Within minutes of getting home he honed in on the boxes of Mac and Cheese which you left us. They are hard to get here in the North and they are one of his favorite foods. (Yes, mac and cheese is a luxury item. I've even bought them for his birthday, he likes them so much.) It was the first thing he ate, and he did it with a huge smile! Bless you. He went back this morning. Leonardo is now in officer training school, so he is away from the action for a couple of months. He would only be called up if the situation in Gaza gets to desperation point. German (pronounced Herr - man) is driving in the North, so he could be in areas which are being hit, but he is alright. Fausto and Alex are also okay. This, folks, is the result of your prayers. As parents yourselves, you know how much their safety means to us. There are not words to thank you enough.

The rest of our members are safe. Most are still in the BYU Center, although one young mother took her baby and returned home yesterday afternoon. I advised against it, but she wanted to go home. Sister Spencer also returned to Sfat, which is getting hit several times a day. She said she felt that she needed to be in Sfat, but doesn't know why. As someone who tries to follow promptings myself, I can't argue with her. Sfat has been pounded. One rocket fell through my classroom at the college, made its way to the offices and test archives on the floor beneath, and continued on to the basement to explode in the library, which was totally ruined. Luckily the two librarians had stepped out to go pick up something from the post office. This building was built by the British during the Mandate period (in the 1930s), and had just been remodeld and reopened this school year. Other missiles have fallen on the Immigrant Absorption Center, several stores and a factory, and a few apartment buildings. The news was interviewing one old man who was quite a character. He said that he and his wife were in the protected room, but one boom sounded very close. His wife started to panic, so they decided to go to the community bomb shelter. He couldn't find his cell phone, so he started looking room to room. When he opened the door of his workshop he was greeted with a huge fire, and the remains of a rocket! In his words, "At that point my wife went from panic to hysteria!" Another rocket hit the air-conditioning plant of the area hospital where all my children were born. It was a miracle that the hospital itself wasn't hit.

The towns around are also getting hit. Hatzor, where I work and used to live, has taken a beating. More than a third of the population has left. I think the rest would like to but don't have anywhere to go. The other day 5 buses were brought in to evacuate senior citizens and families with young children. They were taken to the center of the country. I am in contact with friends, and have been trying to call at least once most of my students. On the first day Hatzor was hit, two katushas fell into the house of the woman who used to take care of my children in day care. In the days since, rockets have fallen on the street behind my old apartment, the yard of the mayor, two other houses, and in several roads. Luckily the personal injuries have been light so far.

Haifa and Nahariya have not been so lucky. One of the things that has happened is that the smaller katusha rockets can't reach that far, so heavier missiles are being used, so the damage is greater. In fact, one of the missiles that Israel found in Lebanon and blew up was a scud-type. In addition, those preparing the missiles and rockets are employing the same tactics that the suicide bombers use. They add a huge amount of steel ball bearings (the suicide bombers also add bolts and nails) to the pay load, so in addition to the regular shrapnel you are hit with the bearings, like getting hit with shotgun pellets at high speed. The damage is multiplied. The other day an apartment building was hit. Many apartments have a breezeway on the groundfloor level, with the apartments starting on the level above. In this case, the missile / rocket went directly into the second floor apartment. The floor of the apartment above collapsed, and the ceiling of the apartment below collapsed. The whole corner section of this building was gone. In the midst of all this devastation, in the upstairs apartment the curtains were still intact, the clock on the wall was still ticking, the ceiling light still hung, and the chairs were still neatly aligned around the dining table, although there was no floor next to them. The chairs and table still survived in the first floor apartment as well. On the second floor, which was nothing but rubble, two beautiful red blossoms still survived in a flower pot which had been in the window sill. It looked like a Dali painting.

On Sunday morning already all ships were asked to leave the port of Haifa and head out for open sea for the time being. Some missiles have fallen into the Mediterranean. That may actually be a good thing. Before the war started we had a jelly fish invasion, so the beaches couldn't be used anyway. Maybe the missiles will get rid of the jellyfish! I have never seen the port so deserted. Besides being one of the busiest ports in Israel, Haifa is also a liberty port for the US navy. Until the second invasion of Iraq, we used to get a lot of ships in from the 6th fleet especially, but they are now in the Persian gulf. It was fun to meet the LDS sailors, either on board ship or to have them in our home. We also got to go out on several ships. My kids remember especially the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. We had to ferry out in a highspeed boat which looked like a giant rowboat, which was in itself exciting. We got the royal tour of the ship, and then there was special treat for the kids. Some of the LDS sailors on board had enough ranking and pull to arrange for the SEALS on board to give the boys (and my daughter too) a special tour and explanation of their equipment and the kinds of operations they did. The adults were asked to stay behind for security reasons. My children and those of our friends in the Tel Aviv branch were thrilled, as you can imagine. On another ship the cook gave the children slices of the freshly baked sheet cake, and the marines fed them red hots (something they had never had before, but loved) and other American candy. We also once had to church General Young (a descendant of Brigham) and about 20 sailors and marines. In those days my husband was the only priesthood holder. It was really beautiful to watch the black sailor with about 20 years in the navy bless the sacrament while the marine general passed it. They were the last group out of Somalia in the 90s. But I digress.

In addition to the fighting in Gaza and the North, we still have to contend with terrorist attacks in the cities. A terrorist was intercepted in Jerusalem the other day. He was within two blocks of his target, and had about 10 kilos of explosives in his bag. A load of 5 kilos is enough to kill about 30 people. Another terrorist attacked a female soldier in the Negev desert. He had a butcher knife and was trying to force her into a car, but she managed to fight him off. She was cut in several places, and he was later caught. This morning there are roadblocks in the Tel Aviv area and a massive search. Security forces received specific information on another terrorist in the area. These are all things that we contend with on a regular basis, but in conjunction with the intensity of the fighting and the rockets, it is stretching resources, and our nerves.

Two of the major supermarket chains are sponsoring summer camps in the center of the country for children from the North. Our area council is also organizing trips to water parks and sports centers for the children, as long as they are accompanied by a parent. The government-owned children's channel is also broadcasting from different bombshelters in the North, and one of our famous singers in going from bombshelter to bombshelter giving concerts. Hotels in the Tel Aviv area are offering 45 - 65% discounts to residents of the North, and have organized activities for residents of the North. Several families have offered to host others from the North. That is the good side of Israel. On the other hand, the hotels in Eilat, the resort city in the South near the Red Sea, have raised their prices by 20-40%. And people are paying it.

Part of the reason I haven't written is that the rockets are now hitting closer to us, on the Southern Golan, Tiberius and into the Sea of Galilee. My youngest son suffers from extreme anxiety anyway, and hearing the booms so close has increased the problem. He has needed a lot more attention from us. Last Thursday I was also supposed to pick up his medication for this month, but I haven't been able to get it yet. All things considered, I think we he is handling things quite well.

As for what happens next, more of the same, at least for a couple of days. I still think that Tel Aviv will get hit, probably on Friday before the Jewish sabbath starts. The UN sent a delegation here yesterday. Hisballah immediately rejected our offer, as we did theirs. There has also been talk of deploying UN intervention troops in Southern Lebanon, but everyone seems to have forgotten that the UN has had troops in Lebanon since the 1970's. We see how effective that has been. Of course, the fact that they are not allowed to use their weapons may have some bearing on how much the warring parties fear them. Israel has suggested that the Lebanese army move into South Lebanon instead, which is actually quite logical considering that they are supposed to be the defense forces of the nation. We didn't get much response. As a friend put it, Hisballa has kidnapped a nation. Yesterday Iran held a huge military parade, with children dressed as bombers and the army marching in the formation of arrows and rockets. Iran has said that they will support the Hisballah in attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets around the world.

And on another note, other victims of the war have been the farmers, who either can't get to their fields, or who have no markets to sell their crops. And many of the families who have left home and gone South have left behind their pets, who are wandering the streets. On a lighter note, yesterday a goat from Lebanon wandered over the border into Israel, but was eventually returned to his side of the border, and hopefully his goatherd.

Our dear sweet teenage volunteers have just called to tell us that in a short while the army's music and entertainment corp will be doing a performance here in our village, so we will get ready and go up. This spirit of brotherhood in times of emergency is one of the things I love about Israel. I thank you for your brotherhood as well.

Ann

I am so sorry for making everyone worry even more than they already are. The place where we live is actually still pretty safe, although the rockets are falling closer and closer to where we live, and we can hear the booms throughout most of the day and evening. The planes and helicopters we hear all the time.

I was talking to one of our LDS members, whose house is on a rise above the main air force base where the planes take off to Lebanon. As of Sunday the AF had flown over one thousand missions, which also means one thousand landings. She says she is going deaf! And as much as I agree that these bombings need to happen, I still can't help thinking what it must be like for the mothers in Lebanon who are on the receiving end. How all of this must be breaking our Father's heart.

This same member came from Argentina 3 years ago and has two sons serving, one in the West Bank (although he might have been moved this week), and one as a driver. She grew up in the Argentina of Peron, where the army had similar connotations to the Nazi SS, and where tens of thousands of civilians (including from their families) routinely disappeared and never returned home. Gloria and her husband are both profoundly anti-war, etc., and never allowed their sons to play with anything that even remotely resembled a war tool. They know that the army here is very different than what they grew up with, and that it is necessary for our survival, but Oligario (Gloria's husband) told me that everytime he sees one of his sons in uniform, his stomach instinctively clenches. This is hard on them, but they are doing remarkably well with everything.

As to our soldiers -- First of all, one of the reasons I didn't write yesterday was that yesterday evening I heard the dog barking, and looked around to see Bryan walking through the door. It was heaven to be able to hug him again! He looked scruffy and very tired, and as usual he had his gun and more than the normal number of clips with him. He told us that the artillery unit down the road was deafening them, and made another comment about "this mess", but other than that he didn't talk about anything army-related. He was definitely in shut-down mode. He didn't even want us to call his sister in the US. They are very close and she has a way of ferreting out of him exactly what is going on. So we fed him and did his laundry and made brownies (plus another batch to take back to his men today), and let him have the computer. He spent a lot of time planning his next overnight hike (he loves nature and frequently goes hiking on the Golan when he is on leave).

And special thanks to you, Mary Abbot. Within minutes of getting home he honed in on the boxes of Mac and Cheese which you left us. They are hard to get here in the North and they are one of his favorite foods. (Yes, mac and cheese is a luxury item. I've even bought them for his birthday, he likes them so much.) It was the first thing he ate, and he did it with a huge smile! Bless you. He went back this morning.

Leonardo is now in officer training school, so he is away from the action for a couple of months. He would only be called up if the situation in Gaza gets to desperation point. German (pronounced Herr - man) is driving in the North, so he could be in areas which are being hit, but he is alright. Fausto and Alex are also okay. This, folks, is the result of your prayers. As parents yourselves, you know how much their safety means to us. There are not words to thank you enough.

The rest of our members are safe. Most are still in the BYU Center, although one young mother took her baby and returned home yesterday afternoon. I advised against it, but she wanted to go home. Sister Spencer also returned to Sfat, which is getting hit several times a day. She said she felt that she needed to be in Sfat, but doesn't know why. As someone who tries to follow promptings myself, I can't argue with her. Sfat has been pounded. One rocket fell through my classroom at the college, made its way to the offices and test archives on the floor beneath, and continued on to the basement to explode in the library, which was totally ruined. Luckily the two librarians had stepped out to go pick up something from the post office. This building was built by the British during the Mandate period (in the 1930s), and had just been remodeld and reopened this school year. Other missiles have fallen on the Immigrant Absorption Center, several stores and a factory, and a few apartment buildings. The news was interviewing one old man who was quite a character. He said that he and his wife were in the protected room, but one boom sounded very close. His wife started to panic, so they decided to go to the community bomb shelter. He couldn't find his cell phone, so he started looking room to room. When he opened the door of his workshop he was greeted with a huge fire, and the remains of a rocket! In his words, "At that point my wife went from panic to hysteria!" Another rocket hit the air-conditioning plant of the area hospital where all my children were born. It was a miracle that the hospital itself wasn't hit.

The towns around are also getting hit. Hatzor, where I work and used to live, has taken a beating. More than a third of the population has left. I think the rest would like to but don't have anywhere to go. The other day 5 buses were brought in to evacuate senior citizens and families with young children. They were taken to the center of the country. I am in contact with friends, and have been trying to call at least once most of my students. On the first day Hatzor was hit, two katushas fell into the house of the woman who used to take care of my children in day care. In the days since, rockets have fallen on the street behind my old apartment, the yard of the mayor, two other houses, and in several roads. Luckily the personal injuries have been light so far.

Haifa and Nahariya have not been so lucky. One of the things that has happened is that the smaller katusha rockets can't reach that far, so heavier missiles are being used, so the damage is greater. In fact, one of the missiles that Israel found in Lebanon and blew up was a scud-type. In addition, those preparing the missiles and rockets are employing the same tactics that the suicide bombers use. They add a huge amount of steel ball bearings (the suicide bombers also add bolts and nails) to the pay load, so in addition to the regular shrapnel you are hit with the bearings, like getting hit with shotgun pellets at high speed. The damage is multiplied. The other day an apartment building was hit. Many apartments have a breezeway on the groundfloor level, with the apartments starting on the level above. In this case, the missile / rocket went directly into the second floor apartment. The floor of the apartment above collapsed, and the ceiling of the apartment below collapsed. The whole corner section of this building was gone. In the midst of all this devastation, in the upstairs apartment the curtains were still intact, the clock on the wall was still ticking, the ceiling light still hung, and the chairs were still neatly aligned around the dining table, although there was no floor next to them. The chairs and table still survived in the first floor apartment as well. On the second floor, which was nothing but rubble, two beautiful red blossoms still survived in a flower pot which had been in the window sill. It looked like a Dali painting.

On Sunday morning already all ships were asked to leave the port of Haifa and head out for open sea for the time being. Some missiles have fallen into the Mediterranean. That may actually be a good thing. Before the war started we had a jelly fish invasion, so the beaches couldn't be used anyway. Maybe the missiles will get rid of the jellyfish! I have never seen the port so deserted. Besides being one of the busiest ports in Israel, Haifa is also a liberty port for the US navy. Until the second invasion of Iraq, we used to get a lot of ships in from the 6th fleet especially, but they are now in the Persian gulf. It was fun to meet the LDS sailors, either on board ship or to have them in our home. We also got to go out on several ships. My kids remember especially the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. We had to ferry out in a highspeed boat which looked like a giant rowboat, which was in itself exciting. We got the royal tour of the ship, and then there was special treat for the kids. Some of the LDS sailors on board had enough ranking and pull to arrange for the SEALS on board to give the boys (and my daughter too) a special tour and explanation of their equipment and the kinds of operations they did. The adults were asked to stay behind for security reasons. My children and those of our friends in the Tel Aviv branch were thrilled, as you can imagine. On another ship the cook gave the children slices of the freshly baked sheet cake, and the marines fed them red hots (something they had never had before, but loved) and other American candy. We also once had to church General Young (a descendant of Brigham) and about 20 sailors and marines. In those days my husband was the only priesthood holder. It was really beautiful to watch the black sailor with about 20 years in the navy bless the sacrament while the marine general passed it. They were the last group out of Somalia in the 90s. But I digress.

In addition to the fighting in Gaza and the North, we still have to contend with terrorist attacks in the cities. A terrorist was intercepted in Jerusalem the other day. He was within two blocks of his target, and had about 10 kilos of explosives in his bag. A load of 5 kilos is enough to kill about 30 people. Another terrorist attacked a female soldier in the Negev desert. He had a butcher knife and was trying to force her into a car, but she managed to fight him off. She was cut in several places, and he was later caught. This morning there are roadblocks in the Tel Aviv area and a massive search. Security forces received specific information on another terrorist in the area. These are all things that we contend with on a regular basis, but in conjunction with the intensity of the fighting and the rockets, it is stretching resources, and our nerves.

Two of the major supermarket chains are sponsoring summer camps in the center of the country for children from the North. Our area council is also organizing trips to water parks and sports centers for the children, as long as they are accompanied by a parent. The government-owned children's channel is also broadcasting from different bombshelters in the North, and one of our famous singers in going from bombshelter to bombshelter giving concerts. Hotels in the Tel Aviv area are offering 45 - 65 0iscounts to residents of the North, and have organized activities for residents of the North. Several families have offered to host others from the North. That is the good side of Israel. On the other hand, the hotels in Eilat, the resort city in the South near the Red Sea, have raised their prices by 20-40 and people are paying it.

Part of the reason I haven't written is that the rockets are now hitting closer to us, on the Southern Golan, Tiberius and into the Sea of Galilee. My youngest son suffers from extreme anxiety anyway, and hearing the booms so close has increased the problem. He has needed a lot more attention from us. Last Thursday I was also supposed to pick up his medication for this month, but I haven't been able to get it yet. All things considered, I think we he is handling things quite well.

As for what happens next, more of the same, at least for a couple of days. I still think that Tel Aviv will get hit, probably on Friday before the Jewish sabbath starts. The UN sent a delegation here yesterday. Hisballah immediately rejected our offer, as we did theirs. There has also been talk of deploying UN intervention troops in Southern Lebanon, but everyone seems to have forgotten that the UN has had troops in Lebanon since the 1970's. We see how effective that has been. Of course, the fact that they are not allowed to use their weapons may have some bearing on how much the warring parties fear them. Israel has suggested that the Lebanese army move into South Lebanon instead, which is actually quite logical considering that they are supposed to be the defense forces of the nation. We didn't get much response. As a friend put it, Hisballa has kidnapped a nation. Yesterday Iran held a huge military parade, with children dressed as bombers and the army marching in the formation of arrows and rockets. Iran has said that they will support the Hisballah in attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets around the world.

And on another note, other victims of the war have been the farmers, who either can't get to their fields, or who have no markets to sell their crops. And many of the families who have left home and gone South have left behind their pets, who are wandering the streets. On a lighter note, yesterday a goat from Lebanon wandered over the border into Israel, but was eventually returned to his side of the border, and hopefully his goatherd.

Our dear sweet teenage volunteers have just called to tell us that in a short while the army's music and entertainment corp will be doing a performance here in our village, so we will get ready and go up. This spirit of brotherhood in times of emergency is one of the things I love about Israel. I thank you for your brotherhood as well.

Ann in Galilee, Israel

The Israeli news just reported that it was actually 2 Apache helicopters which somehow hit each other. Two are dead, and the injured were taken to hospital. Ten years ago we had two large troop -carrying choppers flying soldiers into Lebanon. They got a little too close to each other and their rotors touched. Both choppers crashed and all the soldiers were burned to death. I still remember driving home that night and seeing all the flares in the sky. Since that time the air force has changed the flight formation pattern so that this won't happen again.

I would imagine that the pilots were probably both exhausted -- the AF has been flying non-stop for 8 days now -- and the sky was full of katushyot as well. Helicopters are still continuing to fly overhead. I wonder how their pilots must feel, knowing that two of their colleagues have just been killed and the wreckage is below them. We also had 3 more soldiers killed in the ground fighting today. Tomorrow will be worse, I think.

Ann
1:30 am

This will be very short today. For the past two days there has been more of the same, which means more shelling. After more than a week, the Hezbollah has honed their aim and are much more accurate with where the rockets and missiles hit. The damage also seems to be much greater. We have had both civiilians and soldiers killed. Today more than 150 rockets fell on the North. Many of the people in the bombshelters of the places hit the most and the hardest, like Nahariya and Sfat, are complaining of running out of food and medicine. In a beautiful gesture, a produce supplier from an Arab village near Nahariya took a whole truckload of fresh fruit and vegetables to be distributed in Nahariya. It was his contribution to raising morale.

Another problem is that of the brushfires. Many of the rockets fall in fields, which are always dry at this time of year. There are fires everywhere, and the firemen are working flat out, but there is always more to do. On Thursday I went to volunteer at a "kindergarten" which some of the women here have organized in the village. We had gathered the children together and were talking about saying thank you to the soldiers, and what they would tell them if they were here. There were some interesting statements, like please make it not so loud, and please make it end, and please be safe, and lots of things about heroes. One boy raised his hand and reminded us that the firemen were also heroes doing important work. His father is the best fireman in the North, according to my soldier son who did a lot of shifts with him while volunteering as a medic with the emergency services, and has been up on the border fighting fires since this started.

Israel has started sending in units to clean out the bunkers and positions in Southern Lebanon. The troops are special forces and paratroopers, so I am assuming my son is among them. We have had no contact with him since he was home last week. In the village captured yesterday, a woman my age and her son were injured, so the Israeli army took them both for care to the hospital in Sfat. I couldn't help wondering if her son hadn't been born in Sfat, since during the period that Israel occupied Southern Lebanon the Lebanese were allowed to cross the border and come to Israel for medical care, until Israel built two hospitals and trained the necessary staff. I know that when my oldest son (the missionary) was born in 1984, the Sfat hospital was full of Lebanese patients, especially the maternity ward. We have also lifted the naval blockade so that humanitarian supplies can get through, but there are so many people who need help.

I expect that this state will continue for a long time.

I want to thank all of you who responded to the request for the video tape. And I would like to especially thank the person who brought over the macaroni and cheese for my son! It was above and beyond the call of duty. Bless you all for being such good people. It gives us all hope.

Happy Pioneer Day, and I feel for you in the horrible heat wave you are experiencing. Be well.

Ann

How are you doing? The news we hear is not good. This is an awful situation. Last night we watched a short news special on terrorists, who they are, and what they want. They are truly the Gadianton Robbers of today. In fact, I don't know if it is possible, but could they be worse than those who destroyed so much in the BofM times? People lived in constant fear of them.

Ann's reply is below...

Betty Pearson, Lehi UT, LDS Missionary Moms Listowner

----- Original Message -----
From: Ann Hansen
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 10:35 AM

In answer to your question, I believe that Hisballah, Hamas and al-Quaida are fast approaching the status of the Gadiantons. When we pulled out of Lebanon 6 years ago there was a picture on the front page of busloads of young Lebanese children being shipped to the border as part of a Hisballah-sponsored summer camp. When they got to the border the children were provided with bags of stones and toy rockets to throw over the border fence at the Israelis. It went perfectly with my Bof M lesson that week, which dealt with the Lamanites teaching their children to hate. Terrorism gains power by the use of terror, and it doesn't matter who the victims are. Michael has horrific stories about the victims from his time in the army. The reason that first the PLO, and now Hisballah, have gained such a foothold in Southern Lebanon is because the residents were too frightened to stop them. It reminds me of how the mafia worked in the US during the 50s and 60s. A lot of what they do is evil for the sake of evil. They revel in blood. About four years ago two 11-year-old boys were kidnapped while hiking, and then were tortured to death over a period of days. Months later when the torturers were caught, they admitted that they had done it as part of their initiation into Hamas. The stories go on and on. The only way to deal with terrorists is to destroy them. It is just a pity that more people do not understand that. You cannot be nice to them. You cannot negotiate with them. Your cannot appeal to their feelings. By the way, the Vatican has now castigated the US for not forcing Israel to give in to the Hisballah's demands.

Today has been a bit tough. The stress is beginning to tell on all of us, and the lack of sleep doesn't help. And just after I finished writing the update for today, the Israeli news showed pictures and gave a short biography on each of our soldiers who were killed the last two days. Some were killed on Wednesday, and some on Tuesday. Their bodies just couldn't be retrieved or taken behind the lines before then. Many of them have brothers and fathers who are serving in Lebanon right now as well. Many, like my son, are / were due to be released soon. One was to be released next Sunday, and wasn't scheduled to go into Lebanon because of that. He said that he was a part of the squad, his friends needed his help, and he wasn't going to leave them. Then Fox News showed a segment which was filmed early this morning using a night scope. Mike Tobin, whom I respect as a reporter, was reporting from the area where my son is now. His first sentence was, "The first thing that you notice here is the stench of death. It is obvious that a horrible battle is taking place." I can't even imagine what it must be like for them.

Thanks for listening.

Ann

Yesterday we had over 150 ketushas fall on the North, as well as those being fired by the Palestinians from Gaza. There are more and more missiles being used as well -- longer range, more accurate, cause lots more damage. I live in a relatively quiet area, yet we got several close by yesterday. This morning there was a period of 45 minutes when we heard the booms every few seconds. The rest of the day it has averaged about 2 - 3 an hour. As of Tuesday at least 1,450 rockets had fallen on Israel, all on civilian targets. Not bad for 14 days of fighting. The local news just reported that in the last hour katusha landed in Carmiel, Majd 'l Krum, Tiberius,Marar (where the girl was killed this week), Sfat, Rosh Pina, Maalot, Shlomi, and K. Shomna. In Kiryat Shmona rockets fell directly on 6 houses; luckily the homeowners were in the bomb shelters. Another fell on a "dangerous target" and started a big fire. As of today, cities have been hit 350 times by rockets (the rest fell in open areas), 19 people have been killed and 1,300 injured. The hospitals are full of injured, soldiers and civilians. All of the hospitals in the North are in areas which are getting hit regularly.

On the nicer side, we had a pleasant surprise yesterday. The local radio station paid for one of our residents, a professional clown and party organizer, to organize something for the children. She had the kids (and the adults) well occupied and laughing for almost 2-1/2 hours. Then at the end two delivery trucks pulled up. One of the big banks has its management from the center of the country driving to different locations in the North and delivering care packages. I like the idea that they aren't just paying for it, but having their senior management actually doing the work. Each child received an age-appropriate bag filled not only with snack foods, but also with a book, a crossword book or toy, writing materials and a DVD. If that weren't enough, each family got a big box of food and a nice cake. They also brought new fans for all of the public bombshelters and buildings, plus lots of extra mattresses (our mattresses are made of foam rubber and look like thick gym mattresses) for the shelters. It was a real lift to our spirits.

They've just shown the pictures and read a short biography of each of the 9 soldiers killed yesterday. Many of them had brothers and / or fathers serving in Lebanon at the same time, most of them were called up to do emergency reserve duty. At least I only have to worry about one family member. I can't imagine what it would be like to have my husband and 2 or more sons serving at the same time. All things considered, we have been very blessed.

I thank you for your prayers and letters. If more people had hearts like yours, there would be a lot fewer conflicts in the world. Hug your family members and keep safe.

Ann

Michael and I had a very rude awakening this morning, literally. There was a huge thump, and a distinct change in the air. It is hard to explain, but everything was more intense somehow. Even the sound was different than the normal boom. A few minutes later someone who lives in a village on the next rise South of us called in to say he had seen the smoke a landing rocket makes in a field about 2 kilometers North of him - in other words, close to us. About ten minutes later the rural police patrol came very slowly down my street, looked around for several minutes, then backed up and went to the upper end of my street and did the same thing. My street, which is actually a dead-end street connecting 8 houses, is the last one in the village. I am surrounded on two sides by fields. That just confirmed our impression that this one fell very close.

Because Sec. Rice is here to work out an agreement, I think things will heat up a lot this week. Yesterday we started getting hits in our area at about 2 pm. They usually go on for about 4 hours. However, we were hearing the booms every few minutes, some of them close enough to vibrate the house a little. This went on for over 13 hours. I heard the last one about 3:30 in the morning. The area around Tiberius got hit hard, including two factories, some houses and the road from Tiberius to Golani junction, for those who know the area. Afula also got hit with another missile, not a rocket. Needless to say, we did not hold church meetings for the second week in a row. When the rockets started I happened to be reading in the Book of Mormon in Alma 43. I found that verses 7-9, 13-14, 30, 45-47 had gained new meaning for me.

Last Friday we got hit hard all across the North. The big regional hospital in Nahariya took a hit on the top floor which also caused a lot of damage. Luckily, on the first day of the war this hospital moved all above-ground wards to the basement levels, so there were no injured. This hospital sits very close to the border. Nahariya has been the victim of terrorist attacks for decades, and has also been the victim of katushas for over 30 years. When the new building was built about 10 years ago, the director insisted that it be built so that the entire hospital could move underground if necessary. His precautions have saved a lot of lives. Many of the hospital staff have actually moved into the hospital with their families for the duration.

Already by 7:30 this morning 15 ketushas had hit Kiriyat Shmoneh. One of them fell inside a mall and did a lot of damage. It is just lucky that no one was inside at the time. I am still hearing occasional thuds, but they should increase about 2 this afternoon.

As to our branch members, Spencer is still in Sfat. She says she would now be willing to leave (Sfat gets close to 20 rockets every day), but that she is apprehensive about the drive out. She has a point. Still, she calls all the members every evening, and does what she can with volunteering in the city. She is one tough lady. Our Romanian member Angela is still in Nahariya (she takes care of an elderly woman), but hopes to go back to Romania soon. Our 3 Phillipino ladies (Flora, Beverly and Leah) are all in areas getting hit. They are also care-givers, and all have children and husbands back home in the Phillipines. Ulysia and Anatole are still in Tiberius, working. Ulysia's daughter Anna (12) is being taken care of by one of the couples in the BYU Center. Anatole's wife and daughter are living in Canada, and his younger son Nicky is in the Center with his grandfather. Sonia is still in Upper Nazareth, which has been hit a couple of times. Her grandson Leonardo was pulled out of officer training and is with his tank group in Gaza now. Gloria is still in Migdal HaEmek, but may go to her daughter in Tel Aviv this week. Her nerves are shot, especially from the noise of the air force base nearby. Her son Fausto is still serving in Hebron, and her older son German is a truck driver for the army in the North. The Rivkins live farther South and are not within range of the rockets being used up till now. Their son Alexei is serving in Sfat. Mary Kahn is in Utah with my daughter (thank heavens for the Powells), her mother is in Canada with Mary's father, and her grandmother Reisa is in the BYU Center. The Whiteheads (our service couple) went back to Canada today for two weeks. This is a necessary visa-trip and was planned weeks ago. The Schegalovas (Anna and her 3 duaghters) have gone back to Russia. I didn't get to talk to them before they left, so I don't know if this is permanent or temporary.

My son Bryan called us on Friday afternoon. His unit had been pulled back across the border for 48 hours of R & R before going back Saturday night. He was in excellent spirits. Some of the kibbutzim (collective farming settlements) on the Northern border had taken them in and pampered them with swimming pools, sports facilities, telephones, and homemade goodies from everyone old enough to cook. He said they were being treated like kings. He was really touched by the attention they got from the civilians. I slept really well that night. Thank you for all your prayers. They are obviously being heard.

And before I close, I just wanted to share with you some of the things I have been thinking about this week.

Two of our three hospitals in the North have now been hit by rockets. As far as I know, Israel hasn't hit any hospitals in Lebanon, and certainly hasn't tried to. There have also been reports of severe shortages of medical supplies in the Lebanese hospitals. Israel's hospitals have been building up reserves for years. The Lebanese have the same problems we do, and have some extremely rich citizens who could help. Why hasn't Lebanon built up a reserve of medical supplies as Israel has done? By the way, during the 18 years that Israel was in Southern Lebanon, the border was always open for the Lebanese to cross the border and receive free medical care in Israel. (When my oldest was born, the majority of patients were Lebanese.) Then Israel started training Lebanese medical personnel in Israeli universities and hospitals. Next, Israel built and equipped 3 entire hospitals in Southern Lebanon and staffed them with Israeli medical personnel until the point when the Lebanese staff were ready to take over. These hospitals are still standing and still in use.

Next, Israeli has been building bombshelters since the 1950's. Since the 1990 Gulf War there has been a law stating that every new house and building has to have a bombshelter in it. My son uses our bombshelter as his bedroom. Lebanon has been almost entirely rebuilt in the last few years. Why haven't they done the same?

Citizens in central and Southern Israel are opening their homes to perfect strangers from the North. Are Lebanese citizens doing the same? Since the third day of the war Israel has maintained open supply lines for emergency relief to get into Lebanon. Also, for more than a week they have coordinated with the Jordanians so that the Jordanian air force can bring in a cargo plane full of humantitarian supplies to Beirut each day. If the Jordanians, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, can send humanitarian relief, why can't the other Moslem countries in the area? Last, when you next see a broadcast by Nisralla (Hisballa's leader), pay attention to the flags behind him. The yellow flag is Hisballa's; the red flag with the cedar tree is Lebanon's. The symbol on the Hisballa flag is a machine gun, which should tell you something about their national goals. Anyway, the Hisballa flag's rifle is aimed directly at the Lebanese symbol, the tree. A coincidence?

As for the chances of reaching an agreement to end the war (which is officially called "Peace for Israel" here), the latest polls show that 800f the Lebanese population support Hisballa. That fills me with optimism. What does bring balm to my soul is that the Church is providing both humanitarian relief to Lebanon, and donating $50,000 to the emergency services (Magen David Adom) of Haifa in Israel. By the way, both my daughter and my son Bryan are volunteer medics with Magen David Adom. Before he was drafted into the army, Bryan was given a special award by the national director for his outstanding service. He started when he was 15 in the city of Netanya. In his first two months of volunteering, there were 5 major suicide bombings in Netanya with dozens of dead. One of the attacks was in his school, and he was the first medic on the scene. He still volunteers often when he is home on leave. That is the personality of the "barbaric, inhumane" Israeli soldier.

Be well, love your families, and may we all be more appreciative of what we have.

Ann

Short - term:

1. Israel will cease all air activity for 48 hours, so that they can investigate how civilians came to be killed in a war, a very rare occurrence in the history of the world. [Editor's note: That's not true. In most wars, civilians are purposely targeted to put fear in the military leaders to force them to surrender to save their people.]

2. Israel ground forces will cease all activity for 24 hours in Southern Lebanon so that everyone can leave the South of Lebanon and so that humanitarian aid can get through. However, why they need to send humanitarian aid to the South if they expect everyone to leave I don't yet understand. And of course, if they don't leave there will be more civilian casualties, so there can be more investigations.

   Long - term:

3. A multi-national force will sit on the Israeli and Syrian borders within Lebanon until Lebanon is ready to take over. I thought that was what the UN forces were supposed to have been doing for the last 30 years. In addition, so far only France has volunteered its services. This is the same France which had one of the worst records in Europe for turning in its Jewish populations to the Nazis, those that were left after the French themselves murdered most of them. This is the same France which hates Israel, has the largest Muslim population in Europe, and the highest rate of current anti-Jewish violence. I am filled with reassurance.

4. The Lebanese army will become stronger and replace the multi-national forces at the borders. Considering that several high-ranking officers and a significant percentage of the soldiers are pro-Hisballa, they will of course do their utmost to see that there are no aggressive actions against Israel in the future.

5. The government of Lebanon will be strengthened, unite the Lebanese people, and take control of the South once again. They will exercise control over Hisballa and keep everyone in line so that peace will reign and everyone will smile. This agreement will of course wipe out all vestiges of the sectarian fighting which has been Lebanon's trademark for centuries, and is even taken into account in the Lebanese constitution which specifically designates how many percentages of the parliament seats and cabinet have to go to which ethnic and religious groups. But it doesn't matter anyway. At least 80 - 90 percent of the Lebanese population now support the Hisballa, and the president of Lebanon actually thanked the Hisballa publicly for all that they have done for Lebanon. I am sure that the Lebanese will be smiling; those of us South of the border definitely won't be. Oh, I nearly forgot. It will also be up to the Lebanese president to decide which foreign nations (Syria is their closest neighbor, and they have excellent relations with Iran, of course) will be allowed to cross his borders.

How did this happen?

1. Our prime minister has no military background, he consults with no one, and very much wants to play with the big boys in world politics. In fact, our own defense minister found out about this agreement from press reports in New York! As Michael says, Olmert has the mindset of a clerk.
2. Israel's defense minister is a megalomaniac. He headed the labor unions for years and loves to flex his muscles just to show that he can. He is a master at organizing crippling strikes. He hates Netanyahu and during the year that Bibi was prime minister, Peretz organized more than 50 national strikes which lasted for weeks. That's basically one every week. He loves attention, and in every news conference he always smiled like he was going to a birthday party.
3. The chief-of-staff is an air force general and has almost no understanding of (and little respect for) how to use ground troops. For example, after the first soldier was kidnapped near Gaza it was nearly 3 days before Israel started sealing off exits to Gaza, and it used helicopters instead of ground troops. You can't search a rabbit warren from the air. I wrote to a friend in the early days of the war that we were making a lot of noise but not doing some of the essential basics.
4. We were trying to wage a "humanitarian" war -- as few civilian casualties as possible. We dropped leaflets over Southern Lebanon for days, warning the people to leave before we invaded. There were even messages left on people's telephones! I remember seeing the news and watching the Lebanese wadding up the leaflets and laughing at the messages. And when the ground forces went in, it was in limited numbers. They only attacked one village at a time, instead of all of them at once. This gave time to organize the defenses in the next ones up the line. And now, when we have just started the ground offensive, we are pulling back for two days!

I wrote yesterday that rockets had begun to fall already at 7 in the morning. By midnight last night Kiriat Shmonah had been hit by 90 katusha rockets. That is as many in one town as the entire North has been getting in a day. If you do the math, that means about 1,500 kilos (1-1/2 tons) of explosives hit the town. To put it in perspective, the suicide bombs which kill about 20 -30 people are usually about 5 kilos each. Another 70 rockets hit other places along the Northern border, and there were also rockets launched on the South from Gaza. In the West Bank, soldiers at a temporary roadblock caught a suicide bomber on his way to an attack in Israel, and the bomb squad blew up his bag in a controlled explosion. Also, the 4 members of a terrorist cell who killed the doctor a few days ago were caught and are now in Israeli custody. If I didn't mention it, a few days ago a Jewish doctor living in the West Bank was called one evening to a house in a neighboring Arab village, where he treated many people. He never came back. His body was found a day later. He had been tortured in an especially cruel manner, and then his body put into his car and both burned. When the news of Qana broke, there were riots in Gaza and Beirut. People attacked the UN offices in both places, destroying what they could and trashing what they couldn't. To me this is so typical of the mentality. The UN has never been a friend of Israel's, and especially in Gaza the UN administers food and medical aid to the people on a regular basis. So naturally the UN humanitarian relief office in Gaza should be attacked for something that Israel did in Lebanon. Again I am filled with hope about arriving at a diplomatically-negotiated solution with both Palestine and Lebanon.

On the bright side, I have just learned that Bryan has been pulled back across the border again during this 24 hour "cessation", so I am going to try to call him.

I'm sorry I depressed you, but thanks for listening. It was either write things down or punch the wall. I appreciate your friendship.

Ann

Our family was pretty well prepared, but most weren't. This is what has helped us:

1. Having the computer has been wonderful for me, because it forces me to concentrate, and put the events of the day into some order. A journal would do the same thing at a slower pace.
2. We (Michael) have updated phone numbers for all of the members, and we call them every day. Every member should have a list. I would recommend that we add contact numbers and addresses for extended family or close friends of the members who live outside of the area, so that contact can be made in a case of emergency (next of kin), or to see if missing members are perhaps there. I would further add the email addresses of members.
3. Have an emergency radio that doesn't require electricity. When the rockets hit by the chapel, Spencer's crank-handle radio was a big help for us downstairs to know what was going on. However, the news can be addicting. We are trying to ration ourselves to the news headlines at the top of the hour only.
4. Have something to break the boredom: cards, games, puzzles, crosswords, reading books, knitting, drawing and coloring supplies, a book of games or songs or camp songs, a musical instrument, etc. Nearly one third of Israel's population has been in bombshelters for over 2 weeks now, and a big problem is boredom. Scott had written that they played "Memory" with their children until they wanted to scream. A change of games will prevent a lot of violence.
5. Have enough food for at least a month, especially beverages. Put in a couple of "luxuries" (cookies, special crackers, hard candy, a can of soda) and bring them out when people are starting to get tense(r). Bowdens left us a 6-pack of root beer when they left. I put two cans aside for Bryan for when he comes home, and on a night when the shelling was especially close to us and very frequent we opened two more cans and shared them between the four of us (Yvonne is with us). Nothing ever tasted better. And I told you how Bryan was with the macaroni! It will be different in the SL valley of course, but our little market is already running out of supplies, especially eggs and dairy, and there will be a horrific shortage of fruit this winter because the orchards have had to be abandoned.
6. Read your scriptures and pray together.
7. Have an adequate supply of medications, including those you don't normally take. I have found myself taking more aspirin (or whatever pain reliever you prefer), and MIchael's Maalox intake has increased substantially.
8. Make sure to get some sort of exercise, even if it is a walk around an enclosed space like a bombshelter.
9. Make sure to have sanitary supplies: handiwipes, diapers, feminie hygiene, and especially a covered bucket to use as a toilet if needs be. Have lots of plastic bags for the garbage, etc. During the gulf war when we had to be in sealed rooms with our children for hours, we did use the bucket. That is still one of the children's strongest memories from that period. We are going through a lot of toothpaste, toilet paper and deodorant.
10. Check that the items in your 72-hour kits are actually things you would use or eat. If you had to leave within ten minutes, would you have everything in them that you would need? Do you have your important documents (passports, licence, social security number, insurance info . . .) in one place so that you could pick it up and go? Do you have copies of these documents in another place besides your home? Can you actually pick up your 72-hour pack and carry it yourself? And if your children are young, remember that you may have to be carrying them as well.
11. I also have a tag prepared for each family member, including adults, which has the name of each family member, their age and sex, and where each is supposed to be, as well as a second location. I also put a contact name and number for someone in Israel and my sister in the US. In case the family is separated, or one of the parents is unconscious or dead, the rest of the family can be located.
12. Have at least two light sources, and extra batteries. Candles can't be used in a closed space like a bomb shelter.
13. Remember that everyone will be nervous and very touchy, and say or do things they normally wouldn't. Try to be extra patient and tolerant, and set a positive mood. In all the conversations with people in bomb shelters, and with the experience of our branch staying in Jerusalem, you can see that in those places where everyone is glued to the news, or complaining, everyone is miserable. People in the same circumstances who can laugh get along a whole lot better. I guess this means that you two need to be like Santa and go from crisis to crisis. I defy anyone not to laugh around you two.

I hope this helps, and good luck!

Love, Ann in Galilee

Hello all, and thank you for your tolerance when I let off steam the other day. Today is Tisha b'Av, a day of mourning for the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem. It is a day when we remember past attempts to destroy the Jewish people, so it is especially poignant today.

Israel's self-imposed pause didn't last very long. It started at 2am and already in the morning there were katushyas, albeit a lot less than we normally get. By about noon or so Israel had already bombed targets in Southern Lebanon in support of ground troops, so the pause lasted less than 6 hours. Even so, there was considerably less air activity for those 48 hours.

Monday night / Tuesday morning Israeli attacked about ten Lebanese towns simultaneously, whereas before we had been attacking only one place at a time. Most of these towns sit up on a series of ridges, so they control the highground and can control the flats below them on either side. All of them are Hisballah operational centers, and all have been used for launching rockets and mortars. Our goal is to take control of these towns first, then clean out the areas between them and the Israeli border later. We are trying to push the Hisballa back far enough to reduce the places their rockets can reach within Israel, which is what the 1982 war was all about, and the Litani Operation in the late 70s. We also want to be in control of as much strategic area as possible before the international troops, whoever they may be, are brought in. I think that this change in tactics (before we were only focusing on one village at a time) was a result of the extremely stormy meeting which our prime minister had with the 7 members of his special military advisory committee on Monday afternoon. Israeli reporters said that they could hear the shouting out in the foyer where they were waiting.

Tuesday morning about 3 am I am pretty sure that I saw my son on Fox news. I knew he had gone into Lebanon just west of Metulla, to the area around Taibe (Altaybeh). The news clip was filmed through a green night lense and showed soldiers getting ready to go in. I saw him twice for just an instant. I am not 100 percent sure it was him because it was at night and his face was painted green, but he had the same hair, the same ears and the same walk. It was really exciting to see him, if I ignored the "why" part of it.

On Tuesday there were already rockets fairly regularly throughout the day. We have been averaging about 100 rockets a day throughout the North.

Wednesday morning everything changed. I had been up all night following the reports of the Baalbek raid and the fighting in Taibe (Altaybeh), where Bryan is. I went to bed about 8 in the morning. Just after 9 in the morning we were told to go to the shelters immediately. Within about 40 minutes we got over 70 rockets just in our area alone (around Tiberius and the Golani Junction). Several fell in houses, on main streets, etc. A lot fell in the upper part of Tiberius, including one by the Paz gas station and another by the turnoff to the road that goes to the hospital. One fell about 100 meters from my friend Gary's house, which is just a couple of streets above where Reuben, Susan and Mary Kahn live. Another fell by the bank in Kfar Tabor. Another fell near Kanaf on the Golan. We also got several quite close to us. We think that one fell on the hill behind us which separates the Beduoin camp from Migdal. It was intense. There were another 70-80 rockets around the rest of the North as well. Laurie and Todd, one fell in Dir El Asad, the Druze village where you stayed, the one with the great breakfast. The area of Haifa didn't get hit, but the areas to the east did.

Also, in the early hours of Wednesday morning (1-2 am) Israeli helicopters dropped paratroopers into the Northern Lebanese city of Baalbek. Baalbek is on my list of places I would love to see for decades, but that is beside the point. Baalbek is the spiritual center of the Hisballa, the city where they were founded, and where many of their top leaders live. Israel had received credible information that our two soldiers, whose kidnapping triggered the war, were being held in Baalbek. Three or four groups of paratroopers were dropped at different sites around the city, the most important being a private "hospital". There were several hours of fighting, and the Hisballa kept reporting that they had captured soldiers and had others "trapped", plus they had shot down a helicopter. In reality, Israel captured several of their leaders and returned safely home a few hours later. At the military briefing which we get nearly every evening from the army, they showed the films not only of the troops landing, but also some of what they found in the "hospital" : anti-tank missiles inside of filing cabinets (the anti-tank missiles are just slightly larger than hand grenades), kalatchnikov rifles, recoiless rifles, etc. There was no sign of anything even remotely medical-looking. Even the beds were large, and set inside very ornate rooms. Outside, the building looked like a villa. In addition to the information which the captured fighters may provide, the attack was a huge morale boost for Israel, and a huge morale blow to the Hisballa.

My sister sent me this quotation which says it all:

"Even when the armaments of war ring out in deathly serenade- there stands immovable, reassuring, comforting, and with great outreaching love the quiet figure of the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world."
Gordon B. Hinckley,
Ensign, May 2003

The rockets seem to be taking a break for a bit. A few minutes ago the phone rang and the caller identified herself as Bryan's company clerk. I had a short heart attack. She immediately reassured me and said that she was "just" calling all the parents to let them know that their sons were okay, to ask if we had any messages for them, and to wish us Shabbat Shalom. I wanted to kiss her feet. She explained that none of them had phones because they were "deep inside Lebanon", but that all were well and accounted for. I thanked her probably about a thousand times (she was very sweet) and then had a short but intense cry for a couple of minutes after I hung up. You can find plenty to complain about here, but the acts of true kindness like this are why I love this country. Bless that clerk! And bless her parents too!

Ann

Hello Everyone.

I apologize about the frequent delays in writing, but I keep getting interruped! Wednesday my area got hit very hard. 231 rockets hit Israel, most of them within a 7-mile radius of where I live. The average has been about 100+ per day until now.

Thursday was the same. The area North of us had been getting hit heavily all day, but we were only getting a few. In the afternoon I went to take a nap, and just as I lay down the radio told us all to get into the shelters immediately. I told everyone and we went into the shelter. Within a couple of minutes we heard several booms very close, and then the electricity went out. I got out the battery-operated emergency radio, but our local station wasn't broadcasting, so it took a while to pick up another station. One of the rockets must have knocked out a local transformer, because we were without electricity for nearly two hours (we got off lightly). It is very disconcerting to be sitting in a closed room, hearing the booms, and not being able to know what is going on. I keep thinking about people all over the world who live with this kind of tension for years on end, even more than we do. I also see the faces of people I saw in newsreels from WW II. You would think we would learn. On Thursday more than 240 rockets fell, over 100 of them within 30 minutes. It was a particularly bad day. 8 civilians died from the rockets. They were in 3 separate places. We also lost 4 soldiers.

One of the things that was different during these two days is that more of the "improved, 2nd generation" katushyas were used. They can go a lot farther and hit harder. In addition, different kinds of rockets were used, many of them older Syrian and Iranian types like the Frog 7. (Maybe the Hisballah got them at a clearance sale.) One actually hit close to Jenin in the West Bank. Several others flew over Bet Shean, and still others hit in the areas of Nazareth and Migdal HaEmek.

Another disturbing development is that Bin Laden's son Sa'ad is now in Syria. Within a day of his arrival an explosive device went off on the Israeli patrol road near Kuneitra on the Golan Heights. Kuneitra is a "ghost" town which sits on the border between Israel and Syria, (by the Golan "Key", for those of you who have been there). This is the first time in nearly 30 years that there has been an episode on that border. There have been a couple of other incidents as well, so it looks very much like they are being done deliberately to provoke Israel into attacking Syria. There have also been several katushyot which have fallen on the Northern Golan. The current leader of Syria is a very weak man with little political or military experience. He is a dentist by profession and only became president because the real heir was killed when he was driving his car close to 200 mph and lost control of it. The problem is that because he is a weak leader with little popular support, it would be very easy for him to be manipulated by his Iranian allies, Bin Laden, etc., or for his regime to be toppled.

The close ties between Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and the president of Iran worry me greatly as well. With Castro's health failing Cuba is ripe for Chavez to step in and "help", much like Syria did in Lebanon. In my opinion, Chavez is one of the most dangerous and evil men in the world today. With Chavez controlling the Northern part of South America and much of the Caribean, and his friend sitting in Iran controlling Syria and Lebanon, and much of Iraq as well, the Western world could very well wake up one morning and find itself in a position which will be very difficult to get out of. It is a classic pincer movement-- Iran from the east and Chavez from the west. Iran has repeatedly stated that part of its goal is to completely wipe out the state of Israel. They are not exagerating, and they are not joking. Remember, the current president is the student who organized the storming of the US Embassy in Teheran and the taking of American hostages in 1978 - 79. France, who will supposedly be "leading" the international forces which will come into Lebanon to maintain the peace after we withdraw, is strongly urging the UN and the US to include Iran in the ceasefire discussions. France claims that Iran is a "stabilizing" influence in the MIddle East. In the meantime, Venezuela withdrew their ambassador and diplomatic staff from Israel this week.

Friday morning was a lot like Thursday. Rockets hit throughout most of the day. The town of Magrar, which is about 6 miles from us, had its second casuality. Magrar is a "mixed" town: Druze, Catholic and Bedouin. Both victims were Druze. A high proportion of the town's men serve in the army. The Druze also have a lot of family in Lebanon. The Druze take the idea of revenge very seriously. Last week a rocket fell through a house roof and landed on a 15-year-old girl, killing her instantly. Yesterday the victim was a young mother. She didn't have a bombshelter, so she had followed directions and taken her two young children to a hallway in the center of the house. A katusha fell next door, and the concussion from the explosion broke the glass in her mother's kitchen. A piece of glass flew down the hallway and hit her in the head, killing her instantly. The children in her arms were unhurt. She was 27 years old, and died in the same house where she was born. She and her husband were building their own home, and had planned to move in next week. It does have a bomb shelter, but too late to help her.

In the evening, several longer-range rockets fell farther South than they ever have, about half-way between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Three fell in Hadera and a couple of others nearby. The question on everyone's mind is whether Hisballa can hit Tel Aviv. During the first week Israel hit a warehouse in Beirut which had several missiles in it. They were probably the long-range type. There may or may not be more. Israel has said if Tel Aviv is hit then all gloves are off and they will flatten Lebanon.

Already today (Saturday) dozens of rockets have fallen across the North. One fell directly on a house and killed 3 people. (I just learned that the victims were a mother and her two children from an Arab village near the border.) Kiryat Shmonah is getting the brunt of them today. This afternoon two rockets were fired across the Northern Golan and landed in Syria. Again, I think they are trying to provoke the opening of another front with Syria.

One of the reasons our civilian casualities have been so low is because most of the population of Northern Israel is either underground or has gone South. In effect, about a million Israelis have left their homes. This week, for example, 20 busloads of people were evacuated from Kiryat Shmonah. Only a couple of thousand remain out of a population of 25,000. Looting has become a big problem. On the other hand, two men from Jerusalem showed up at a neighborhood grocery in K.Shm. this week and asked the owner if people bought on credit. When he answered yes, they asked him to mark those on the list who were truly poor. After the owner did that, they pulled out a wad of cash and asked him to put several hundred shekels on the bill of each of those he had marked. When he asked who they were, they said it didn't matter. When he asked how they could be reached so that the people could thank them, they also said that the best kind of good deed is where the recipient doesn't know who the benefactor is.

When Israel pulled out of Lebanon in 2006, thousands of soldiers from the South Lebanese Army (they formed their own militia to fight against the Hisballa, and Israel later armed and trained them as well) and their families came to Israel as well. If they go back to Lebanon they will be fined, imprisoned and tortured. Most of these "Sadalnikim", (from the initials of So. Leb. Army in Hebrew) live in communities across the Northern border of Israel. Not only are they getting hit by rockets, they have to be wondering what is happening to their extended families on the other side of the border as well. They fought against the Hisballa infilitration for twenty years, and lost everything they have because of it. They don't even have a country.

One of the things less-talked about are what happens when all these rockets hit "open" areas. The entire North is a series of forest and brush fires. We could see fires just South of Sfat today. The firemen have been working non-stop since the war started 25 days ago. Jewish firemen from NYC have even come over as volunteers to provide extra manpower. Most of the trees that are burning are 60 years old. They were planted by the Jewish Fund even before Israel became a country. Early Jewish settlers hiked up the hills carrying buckets of water in order to keep the seedlings watered. They transformed bare hills into forests. If you look on the news you can see how green Israel is compared to what is across the border in Lebanon. Now many of these trees are gone and the hills are once again barren. They will all have to be replanted, and meanwhile the rains this winter will cause problems of erosion. Another problem is the sea. During the 4 days fo relative quiet over last weekend, several fishermen from Haifa and Akko went out. There were almost no fish. Several katushyas have landed in the sea, and the constant percussions from the explosions under water have scared away the fish. If that weren't enough, many of the fishermen's nets got torn up by the remains of the katushas they caught instead of fish.

I also wanted to share a note from a friend who lives in Rosh Pina:

On Wednesday one of the rockets fell in my neighbours garden! We got broken windows and holes in the netting, shed and my grandaughter's playhouse! Matti and co heave been in moshav Nov since the beginning of the war TG. Let's pray it will be over soon-

Be well and safe,

Bryan called this morning to tell us they were out for a day of R&R, were staying near us and that we could visit him later this afternoon. We called several times and got his answering machine, so late in the afternoon we went over anyway. We found some of the soldiers in his platoon, and they told us he was asleep in his room, and showed us where. The door was locked and no amount of noise woke him up. Bryan has been like this since he was tiny. If he knows he has the time, he can sleep so deeply that we can literally sit on him and it doesn't faze him! So we weren't surprised by the Rip Van Winkle impersonation. In the end we left all his treats in the care of the guys across the hall and went home. If we can see him before he leaves tonight then we will go back over, but if not, at least I know he is rested and more alert for the next stretch of fighting. It is more important to me that he gets some good sleep than that I get to hug him, although it would have been nice to be able to do both.

May we all be more appreciative of what we have.

Ann>

Hello to All.

I wrote that on Saturday we went to visit Bryan (Bryan is Ann's returned missionary son in the Israeli army), who was so fast asleep we couldn't wake him up. He did call later in the evening, so we went down and had a good visit with him. He was also in a relatively talkative mood (he doesn't usually talk a lot), so he took the time to explain to his woefully ignorant mother how the company is broken down, what each part does, and -- more importantly -- what it is that he does. I am glad that he did, and now I finally know, but there is a lot to be said for having your head in the sand.

I have also seen on some news clips that in the villages where the infantry is that some houses have been demolished, so I asked him about that. He said that they try to leave houses intact as much as possible. They are told to remember that these are people's homes, and that if nothing is found to move on. The only buildings which are demolished are those where they have found a lot of arms, and the demolition is mainly to destroy the arms caches, because chances are there is a lot more hidden than they have time to look for.

Another interesting tidbit he told us was that when they first went in, they tried using llamas, yes llamas, as pack animals. A retired general owns a llama farm in the Negev in the South, and it was his idea. Lllamas can go longer without food and water and carry more than donkeys or mules. Some of the commando units have been using them successfully for awhile, so they decided to see how they would do with larger units. They did quite well for a few hours, but then one got a stubborn bee in its bonnet and refused to move, so the rest of the llamas followed suit. It was fun while it lasted.

It was strange for me to walk around all the equipment on the ground, and have Michael (Ann's husband) casually point out the different kinds of weapons, including a rocket-launcher. It was also strange to sit back and listen to Michael and Bryan compare notes on their experiences in Lebanon (Bryan's doing a lot of what Michael did back in 1982), and even stranger to watch Bryan show his little brother how to use the grenade-launcher apparatus on his gun. As for the sniper gun, Yaron couldn't even lift it (way too heavy). Another moment of family bonding.

Sunday was a very sobering day. A neighbor came by about 11 to say that the Border Patrol had called and asked everyone not only to be inside, but to be inside the bombshelters from about noon to 3 in the afternoon. They were expecting a heavy barrage. We of course did what they asked. You need to understand that my sister-in-law is claustrophobic, and my husband cannot be for more than a few minutes in a closed room with other people. He had no problem being in a tank, because each crew member is in his own little cell with something to do. Michael just can't be in a room with lots of people. My son is also hyper and likes to pace. The bombshelter is a room barely big enough to put in two beds and a small closet. The only calm one was the dog. At least we have a bombshelter, and electricity, and a TV.

Sure enough, at twelve o'clock a huge barrage began. There had been rockets all morning, but nothing like this. It also started out in a deadly manner. One rocket fell directly on a group of reserve soldiers who were outside, killing 13 and wounding several more. Most of these men are middle-aged with families. It also didn't need to happen. They were a reserve unit who had been called up and were having a general briefing before getting their equipment, etc. to go into Lebanon. The meeting ground was the parking lot near a cemetary and national monument (the Roaring Lion statue) at Kfar Giladi. KG sits just above Kiriat Shmonah (which is actually named after those buried at that cemetary) and is right on the border. The place is easy to find, but it is out in the open in an area which has been getting hit frequently from the beginning. The officer in charge was also told personally at least 30 minutes before that they were expecting a barrage and to move the meeting place to somewhere inside (there are several within 5 minutes of the place). The officer didn't listen, and now 13 men are dead, and several others maimed for life.

In the evening, 6-7 rockets hit Haifa again. It has been nearly a week since Haifa was hit. These were also not the regular katushas, which have a warhead of about 20 pounds. It is thought that they were actually Fagger missiles, which have a warhead of between 200 and 350 pounds. Whatever they were, the result was lethal. Two of them fell directly on a 4-story apartment building. The building was quite old, and totally incapable of withstanding the effects of the missile's impact and explosion. The building collapsed and a huge fire started inside the ruins. It looked like the fire inside a furnace. Three older people were killed immediately, and the death toll will probably rise. Over 200 people were injured, several of them seriously.

Within an hour the air force had destroyed both launching pads. One was inside of the city of Tyre. The other, the one responsible for the deaths in Haifa, was in the village of Kefar Qana. What a surprise. Qana is the same village which we bombed last week, bringing international condemnation on our heads because of the civilian casualities.

We have rockets falling very close (I can feel the ground move a bit), so into the shelter I go.

Ann

Hello again.

We have spent most of the day in and out of the bomb shelter. It is now 6:30 in the evening and it is still very noisy. It sounds like a lot of rockets are still hitting the wadi just North of us, and probably the area around Magrar, the Druze / Christian / Beduoin town where the young mother was killed last week and the teenage girl the week before. By about 1 pm K. Shmonah had already reached the 100 mark.

A lot of reporters keep asking why we don't stop the rockets and how can they keep launching rockets at us. The missiles need a bigger launcher which is easy to find quickly and wipe out, as the air force did twice last night. The katushas, however, are another matter. First, the Patriot anti-missile system doesn't detect them. Secondly, you only need two men to launch them. They weigh about as much as an irrigation pipe, and are as mobile. They can be hidden under trees, by houses, buildings and walls, put in the back of a truck or the trunk of a big car. You can put them nearly anywhere, so you go out at night and hide them, then in the day you pick them up and launch them. It only takes about two minutes, and then you disappear. So figuring the number of katushas we estimate they have, you only need a maximum of 30 men in the entire South of Lebanon and you can fire from anywhere at anytime. They won't be in uniform either, so theoretically a man could step out into his yard, fire the rocket and go back in for dinner. How can you distinguish him from anyone else in the village? And how can you find those specific 30 men in the hills of Lebanon, an area the size of Northern New Jersey? And anyway, who says that it will be the same 30 men who launch the rockets each time? It's like being in a classroom and asking who was the one who was humming.

The news has just said that we are up to 170 rockets, and they are still falling.

I just wanted to share with you a couple of personal interest items. Two of the reserve soldiers who were killed at Kfar Giladi were cousins. One of them was named for an uncle, who was killed in the Six Day War. I heard a radio interview with another cousin of theirs, who spoke about them, their families, etc. She also mentioned that the same day that her two cousins were killed, the family was holding the memorial service for another cousin -- twenty years ago on that date she had been kidnapped, raped and murdered by terrorists from Nablus. As the cousin tearfully asked, "Can you even begin to imagine what our family is feeling at this moment?"

Another of the Kfar Giladi dead was an Ethiopian. Because of his encouragement and example, one of his cousins (friends?) had joined the paratroopers as well. That cousin was killed in Lebanon last week.

And more dangerous than anything, he has now given Hisballa legitimacy and granted them de facto status as a state. The Middle East is built on a bully mentality. If you are perceived as being tougher and meaner, most people will leave you alone, or at least throw rocks only from a well-protected distance. The minute you show any vulnerability, you will be a magnet for every wanna-be bully in the neighborhood. Olmert sent the army out into the middle of the trouble to stop the wanna be bullies, and then tied the soldiers' hands behind their backs and told them not to hurt anyone while they took care of the problem. There is no doubt in my mind that the Israeli army could have done a lot more to hinder the work of the Hisballa. I don't think Hisballa will ever go away, but their ability to attack us could have been seriously diminished. Instead, they have come out as the victors, and Israel is perceived, quite rightly in this instance, as being weak and unwilling to do what needs to be done. This is waving a flag at a bull. You watch, in the next few weeks there will be a serious escalation in the number of suicide bomber attempts inside Israel, and in the activities of the Hamas in the Gaza area and Israel's Southern border. Just as the Hamas kidnapping of the Israeli soldier spurred on the Hisballa to do the same thing in a bigger and more showy manner two weeks later, the Hisballa's victory in the North will encourage Hamas in Gaza to more and more violence against Israel in the South and the west bank. It's like swatting at a wasps's nest and hoping not to get stung. You have to either leave them alone or be prepared for total war. Israel does not have the territory or the manpower or the finances to play at war like this. We are fighting for survival. Everyone, including our enemies, seems to realize this except our PM.

From day one, Olmert has been unable or unwilling to make a decision concerning the direction of this war. It's like the cartoons of the lady ordering the moving men where to put the furniture, then changing her mind again and again and again. You need to understand that the Chief of Staff is an airforce general and has almost no understanding of ground warfare. He was brought in during Sharon's administration, but Olmert was the one who pushed for him. He has always been Olmert's yes man, and Olmert wanted him because he wouldn't say no to the withdrawal from Gaza last year. (By the way, the ruins of the Jewish settlements are being used by Hamas to launch rockets on Israeli towns in the South.) When he sent his second-in-command up to oversee the head of Northern command this week, effectively undermining his authority, it wasn't because General Adam wasn't doing a good job. It was because Adam, who came up through the armoured corp and isn't a member of the AF boys' club, stood up to Olmert and Halutz and told them they were making a mistake by not doing enough. From day one, Olmert has been unwilling to use the ground troops the way he should have. He only put them in after a stormy cabinet session. Then he finally called up the reserves, put them in for a day, they pulled them out again. Then this week he called up even more reservists, put them on the border at 3 in the morning, and half an hour later told them to go back across to Israel and wait. One reservist said that he even had his toes across the border when the orders came. So, he has taken thousands of men away from their families and jobs and school, and then told them to come up to the border and wait for three days. He had originally been pushed into agreeing to a large land invasion which would take over the entire South of Lebanon up to the Litani River and maybe beyond, and this invasion had actually begun when Olmert decided to wait and see -- yes, wait and see -- what would happen with the UN talks for cease fire, so he pulled the forces back into Israel. Then he waited for days, and at the very minute that the Security Council sat down today (tonight for us) to begin the final discussions, he decided to go ahead with the invasion. Even then, within a couple of hours he changed his mind again at least twice. No one really knows what is going on now, except that the soldiers already in Lebanon are still involved in heavy, heavy fighting, but without the back up that would help them. This entire mess could have been mostly done in 3 weeks if Olmert had listened to his army officers.

As I undertand it, the UN ceasefire does not deal with the Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped. It just says that at "a later date" the UN will talk to Lebanon, who will talk to the Hisballah, who may or may not be willing to discuss the terms for their release. That sounds promising. Also, the Lebanese army will move into South Lebanon. That is also a comforting thought. At least a third of its soldiers are pro-Hisballa, as are some of the high-ranking officers. The percentage is actually probably a lot higher now. In addition, there will be a buffer force of 15,000 international soldiers, who will not be able to engage in conflict but are there to just watch. How is this different from the UNIFIL forces which have been in Lebanon for nearly 30 years? Well, they will be led by France. The other contributing countries haven't been named yet, probably because no one is volunteering. France has a long history of anti-Israel voting in the UN, it has the largest Moslem community in Europe, and has the highest number of anti-Jewish violent crimes in the western world. The main synagogue in Paris is fire-bombed or attacked nearly every year around Yom Kippur. So, this is the country which is going to do its best to see that Israel isn't attacked. Also, the ceasefire bans militias in Lebanon, but so did the resolution two years ago, and the one four years before that. The governenment of Lebanon can decide what arms come into the country, but as Lebanon is a democracy there is every chance that Hisballa could be the government one day, just as Hamas is the elected government in Palestine today.

The jackals in the field outside have begun to howl. I think it is appropriate tonight.

The last few days have been "more of the same", which means more ketushas. The average used to be about 100 a day; this week it has been between 160 - 200 a day, and they are becoming more deadly. The damage they can cause defies description. In addition to the damage of the warhead itself, you also have the shotgun pellet effect of the ball bearings which are packed inside. They literally pepper everything in the vicinity. There is also the damage from the concussion. When a rocket lands it creates a powerful vacuum in the immediate area -- it literally sucks the air out of everything. Anything made of metal will look like a milk carton which has had the air pushed out of it. A lot of the injuries are from this concussion as much as from shrapnel, etc. Then there are the fires. The director of the Nature Reserves authority in the North said that 5,000 dunam (about 1300 acres) of forest and fields on the Golan have been burned, and about 15,000 dunam (4,100 acres) in the Northern Galilee. These are only protected areas. The statistics don't include all the other areas which have been burned. It will take decades to repair the environmental damage.

There is a big problem with the bomb shelters as well. Many of them were built 30-40 years ago and have no ventilation or plumbing. A news team yesterday was in Nahariya when the sirens started. They ran into the nearest building to get some shelter, and found several older people (the youngest was 81) just sitting on the stairs. The building was fairly new and had a nice, modern shelter. It turned out that 3 weeks ago a katushya hit the water main outside, and flooded the shelter. For three weeks the shelter has been filled with water and raw sewage, and no one has come to help them pump it out. This week bank Leumi has agreed to pay to put airconditioners in dozens of shelters, but it will take time to install them.

Social services are also a problem. Many older people have no way to get their medications. Not all of them get food regularly. All that has been done so far -- daily food deliveries, R&R days, etc. -- has been organized and paid for by very rich individuals or formal charitable organizations. The government has done nothing. Everyone I have talked to, and everyone I have seen interviewed, have said that they are willing to go on like this as long as necessary, as long as it means we will have some quiet on the Northern border in the future. Most of the country is behind the war.

On a personal note it has also been a depressing week. One of the reserve soldiers killed on Wednesday was a person whom I had taught for two years in high school. He was married and had young children. Another soldier who died was the manager of the first water park on the Sea of Galilee -- the Luna Gal. His partner's son was in my daughter's class. This man was known for his philanthropic work in the community. He also had two children. Then I found out today that a man in Acco killed by a ketusha this week was the brother-in-law of someone in village where I live (Aliza Even Haim). He was driving home when the katushya fell on his car, if I remember correctly. Then the main high school where several friends teach, and the special ed school which my foster brother attended in Kiriat Shmonah were hit directly by rockets, resulting in a lot of damage. To top it off, many of you may have seen on Fox News today a 14-story apartment building in K. Shmonah which received a direct hit, and then showed a woman covered in blood being helped to an ambulance. It is across the street from the high school. A dear friend of mine lives in that apartment building. He is a holocaust survivor, and when he first moved to Israel in the early 70s he lived in a kibbutz which got shelled by the Syrian army on the Golan nearly every day. He was a medic in the Yom Kippur war, and again in the 1982 war in Lebanon. In 1982 he also had 3 sons who were fighting at the same time in Lebanon. He has lived in K. Shmonah for nearly 30 years, and for most of that time the city has been hit by rockets on a regular basis. He has family all over the country and could have left, but his wife works in the senior citizen home and she wouldn't leave her patients. He laughingly told me once that he must be a "missile magnet".

On a lighter note, the town of Hatzor HaGlilit (where my school is, and where I used to live) has been hit several times by rockets, but this week it also got its first injury. A gravedigger was at work in the cemetary when a katusha landed in the quarry just above the cemetary. The shock of the impact knocked him into the grave he was digging, and he got a bit scraped up in the process. I guess I really shouldn't laugh, but if you knew Hatzor you would laugh too.

On a more somber note, Syria this week began to clean and fix up their bomb shelters for the first time in decades. This means either that they are expecting to be attacked by Israel, or that they are planning to attack us. This is just in case we get bored, I guess.

So, if you aren't as depressed as I am, enjoy your weekend.

Ann

Actually, we will have to wait and see how good the morning will be. The ceasefire is supposed to go into effect in 3 hours. I am not holding my breath. Israel says the army will bide by the terms, but when asked what happens if soldiers are in the middle of a battle, or are waiting it out with the Hisballa -- "we'll have to wait and see". The soldiers are going to get hell.

As I understand it, the airforce will stop its activities at 7 am, as will most of the army. If soldiers see Hisballa people going North, they won't do anything. Never mind that all Israeli positions aren't on a parallel line. If they see Hisballa going South, they can shoot. Hisballa has repeated many times that they will continue to attack as long as there are Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil. Since it will take at least two weeks for the international force to arrive, I conclude that the ground war will go on another two weeks as well. If they fire katushyas into Israel, well, the government has said they will have to wait and see. They've been saying that a lot. In separate television interviews, both the PM and the Chief of Staff were asked why it had taken them so long to do something they should have done weeks ago. Answer: "We don't need to talk about that right now" or, "Now is not the time to discuss that." It reminds me of a scene from the old 60's movie "The Great Race". They are marooned on a rapidly-melting ice flow and Professor Fate is told not to say anything because he could alarm the others, as they stand nearly knee-deep in water. My guess is that Nasralla will let everyone feel secure, then hit us one more time. For those of you who have been following the news, last week the Chief-of-Staff announced that he was sending up his deputy to "work parallel" with the head of Northern command, in effect, removing all authority from General Adam (Northern command). It was a true slap in the face. Many speculated that it was because of the way the war wasn't being run, but my own speculations were borne our today. Adam says that the plan used for the invasion two days a ago was basically ready at the very beginning, but that the CofS didn't want to know about it. Adam also claims that he sent numerous requests fot equipment and supporting troops to the Defense Minister and the Cof S. Now the Defense minister is claiming he "never got " them". Like his father before him (he was killed in Lebanon in 1982), Adam refused to say "yes" to everything, and had the temerity to express his own position

The day (Sunday) started off with sirens at 7:30 am, and they were still sounding in some places after 9 at night. It is now 4 am Monday, and people in the North are still being told to stay inside the bomb shelters. The warning goes as far South as Hadera and Caesaria. There is good reason for this. Last night in Lebanon a long-range missile launcher was destroyed. A week ago the area around Hadera was hit with middle-range missiles. A long-range missile could conceivably reach Tel Aviv. In addition, tonight Israel shot down two drones filled with explosives. In another incident, the Israeli army shot at a car heading towards the former "Good Fence" crossing point near Metulla. From the explosion, the car was packed with explosives. As I've written before, in the first couple of weeks of the war we got an average of about 100 rockets a day. Last week the average was between 150 and 170. Today we got well over 250. A high percentage of them hit buildings and houses. One of them killed a 70-year-old man. I forgot to write this in my last letter, but one of the incidents that was so tragic last week happened in a Moslem Arab village. A young mother was in the kitchen of her house, with her two young boys. The radio and TV had said to stay in a protected space, and the kitchen fit the most requirements. A katusha entered the kitchen, went through/by her, and went out the opposite wall to land in the yard. The percussion was so great that the mattresses in the bedroom upstairs ended up outside. The room itself wasn't touched. The mother was killed intstantly, her 5-year-old died in the ambulance, and the 2-year-old is in critical condition. There will still be a couple of hours of daylight before the ceasefire. Close to 4,000 rockets have been fired at Israel. It is estimated that the Hisballa had about 12,000. Someone said today that we have been hit with more rockets than Britain was during WW II. I haven't checked the statistics, and what was falling on England was bigger that a katusha, but still, it gives an idea of what has been happening.

I haven't heard from Bryan since last week, and I don't expect to until Israel officially withdraws from Lebanon (providing that is in a couple of weeks). I do know that I have seen Nahal soldiers (his brigade's name) in the background of the hospital where they are bringing the wounded, and one of those killed two days ago was a Nahal medic. From all accounts, fierce fighting is going on everywhere inside of Southern Lebanon. I can't see it stopping just yet. One of those killed Friday or Saturday is / was the son of one of my colleagues at school. It took until this morning to identify his body.

The army released statistics today that stated that the overwhelming majority of Israeli wounded and killed were killed by Russian anti-tank missiles and rockets. Israel is sending a delegation to Moscow today who will plead with Putin not to sell these kinds of weapons to our neighbors. Since arms and weapons sales contribute a lot to the economy of Russia, and since he is perfectly willing to sell to Iran and Venezuela, I don't expect Putin to be overcome with remorse after talking to our delegates. Another worrying little twist was reported and confirmed by army intelligences services this evening after dark. More than 30 Syrian tanks have been seen on the Golan on Syrian's side of the border. Remember that last week Syria was getting its bomb shelters into shape.

So we will wait a bit longer to see what happens. In the meantime, I am still not sending my nearly-blind sister-in-law back to Hatzor yet.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Ann

Hello everyone,

We are now in the third day of the ceasefire, which means that no rockets have fallen on us since Monday morning. The silence is weird. It's like you are waiting for the noise to come, but there isn't any. It is almost unnatural. Almost no one believes that this ceasefire will last. It is only a matter of time before things heat up again, so nobody is really relaxing. It's like being on constant alert but without the adrenalin to give you the energy to deal with it. One of the strangest things for me is to go outside and see traffic on the roads again. I can see two main roads from my house, and in a month I saw maybe 3 vehicles on the roads.

I made the mistake yesterday of going to Tiberius -- it was a madhouse. I walked into the bank and saw a room full of people. I took my number to wait - number 142. Number being served -- 99. Figure about 5 minutes per person minimum, divided by 2 bank tellers, and more people streaming in. No thanks. Post office - same story. Health clinic - same story. Barbershop - same story. The only thing I really got done was to get my youngest son out of the house, and to get his bookbag, student diary and notebooks bought for the school year. I also filled up the car. Luckily gasoline hasn't gone up yet. For those of you in the US, we pay an average of $6 - $6.50 per gallon, and our wages are substantially less.

It was only yesterday afternoon that the appropriate army branch gave permission for people in the North to leave the bomb shelters. However, most people still prefer to sleep in them for the time being. There have been busses bringing people North, and the bus and train routes have been restored again. For a few days, at least, if your ID card lists you as living in the North, you can get free public transportation to travel North. Even the country's only toll road didn't charge North-bound traffic for two days. But again, these are all private or semi-private organizations. As throughout the war, the government offered nearly no public services or help. All of the food and other provisions brought to the North were provided by charitable organizations and individuals. All of the relocations and R&R days to the South were planned and taken care of by charitable organizations and individuals. The government is already being asked some hard questions which they can't answer.

People returning home have been shocked at the damage they have found. The newspapers are full of notices and instructions about how to get compensation, where to go to file, what constitutes a legal appraisal, etc. The big question is going to be when all this money is going to be paid, and where it is going to come from. No one has addressed the issue of what to do with those whose homes are not habitable and won't be for a long time. One of the billionaires who lives here has offered to set up a reasonably nice tent city for those who need, but it will be in the South. Again, the government has said little and done almost nothing.

Another legacy of the past month we have to deal with are all the unexploded rockets and mortars which were never found. The official count of katushas is estimated to account for only two-thirds of the number which actually fell. I know of at least 5 that fell in the fields around my house that never appeared on the official counts. There are now ads on tv, the radio and newspapers showing pictures of exploded and unexploded katushas and mortars, and warning people (especially children) not to touch them or get close, but to report them to the police and / or army.

School was supposed to begin on Friday, September 1, two weeks from now. Many communities in the North begged for more time, and for once the government listened. Instead of opening on Friday, we are now going to open on Sunday Sept. 3 instead. I'm sure that the extra day, and a sabbath to boot, will give everyone the additional time they need to recoup, start to deal with the trauma, find new buildings to use in place of all the school buildings which were bombed, etc. When asked what would happen in places where the school buildings have actually been bombed, our Education Minister said that "we will find creative solutions". Okay, my mind is at rest now. I know that in Kiriat Shmona, for example, both high schools, one elementary school and a special ed school are un-usuable and will require extensive rebuilding. But I guess that extra day will do the job. I have an emergency meeting at school on Sunday for department heads, so it should be interesting to see what is said. (Israel's day off is Saturday. Sunday is a regular work and school day.) I have just seen an interview with our Ed Minister and I feel so much better. When asked, she says that if the Northern settlements are shelled again then quite simply the students will immediately be sent down into the bomb shelters. Voila, problem solved. First, almost no schools have adequate bomb shelter space for their studentbody; secondly, by the time you know a rocket is falling there isn't time to get into the shelters. I had a good laugh; much healthier than crying.

A scandal broke yesterday concerning the Chief-of-Staff, Dan Halutz. He badly mishandled the war from beginning to end, and several reserve soldiers who have now been discharged have made major accusations about his "leadership" or lack thereof, and are in the process of filing official complaints as well as calling for his immediate dismissal. The scandal is reflective of his leadership. One of the country's major newspapers released the information that back in July, just a couple of hours after he had been told of the kidnapping of the two soldiers in the North, Dan Halutz went to the bank to meet with his investment counselor. At the end of his consultation, Halutz sold out most of his stock portfolio - everyone knows that stock prices usually drop during a war, so what was he supposed to do? He is so arrogant that he doesn't even deny what he did, nor admit that it was wrong. Whether or not if what he did constitutes insider trading (and that is being investigated now), what kind of leader takes two hours out of his schedule on the first day of a war, after his country has been invaded and two of his soldiers kidnapped, to worry about his stock portfolio? At most he could have called his wife to go do it for him if it is so important. But who needs a leader whose finances are more important than his men, and the people who depend on him to protect them? To put icing on the cake, yesterday afternoon he was given a glowing character reference by another cabinet member, one who had spent the enitre war on vacation in the US with his wife and children. Can you begin to understand how this war turned into such a debacle?

The biggest topic of conversation here is how long this ceasefire will last. There have been rocketings and exchanges of fire between the Hisballa and Israeli troops in Lebanon each of the 3 days. A few positions have already been handed over to the UN forces. However, the full contingent of 15,000 has yet to come into existence; they don't even have all the countries signed up yet. Like the education minister's "creative solutions", I am sure that all will magically come to pass by the end of next week. I personally doubt the ceasefire will hold very long for the following reasons:

1. The Lebanese army, which is supposed to sit on our border, has not been in Southern Lebanon for nearly 20 years. They have minimal training and have not received new equipment for years. Their duties were basically carried out in the North by the Syrians until a year ago, and are still being carried out in the South by the Hisballah. Nisralla has already told many of his men to join the ranks of the army, so they will still be in the South, only this time they will be official. By the way, the Hisballa has reiterated today that they will not withdraw nor be disarmed. Kofi Annan has reiterated that the UN forces are not there to disarm anyone.
2. The Arab world has taken this war as a Hisballa victory, which it has been in many ways. They see that Israel has a weak, ineffective leadership whch is unwilling to do what needs to be done. The army is still strong, but has to obey the leadership. This enboldens Israel's enemies. Syria's president has already alluded to an imminent attack. Among other things, he said that just as Hisballa stood up to Israel and forced them to their knees, the current generation of Arab and Muslem leaders are stronger and smarter than their predecessors and will express their collective hatred of the Zionist enemy in ways that their fathers never dreamed of. I believe them. They also now know our military weaknesses, especially in terms of equipment and tactics. We may have the most modern air force in the world, but the same money and development was not put into the armored corp or other ground forces. Hisballa, on the other hand, was using some of the most modern, sophisticated anti-tank weapons on the market, and they accounted for most of the Israeli casualties. By the way, two Fox news employees were kidnapped in Gaza two days ago and no word has been heard from their captors. Foreigners get kidnapped all the time in Gaza, but they are usually released after a few hours.
3. There are two important dates approaching which are traditionally used to stir up anger against Israel, Jews and the West. August 20 is the day on which Moslems commemorate the prophet Mohamad's ascension to heaven. The famous Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is built over the rock from which Mohammad embarked on his night journey to visit Allah. Actually the Koran only mentions that this happened in a faraway place, but does not mention Jerusalem by name. A later leader, Caliph Omar, decided that it had happened in Jerusalem because he had been removed from the capital in Arabia and needed to establish a new power base. So, August 20 should be very eventful, especially in Jerusalem. The second date is the weekend of September 22. Not only is it the beginning of Rosh HaShana, an important Jewish holiday, but it is also the beginning of the most important Moslem holiday, Ramadan. Traditionally the period between Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur and Sukkot is a time of increased terror attacks against Israel and Jews worldwide. The main synagogue in Paris, for example, gets fire-bombed nearly every year during this period. The Jewish holidays and Ramadan don't always coincide (different calendars), but this year they do. This would be an excellent opportunity for countries such as Syria to settle some long-standing issues such as their loss to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
4. Former prime minister Ariel Sharon had several strokes and major brain hemorrhaging months ago. In the last couple of days his health has deteriorated considerably and he will probably not last more than a few days more. Many world leaders will probably attend his funeral, and the country's focus will be on the security necessary to protect that many internationally important people together at one time in the same place. Heightened security in Jerusalem / Tel Aviv means less defense resources in the North and South. And what better revenge against the man who led Israel's armies against them for years than to attack his country during his funeral?

Until next time,

Ann

Hello Everyone!

Bryan called and said he is now South of the border and will be home on Sunday. Yeahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for all your support and your prayers this past month.

Shabbat Shalom,

Ann

Longer version:

Hello All.

In case you missed it the first time around (see above), my son Bryan called this afternoon to say he is back in Israel and will be home on Sunday. No better news on the planet!

The Lebanese army is moving bit by bit into Southern Lebanon, and the Hisballa are magically disappearing into thin air. Um hum. The Lebanese army hasn't been in the South of the country for nearly 30 years. Some UN troops are scattered here and there, but there aren't many there to scatter. The multi-national force of 15,000 has yet to be assembled, and they still don't even know which countries will contribute. The Israeli foreign minister has stipulated that Israel will only accept troops from countries which currently have diplomatic relations with Israe. This leaves out some of the Muslim countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia (who, by the way were sending trained suicide soldiers to join the Hisballa in Lebanon). And France, the great mediators who will be leading this mighty defense force, in the end will only be contributing about 200 soldiers. So, that only leaves another 14,800 soldiers to find. The sudden downsizing of their proposed contribution came after sources in Syria reminded them of what happened to French peacekeepers in Beirut in 1983 (Israel, the French contingent and the US Marines lost hundreds of men when their headquarters and barracks were blown up in separate incidents by Hisballa). Meanwhile, Israel still has troops in Lebanon, but I don't know how many and where.

Hisballa is already setting up locations for the Lebanese to come and receive a payment of $12,000 per family. Yet another way to buy allegiance and intensify hatred towards Israel. I don't expect these feelings to ever change, not towards us and not the the hatred towards each other. I was just thinking today that from the 1950's until today Lebanon has been involved in at least one major military crisis per decade, and very often more. If the conflicts didn't involve foreign countries, they were intense civil wars. Israel has also had a war every decade, but none were civil wars and all were in response to attacks from outside. I don't expect that to change either. My worry now is that not enough will be done in Lebanon to set up adequate temporary housing before the cold weather comes in about a month. It is already cold enough in the mountains to require a coat in the evening, and Lebanon has very cold, snowy winters. There is never any shortage of foreign aid, but the administration and distribution of the resources inside of Lebanon is very often corrupt and/or inefficient.

Speaking of which, there is a lot of anger about how the government handled the war. Many people are calling for an official inquiry, so just to show that he has nothing to hide, the defense minister has already set up a committee to look into the defense department's actions. I expect it to be totally objective, since it is headed by the minister's close friend and is comprised of two more close friends, a heavy campaign contributor, and someone who owes his job to the minister's political maneuverings.

The atmosphere in Israel is still one of wait and see. People are going out and doing errands, etc. but the feeling is more like a long lunch break than an end to the war. My youngest son Yaron had 3 movies he wanted to see this summer (we don't go to movies very often), and they had just gotten to the North when the war erupted. So today I took him and his cousin to Carmiel to see Pirates of the Caribbean at the matinee. There were 10 of us there. In the little shopping center the parking lot was nearly full, some people were sitting at an outdoor cafe, but most of the people looked to be in the grocery store or the school supplies store. After the movie I took the boys to the other side of town to see some of the katusha damage. Yes, the ghoulish historian in me wanted to see and record. They both thought I was nuts, but when we got there they quickly became experts in the differences between shrapnel damage and ball bearing damage, which were entrance holes and which were exit holes, angles of explosion, etc. They were intrigued and scared at the same time. If you can divorce yourself from the human issues for a moment, the capricious mechanics of the explosion are fascinating. At a factory one katushya hit the parking lot and skidded to a halt in a flower bed. The blacktop is all ripped up, the surrounding metal light poles look like confetti, the building's windows are all shattered, yet the flowers remain beautiful and untouched. We then went to the Ort high school which sits just above this factory. It also got hit. A katushya fell right in the middle of a little memorial garden at the school's entrance. The garden was built in memory of an alumnus who was killed in battle in a couple of years ago. A seating area had been built of nice dressed stones cemented onto a stone base. The seating stones were blown off and landed in the area. The trees were shredded and the trunks looked like a carrot being grated. Several branches had been blown off. The metal sign and light poles were pocked from the shrapnel and ball bearings. Most of the shrapnel passed completely through to the other side, but some were still embedded in the metal poles, like boils under the skin. The windows of the sports hall were all shattered, including the glass bricks, yet the blinds inside were intact. There isn't a lot that can be done about the trees, but I hope the school at least takes down the sign poles before school starts in two weeks. The kids will be traumatized, and all the damage is right at the main gate.

As I was driving yesterday I saw a lot of police and police auxiliary out checking bus stops and all the minor roads in the area, obviously looking for something. I've also heard a lot of booms in the past couple of days, which had me worried. I have since learned that there is a massive police operation to find and disarm the rockets which haven't been located yet. Nearly 4,000 fell and only about 1,500 were found during the war. The booms I have been hearing are the newly-found rockets being taken care of in controlled explosions. There is an extra urgency because starting this afternoon a lot of Israelis will be coming up from the center of the country for their annual vacation in the North, or to come and look at Kiryat Shmonah. A lot of these rockets have fallen in nature reserves and popular tourist areas, and there is no shortage of idiots who are looking to take home souvenirs.

On the lighter side, one woman from K. Shmonah was saved from serious injury or possible death by her new breast implants. She was hit by shrapnel, and most of it went into her chest. Several large pieces of shrapnel were found quite near her heart, but were embedded in the silicone of the inplants. I wonder if that invalidates the warrantee?

Here's to a quiet weekend for everyone.

Ann

You have probably heard by now, but early this morning Israel mounted a commando raid on Hisballa supply lines in Lebanon. One soldier was killed and others injured. Lebanon has done nothing to stop military supplies from getting to Hisballa, which was part of the ceasefire agreement. Israel has said from the beginning that it will continue to attack potential dangers to Israel; Lebanon has said this is a blatant breach of the ceasefire. Also, Hisballa flags are already flying on the other side of the border fence between Israel and Lebanon.

Yesterday Hugo Chavez of Venezuela called on everyone of his citizens to contribute money to rebuild Lebanon, telling them that it was their duty. He also called on those who could to volunteer to serve in Lebanon against Israel, giving their lives if necessary. By the way, a couple of weeks ago he went into Colombia with tanks for a short while, claiming that it had something to do with stopping the drug cartels operating in Venezuela. He is very scary.

In Gaza, the two Fox journalists kidnapped a week ago still haven't been heard from. Usually someone at least takes credit and makes a demand. Not a good sign.

And one last bit of cheery news. I wrote that Sunday Aug. 20 is the memorial of the Prophet Muhammad's ascension to heaven. The Islamic calendar is not exact, and evidently in Iran the ascension will be commerated on Tuesday, Aug. 22. Today, Iran began a massive 5-week series of "war games" involving all branches of the highly-trained and equipped military. Many of the exercises are taking place in an area on the border with Afghanistan. Coincidence? What really concerns me is a statement by Bernard Lewis, probably the world's foremost expert on the history of the Middle-East and Islam. To me, his books are the bible of Middle-East scholarship and should be mandatory reading for anyone wanting to learn about the Middle East. Not only is his scholarship faultless, but his observations, plus his understanding of the cultures and mentality of the area are brilliant. He issued a statement today saying that he is expecting Iran to use Tuesday's remembrance of the Ascension as the starting point of its war against the West. This is not a man who exagerates or goes for the sensational. It doesn't necessarily mean that Iran will stage an all-out military attack, but I am sure that they will put plans into operation which will lead to major developments on the world stage.

In the meantime, a grand total of 50 French soldiers have arrived in Lebanon to join the international forces. There were supposed to have been 15,000 international troops in Lebanon by the end of next week.

So, it will be a tense week here. May your week be better.

Ann

Shabbat Shalom to everyone.

I wasn't sure whether or not to continue with these, but Betty has passed on your requests. It has been a busy week for me. Sunday I spent doing errands, and finishing homework for an on-line course I am taking for school. (We have church meetings on Saturday, and Sunday is the beginning of the work week here.) Monday I left the house at 5:30 am to go to Tel Aviv for an all-day seminar for department heads of the school network I work for.

It was good to see colleagues I haven't seen all summer, and the discussion on the ride down was quite interesting as we compared our stories of this summer. The special ed teacher lives in a moshav west of Kiryat Shmonah which got hit continuously by katushas. In addition, there were also Israeli artillery batteries stationed in her orchard so they got the noise coming and going. She organized activities for the children, and tried to get some relief supplies from all the donations. However, she said that they only got one delivery of donated supplies. Everyone said it was too dangerous to drive supplies that close to the fighting! Her adult son, who is an electrician, donated his time to fixing electrical problems in bomb shelters in the area. His business was closed, of course. After the war he got a letter from the government stating that he is expected to pay the wages of his 5 workers for the 5 weeks they were out of work, but neither he nor his company will be compensated for time and work lost. In effect, this is all supposed to come out of his own pocket. What especially stings is that he stayed in the North and risked his own life going from hot spot to hot spot, while all of his workers and their families took advantage of special offers and spent their time going from hotel to vacation village down South. It was generally agreed by everyone that the government has messed up from beginning to end.

Yael lives in the same village as the retired sports teacher from our school whose son was killed on the last day of fighting. Another teacher has his married daughter and her family and his sister-in-law and her family living with him. Both of them live in Carmiel. A katusha landed in the house next to his daughter's, and did substantial damage to both houses. Another katusha landed in his sister-in-law's living room. So he has both of them living with him until their houses are rebuilt. At the same time, one of his son's was in Lebanon. Another day he was in the garden with his granddaughter and got bitten by an asp. He collected the snake in a bag and went to the nearest hospital -- Nahariya. Because it was in the middle of the war he had to wait for hours before a doctor got to him. By then the venom had spread and he had to be hospitalized for several days.

Yet another teacher had three sons in Lebanon: one in full-time service (in my son's battalion) and two in reserve duty. Another teacher raises goats and makes cheese from the milk. She said that she has some goats who won't leave their shelter and go out to the grass now; another goat refused to nurse her baby; several others have massive behavioural changes. I know that my own dog won't go run in the field now unless I go outside with him. (Just as an aside, one of the Northern kibbutzim just re-opened their dairy. A katusha had fallen directly on one of the cow sheds, killing about 40 cows. The trauma dried up the milk of most of the others.)

On Tuesday we had a general staff meeting at school, and then a couple of hours with trauma-therapy specialists. Ours was an army colonel who set up the trauma center in Kiryat Shmonah 10 years ago when the city was getting hit nearly everyday by katushas (although only 1-3 a day as opposed to 70-80). He lives in a suburb of Tel Aviv which is right across the border from a Palestinian terrorist hotbed, so he does counseling for terror attack victims and for soldiers with battle fatigue/PTS. Although his stated objective was to give us some basic tools for dealing with the students, in actuality he did a lot of therapy with us.

One of the major fears that teachers expressed was what would happen if we were in school when there was another attack. Their biggest concern was the conflict in choosing whether to get to their own children or to stay with their students. He told us that just as we would expect the kindergarten teacher to stay with our children until we could safely get there, other parents would expect the same from us. He also brought up the point that if it were safe enough to travel anyway, then the parents would be picking up their children right away.

He then told us about another group of teachers he had met with a few days before. Two of them were Ma'alot survivors. Ma'alot is a town on the Northern border between Nahariya and Sfat. It also got hit heavily and had several fatalities. In 1974 a group of junior high students from Hatzor and Sfat were on a school trip and camped overnight in the school building in Maalot. They were attacked by Palestinian terrorists who had crossed over from Lebanon, and held under seige inside the building. When it got dark enough, most of the teachers who were the chaperones jumped out of the windows and ran, leaving the children alone. Only 3 teachers stayed. One of them was the husband of my children's babysitter. He was shot and walks with a bad limp to this day. In the end, several children were killed before the rest were freed.

So, this is what these two teachers had gone through as children, and they had both chosen to be teachers so that this would not happen to someone else. They talked about the sense of betrayal when their teachers deserted them and they were left on their own, and how their vision of the world and their own perceptions of adults were forever changed. They both said that our first responsibility has to be to the children in our keeping, and trust that our children's teachers would have the same values. He then added that the female teacher had survived Ma'alot, but her sister had been killed in front of her. During this war her cousin had been killed in Lebanon, and her brother injured. As if that weren't enough for anyone to bear, the last week of the war her father died after a long illness. He brought out that everyone is different, but that most people have more strength than they realize, and will do what is needed in a crisis if they will allow themselves to.

Another thing that came up, especially by the young mothers from Carmiel, was that after they had returned to their homes after a summer away, the North-facing views which they used to love, now just make them feel unsafe (the rockets came from the North). Many of them are now keeping the curtains closed because everytime they look out they remember watching the rockets falling and being powerless to stop them.

On Wednesday we had another kind of "therapy" session which was surprisingly effective. I walked in and saw the circles with candles in them, and everything draped in scarves and thought to myself "yeah, right." But, by the end of the day we had shared a lot of things with each other, and learned things about teachers we have worked with for years. Two events really stick in my mind. We had been asked to share an experience where we had trusted in someone, and then tell whether or not the trust had been justified.

One teacher told about growing up in a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley during the late 50's and early 60's. She is just a couple of years older than I. In those years the children spent much of their childhood in bombshelters because they were contstantly bombarded by the Syrian artillery on the Golan Heights, or by the Jordanian artillery. She spoke about a period when they had to stay in the shelter for several days, and the constant yelling of a 6-year-old immigrant from Argentina. The kid was hyper anyway, and the move to a new country and his inability to speak Hebrew combined to make him especially active. She just remembers his screaming, and him calling over and over again "papa". When they were finally able to go above ground, it was to learn that his father had been killed by one of artillery barrages. She said that the boy went absolutely silent, turned around and disappeared. They didn't find him for days; he had disappeared into the hills, literally. She says she still dreams about his face, and the fact that he went from continual screaming to near-total silence, and it lasted for years. The father had trusted the shelter to protect his son, and it had. The son had trusted that his father would be there for him, but he was gone.

The second incident involved a teacher from K. Shmonah. During the Yom Kippur war (1973) she was doing her army service and worked in the division which notified parents of casualties. Her brother was in the tank corp on the Golan when her mother received notice that he was missing. She asked her daughter to see if she could find him. This teacher spoke about walking in the battle areas and seeing piles of black oily stuff. At first she thought it was some kind of residue from the tanks, until she got close enough to comprehend that she was seeing the charred remains of soldiers, and wondering if one of those piles was her brother. She managed to contact her mother (personal phones in each house were almost unheard of ) and told her not to hold out any hope of finding her son's body. Her mother told her that if you put your faith in God then your soul, if not your body, would always be protected and you could accomplish what was needed. She said that it gave her the courage to go on looking; a few days later she found her brother's body, and enough was left for it to be quickly identified and buried.

This same teacher spent this war farther South setting up and running a center for senior citizens who had been evacuated from their homes in the North. She returned home to a house which had been hit by a rocket (which didn't seem to bother her overmuch) and a garden which had dried up (which did bother her a lot.) As she said, they may as well leave the broken floor tiles till the next war, but it will take years to regrow her garden and grape bower.

Sept. 6 -- We have been back to school for four days. The students have been very willing to talk about their experiences, but seem to want to get on with other things as soon as they are done talking. In the activities I have done with my classes, the words which have come up over and over again are fear, boredom and hopelessness.

Ann

Today was Yom Kippur, a day which is traditionally spent in prayer and reflection. In Israel, it is additionally sobering because it brings with it the memories and sorrows of the Yom Kippur war, the dark days in 1973 when the country was nearly lost only 25 years after it began, and when the miraculous survival brought none of the euphoria of the Six Days war six years before. It left a deep scar in the psyche of the people that remains to this day.

The events of this summer have opened old wounds, and created new ones. Once again the people of Israel feel betrayed by their leadership, but whereas Golda Meir and her chief-of-staff took upon themselves the responsibility and guilt for what happened and also what didn't happen, the present leadership acts as if nothing major occurred and everything is rosy. In Israel, this sense of betrayal isn't just a political storm, it is a matter of our survival. To pretend otherwise could be fatal.

The ceasefire has been in effect for just over a month now. No one believes that it will last. Israel withdrew the last of its troops from Lebanon on Saturday night, in compliance with its part of the ceasefire agreement. However, not all of the international troops have arrived and been deployed in Lebanon yet. Those that have arrived have not been given clear "fire orders" yet (instructions as to when, where and how they can use their weapons). The Italian commander in charge of the multi-national forces has stated that until told otherwise, his soldiers will not intervene in anything (even if an attack from either side takes place right in front of them), they will use their weapons only to defend themselves, and they will be withdrawn if it becomes dangerous for them. They will not be deployed along any border except Israel's, and the Syrians and others will still have free range to bring in weapons and armaments wherever the Lebanese don't stop them from going (which is everywhere). Nothing is to be done to disarm Hisballah, which still has at least 75% of their original arsenal. The international forces will clearly be a great asset to the area.

In addition, the Hisballah has returned to its border activities of six years ago. Every day crowds of Lebanese (men, women, children) are bussed to the border area near the Israeli town of Metulla, where they stand on their side of the fence, chant "Death to Israel and the Zionist Dogs" and throw rocks across the border. They hold Hisballah flags and are provided with rocks by their escorts -- Hisballa fighters. You need to understand that the border in this area is literally across the street from Israeli houses. A street in the town is the border. A few feet separates Israel from Lebanon. This area is patrolled by the Israeli army, which has been told that they can fire only when their life is endangered. That means that an enemy who has sworn to destroy you can swear and threaten and throw rocks at both civilians and the army, and nothing is done about it. Can you imagine what this does to their sense of invincibility? Of course they won't hesitate to do more when they want to. It's like chaining up a captive and inviting everyone to come and taunt him. By the way, there are UN observation posts right there on the Lebanese side, but they can/will do nothing about it.

Syria is still making noises as well. On one hand they are still threatening us, but on the other they are saying that the U.S. owes them a favor. A couple of weeks ago the U.S. Embassy in Damascus was attacked, but the attack was stopped by Syrian soldiers assigned to protect the building. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. But because Syria is a police state, has good intelligence and isn't concerned in any way about human rights, the government pretty well knows what is going on and is ruthless in stopping something it doesn't want to happen. Of course nothing has been said officially, but it is felt that the government knew about the plot and let it proceed anyway. If the embassy had been blown up, it was a blow to the Americans. If the plot was successfully foiled, Syria could look brave and call in a favor. Either way Syria wins.

Iran, of course, is playing us all along. I think the U.S. is waiting for Israel to do something, but Israel has no leadership and time is running out. Iran will have active nuclear capability by this spring.

Last week another incident occurred which also shows how basically alone Israel is and how much the world wants to ignore what is happening. Norway has always been among the first countries to render humanitarian assistance when there have been natural disasters, and they are champions of the cause of the Palestinians. When the Palestinian Authority was set up six years ago, they were probably the biggest single contributor of money, advice, and personnel from Europe. They have always had troops in the international forces in Lebanon, and the UN peace negotiator Terje Larsen (sp?) is Norwegian. The royal family have been strong supporters of the Palestinians, and have always been very quick to condemn Israel. Just before Rosh HaShana, the main synagogue in Oslo was attacked. It barely made the news anywhere but in Israel. Norwegian police caught the attackers. During the interrogation it was learned that a second attack had been planned on the embassy as well. They had planned to get inside, and then slit the ambassador's throat -- not just kill her, but slit her throat. After that they had planned to blow up the building. When this news was made public, a few public officials condemned the planned attack, but the royal family was absolutely quiet on the matter. When the Israeli ambassador made mention of that at a press conference, the royals were indignant and have asked that the ambassador be expelled from Norway for insulting the royal family!

The Palestinian Authority continues to be a hotbed of violence directed both towards Israel and against each other. Palestinians are still using the ruins of former Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip to launch rockets into the settlements in Southern Israel nearly every day. The week before Rosh HaShana the Israeli army caught over 40 suicide bombers on their way to attacks in Israel. Last Sunday ten more were caught on one day. This week there have been violent clashes between the Fatah supporters (Arafat's party) and the Hamas. Several people have been killed, the parliament building was attacked, today there is a general strike, and things are getting worse. Most European countries have stopped donating money to Palestine because of the massive corruption and the in-fighting, and a lot of aid money contributed by Islamic sources is now going to Lebanon. The poverty is horrific, and any government workers have not been paid since the Hamas came to power in March. It is a perfect situation for increased violence and civil unrest.

The damage to both Lebanon and Israel from the war this summer has been horrendous and it will take decades to recover. The government department in Israel which is responsible for repairing damage to houses and buildings during the war has long since run out of money. They announced last week that from now on they will only pay damage costs to buildings which were directly hit by a katusha. If you don't have a katusha in your living room, forget it. Never mind that anything withing two blocks will have been damaged as well. I keep thinking of the example of a colleague's daughter. Her house was next door to one which got a direct hit. The force of the blast from next door ripped her own washing machine from the wall, along with all its plumbing fittings, threw it across the room and through the wall into the next room. It shattered the glass in every single window in the house, and blew off several of the roof tiles. Technically, she is no longer entitled to compensation! Entire neighborhoods in most Northern towns were damaged, and the repair costs will be in the millions.

Businesses everywhere have closed down and most probably won't be able to re-open. Two weeks ago, for example, we had a guest from the U.S. and my husband had taken him to the Crusader seaport of Acco for the day. It is a major tourist site, and famous for its seafood restaurants. Michael told me that they only saw two other tourists there the entire day. When they went to eat, they had to look for over 30 minutes before they found a restaurant that was open. When they finally found one, the owner told them that they were the first and only guests there in over two months! The saddest moment was when they learned that even Abu Cristo's, probably one of the oldest and most famous restaurants in Israel (close to 80 years at least) has now closed for lack of business. Acco is a city which is based on tourism and fishing. Tourism is almost non-existant, and the fishing has been severely affected because the katushas which fell in the sea near Haifa and Acco chased most of the fish away. Who knows how long it will take for the ecosystem of the sea to return to normal? The population of the old city is Arab, as is a large part of the newer neighborhoods.

The area around the Sea of Galilee is traditionally packed with people during August and September. You can't find a free spot, people even park on the highway, and we always have to add at least a half-hour to our travel time to get to Tiberius. This year the beaches are still nearly deserted and you can easily find parking even in the town center of Tiberius. The Jewish holiday of Rosh HaShana was just over a week ago. The weather was perfect. Usually Tiberius, the Sea of Galilee and all of the upper Galilee are filled with visitors. It is not unusual to get close to a million visitors up North during Rosh HaShana. You have to book rooms in hotels or bed and breakfasts nearly a year in advance, and if you aren't in a national park by about 9:30 in the morning, you won't be able to get in at all. This year there were only 200,000 people in national parks in the entire country, and most of them were in the South! At the height of the holiday weekend, we counted only 4 tents along the entire stretch of beach between us and Tiberius. There would normally be hundreds. There were very few visitors to the Galilee, and those that came did not stay overnight. They were afraid of getting caught in the war when it broke out again. Many hotel owners in Tiberius say that all of their bookings until next summer have been cancelled, and they have received no new bookings. There are just no cars on the roads, and you see almost no one out in the streets in the evenings. People are either afraid to come North, or they have no money to do vacations, or both. I have never seen it like this in the 25 years I have been here.

Our local gas station offers a discount to locals who have a monthly account with him. My last month's bill was a third of what it normally would be. It would have been even less if the ceasefire hadn't gone into effect. If you figure that my bill was fairly representative, that means that the station owner lost at least 67% of his normal revenue from the locals, plus all of the revenue from the tourists and summer visitors. The summer and the Rosh HaShana-Sukkot holiday traffic are his biggest income earners. In effect, he has lost nearly all of his income from July to October, or nearly half a year's income.

Rosh HaShana and Sukkot are kind of like December in the U.S. -- a feeling of festivity and family, and a time when lots of gifts are bought. This year there were almost no ads, no deals, no buying.

Yesterday our son, who had been given a couple of days off, received an emergency callback notice (probably because of withdrawing from Lebanon the night before). Because it was already early afternoon of the eve of Yom Kippur when there is no travel, especially on public transportation, we took him and another soldier back up to a base where he would be picked up and taken to his base. Partway up the Hula Valley, you could see a huge pit and burned area in a field where a rocket had fallen. When my youngest commented on it, his brother said, "from now on everything you see will be burned." He was right. The landscape of the North is black, where once it was the green of many forests. I saw things I never noticed before because they were covered in trees and shrubs until now. It was heartbreaking. Nearly nothing is left. It would be bad enough if there had been just one big fire, but that wasn't the case. There were hundreds of small fires, each caused by a rocket. All of these little fires interconnected, with a green tree or two left in between. It's like seeing a dog or cat with the mange -- the bald spots are far more numerous than the hairy places. I am at a loss for words to describe the feelings I had driving through these areas; "sadness, sorrow, devastated" simply aren't adequate. When you realize that each of these fires was caused by a different rocket falling, you can begin to get an idea of the sheer magnitude of the rocket attacks. Over 750,000 trees were burned in the North, many of them planted and watered by hand over 60 years ago. These fires were caused only by the rockets which were classified as having fallen "in an open area -- no damage to structures". Imagine the damage by the ones that fell on structures! We drove through Kiryat Shmonah. Everywhere we looked the buildings had new paint and plaster, and new windows, but no one was outside (and not because it would be Yom Kippur in a few hours). Further North the roads and guardrails and ground are a beautiful mauve color, thanks to the chemicals used on the forest fires. In many places you can still smell the odor of the fires which raged over a month ago. Mostly you feel the loss of the trees. Even the few that survived are partially burned. We stopped at Margoliot, which was pounded. Outside the village are the ruins of a small Crusader-period fortress which we have always liked. Part of it was purple from the spray, and at least 3 katushas fell around it (you can still see the pits), but it survived yet again. I wonder how many battles have taken place near it in the hundreds of years it has been there? It was a reminder to me that there has always been violence, and there will probably be more as long as people exist. It put things into perspective for me that the only changes I can make will be in myself.

Our last stop was at Tel Hai, to the statue of the Roaring Lion. Tel Hai had been a Jewish settlement in the 1920's which had been attacked by Arab bands. During the battle 8 people were killed, including the commander who had been a Russian officer in the Japanese-Russian war in the early part of the century, and who had also fought with the Jewish Brigade in World War I. Shortly before he died of his wounds, Trumpeldor said "It is good to die for your country." Tel Hai has become a symbol of bravery, of committment to country, and of loyalty to each other. The eight who were killed were buried together, and several years afterwards a statue of a lion (the symbol of the tribe of Judah) roaring into the heavens was built over the grave. It looks out over Kiryat Shmonah (which was named "shmonah" (8) after the 8 who were killed) and North into Lebanon. It is a place to which I have taken my children nearly every year. Towards the end of the war it was also used as a meeting point for reserve soldiers. One day a katusha landed on a crowd of them, killing many. The destruction caused not only by that katusha, but by others is still being repaired, if it can be. The cemetary also contains the graves of many kibbutz members who were killed fighting in all the wars of Israel. It is also in the cemetary where the members of HaShomer are buried, the group I did my masters thesis about. They were one of the first modern Jewish groups who realized that their survival could only be assured by defending themselves, and both men and women participated in this group of defenders. Many of them, or their children, later became some of the most important leaders in the new state of Israel. Their commitment to their beliefs came at great personal cost, and the things that many of them did may never be remembered by anyone outside of their descendants, but that wasn't important to them. What was important was believing in something, and doing whatever was in their power to keep that belief strong and alive. It was a strong reminder to me that the people who attacked us also have strong beliefs, and are just as commited to following what they believe as we are, maybe even more so. This is not a war which will have an end, not as long as they believe we need to be eliminated, and we believe otherwise. By "we", I mean not only Israel, but anyone who believes differently than they do. This war will not go away, and we need to be as committed to fighting for what we believe in as they are. It was a sobering day.

Ann

Just as a little background, there have been branches of the Church in the Galilee since the last part of the 19th century. For several years the mission home was also in Haifa, before Israel became a country. The first members were members of the German Templer faith. Later many Armenians joined the Church, and in the 1930's the Mission president was himself an Armenian. (You can imagine how I felt when Reuben Kahn, a member from Armenia, was called to serve as our branch president after Michael was released several years ago.) The branches later disbanded, and the mission was closed when World War II broke out. In the late 1970s several couples served in Israel as Special Representatives, and there were branches in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and the Galilee. The first special rep. couple in the Galilee, the Ottleys, found and rented a duplex in Tiberius, which is where our branch has met for the past 26 years. Before then, meetings were held in my in-law's home, and several other places, including a bus station once.

The Special Reps were pulled out in 1985, partly because of pressure related to building the BYU Center in Jerusalem. Since that time there have been couples serving in the BYU Center, and then about 3 years ago service couples were again called to serve in the Galilee. We had the blessing of having Ted and Nedra Powell sent to us. To make a long story short, Ted was given the assignment by the District President to look for a new building which would be suitable to meet in, since the building we were renting was falling apart and the landlord would not repair it. Ted and Michael literally combed Northern Israel looking for somewhere appropriate, but kept coming back again and again to a dilapidated house in Tiberius fairly close to the present branch building. The only problem was that it was for sale, not rent. At no time in the history of the modern Church in Israel (since the 1800s) has the Church ever owned any property. Even the BYU Center in Jerusalem sits on land leased for 99 years. But Ted kept pushing for this property, and in a series of literal miracles, the decision was made to go ahead with the purchase. Even more miraculous, the building sits on privately-owned land (very rare in Israel) and was currently being rented by a Finnish evangelical church, so the neighbors were used to living next door to a church. Also, the owner was a close family member of the current mayor, so the expected bureaucratic roadblocks were minimal. Ted later told me that he felt that one of the biggest reasons he was called to serve in the Galilee was in order to find this building. (The Powells were called to serve here only a few months after returning from a mission to the Bahamas.

They hadn't even been thinking of going on another mission yet.) The Powells left before the serious remodeling began, so that headache was left for the Whiteheads to deal with. The intensive building work had just gotten started when the war broke out, so that caused another delay. And in the last month we have gotten more rain than the rest of the winter combined. I think Judy Whitehead has probably spent more time on her knees cleaning away the mud from the workers and the movers than in any other activity these past weeks. Her work at the archaeological dig in Tiberius was just to get her ready!

During the past couple of weeks the things in the old building had to be packed up, thrown out or given away, plus the building cleaned and painted. Most of that also fell on the Whiteheads, but as many of us from the branch as could also came over to help. Imagine to yourselves the sight of 9-10 well-meaning adults, none with much painting experience, 3 of them professors, all together on the same floor, and often in the same room, trying to get more paint on the walls than on the floor or each other. Great fun, and great memories.

The Friday afternoon before the dedication some of us went over to clean the new cupboards and closets (and then fill them up!), wash and put away all the new dishes, pots and utinsels in the new kitchen, then set up all the tables, etc. for the lunch the next day. Irena Sitonin also bought and arranged flowers for the chapel and the downstairs area. We started working in the afternoon and worked well into the evening. I actually find the monotony of washing dishes very soothing when I am not in a hurry, and to stand there at the sink, looking out the window at the lights around the Sea of Galilee was an absolute gift of tranquility in my hectic week. And even though we had actually been meeting in the building for nearly a month (I wrote you about our first meeting in the new building), I still couldn't quite believe that this was all real.

I have been in this branch for 25 years. For many years there were no more than 3 active adult members. Several times it was strongly recommended that the branch be closed, and once it nearly was. But Elder Ballard, who was in charge of us at that time, was inspired to keep the branch open, and told us that the time would come when the branch would grow, and there would be a need to have a meeting place in the North. This was about 15 years ago. And remember, the Church has asked us to keep a low profile, and not do missionary work of any kind. We can't even invite non-members to our meetings, or talk about the church with others. So the only growth in the size of the branch would have to come from our own families (I did my part - 4 children!), or from people moving in. Soon after that we also had the Russian immigration, and our branch numbers multiplied. Still, to think that the Church was willing to invest this much to make a permanent meeting place for us is very humbling, and sobering. We still have only about 60 members on paper, and seldom have more than 20-25 people at a meeting. And there is an inspiring serenity just being in this building, especially when you look outside. I think Fabricio (our Brazilian member) said it best when he said, "This isn't like a church; it's like being in a temple."

As many of you know, last Saturday, March 17, 2007, was the dedication of the Galilee Branch house. It seems beyond belief to me that such a momentous occurrence can be encapsulated in so few words. I am still trying to grasp the magnitude of all that has happened, and all that this will mean not only for me personally, but for the Church in Israel as well. Three days later I still find myself crying whenever I think about it, which is most of the time!

Just as a little background, there have been branches of the Church in the Galilee since the last part of the 19th century. For several years the mission home was also in Haifa, before Israel became a country. The first members were members of the German Templer faith. Later many Armenians joined the Church, and in the 1930's the Mission president was himself an Armenian. (You can imagine how I felt when Reuben Kahn, a member from Armenia, was called to serve as our branch president after Michael was released several years ago.) The branches later disbanded, and the mission was closed when World War II broke out. In the late 1970s several couples served in Israel as Special Representatives, and there were branches in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and the Galilee. The first special rep couple in the Galilee, the Ottleys, found and rented a duplex in Tiberius, which is where our branch has met for the past 26 years. Before then, meetings were held in my in-laws home, and several other places, including a bus station once.

The Special Reps were pulled out in 1985, partly because of pressure related to building the BYU Center in Jerusalem. Since that time there have been couples serving in the BYU Center, and then about 3 years ago service couples were again called to serve in the Galilee. We had the blessing of having Ted and Nedra Powell be sent to us. To make a long story short, Ted was given the assignment by the District President to look for a new building which would be suitable to meet in, since the building we were renting was falling apart and the landlord would not repair it. Ted and Michael literally combed Northern Israel looking for somewhere appropriate, but kept coming back again and again to a dilapidated house in Tiberius fairly close to the present branch building. The only problem was that it was for sale, not rent. At no time in the history of the modern Church in Israel (since the 1800s) has the Church ever owned any property. Even the BYU Center in Jerusalem sits on land leased for 99 years. But Ted kept pushing for this property, and in a series of literal miracles, the decision was made to go ahead with the purchase. Even more miraculous, the building sits on privately-owned land (very rare in Israel) and was currently being rented by a Finnish evangelical church, so the neighbors were used to living next door to a church. Also, the owner was a close family member of the current mayor, so the expected bureaucratic roadblocks were minimal. Ted later told me that he felt that one of the biggest reasons he was called to serve in the Galilee was in order to find this building. (The Powells were called to serve here only a few months after returning from a mission to the Bahamas. They hadn't even been thinking of going on another mission yet.) The Powells left before the serious remodeling began, so that headache was left for the Whiteheads to deal with. The intensive building work had just gotten started when the war broke out, so that caused another delay. And in the last month we have gotten more rain than the rest of the winter combined. I think Judy Whitehead has probably spent more time on her knees cleaning away the mud from the workers and the movers than in any other activity these past weeks. Her work at the archaeological dig in Tiberius was just to get her ready!

During the past couple of weeks the things in the old building had to be packed up, thrown out or given away, plus the building clean and painted. Most of that also fell on the Whiteheads, but as many of us from the branch as could also came over to help. Imagine to yourselves the sight of 9-10 well-meaning adults, none with much painting experience, 3 of them professors, all together on the same floor, and often in the same room, trying to get more paint on the walls than on the floor or each other. Great fun, and great memories.

The Friday afternoon before the dedication some of us went over to clean the new cupboards and closets (and then fill them up!), wash and put away all the new dishes, pots and utensils in the new kitchen, then set up all the tables, etc. for the lunch the next day. Irena Sitonin also bought and arranged flowers for the chapel and the downstairs area. We started working in the afternoon and worked well into the evening. I actually find the monotony of washing dishes very soothing when I am not in a hurry, and to stand there at the sink, looking out the window at the lights around the Sea of Galilee was an absolute gift of tranquility in my hectic week. And even though we had actually been meeting in the building for nearly a month (I wrote you about our first meeting in the new building), I still couldn't quite believe that this was all real.

I have been in this branch for 25 years. For many years there were no more than 3 active adult members. Several times it was strongly recommended that the branch be closed, and once it nearly was. But Elder Ballard, who was in charge of us at that time, was inspired to keep the branch open, and told us that the time would come when the branch would grow, and there would be a need to have a meeting place in the North. This was about 15 years ago. And remember, the Church has asked us to keep a low profile, and not do missionary work of any kind. We can't even invite non-members to our meetings, or talk about the church with others. So the only growth in the size of the branch would have to come from our own families (I did my part - 4 children!), or from people moving in. Soon after that we also had the Russian immigration, and our branch numbers multiplied. Still, to think that the Church was willing to invest this much to make a permanent meeting place for us is very humbling, and sobering. We still have only about 60 members on paper, and seldom have more than 20-25 people at a meeting. And there is an inspiring serenity just being in this building, especially when you look outside. I think Fabricio (our Brazilian member) said it best when he said, "This isn't like a church; it's like being in a temple."

Pt. 2 coming soon...

Saturday was glorious. It had been stormy all week, which always intensifies the colors. The hills were green, the mountains deep purple, and the skies turbulent with various shades of gray. And if that weren't beautiful enough, the waters of the Sea of Galilee absorb all these colors and reflect them back. At times like this I wish I could paint! I kept hearing in my head the words ". . . the Master of ocean and earth and skies . ." (hymn #105). Nothing on this day happened by chance. We even got Bryan and Fabricio awake on time!

We got to the new building just after the Jerusalem bus with Elder Holland and all the others arrived. And people kept coming and coming. There was such a festive atmosphere! Among those who had come especially was Haws Marble, whom Michael has known for 34 years. M told me that one of the biggest factors in his decision to serve a mission was the advice, friendship and personal example of Haws. He has been connected to the Church in Israel from the beginning, and I was so happy that he could be there for this day. I was also thrilled that Michael and Maria Moody could be there as well. I think they are an adopted part of our branch! Brother Moody also played the prelude music.

Most of our branch members were there, and nearly as many visitors. Even Uri and Mariette Zionance from Tel Aviv made it. Uri has had several strokes, is in very bad health and in a wheelchair, so it is not easy for him to travel. Uri at one time was the president of the Tel Aviv branch, and was the man who translated the sacrament prayers into Hebrew. Mariette met him while she was a member of our branch. They are dear, dear friends and were among the first people who befriended me when I moved here 25 years ago. I have been praying for weeks that his health would allow him to be there with us and to share in this blessing. To give you an idea of how much Uri and Mariette have done for the church here, after the dedication the Hollands headed straight for them. Elder Holland enveloped Uri in a huge hug and said over and over, "Uri, I love you. Uri, I love you."

The meeting itself was quite intense. Before the meeting the choir met in a back hall for a prayer before the meeting began. We sang the same opening and closing hymns as we had in our first meeting in the building: "Now Let Us Rejoice" (3) and "The Spirit of God" (2). Halfway through we also stood and sang "I Am a Child of God". Michael, who has served in branch presidencies for about 20 years (13 of those as the bishop, and most of those without a councilor), gave the invocation in Hebrew. Anatoli Sitonin, a past branch president, gave the benediction in Russian. The choir sang "This is the Christ", which was written by President Faust and Michael Moody. President Faust has been in charge of us for decades. In fact I met him on his first visit here just after he was made an apostle. That was back in 1979 in Jerusalem. I was a kibbutz volunteer and had come to Jerusalem for a conference, and we met at the home of one of the Special Rep couples. It is a beautiful song, and I am glad that Pres. Faust's words were a part of this special day. And how often do you get to have the composer singing with you?! Of course, I didn't actually sing very much of it. I started thinking about the words and the occasion and I couldn't stop crying, which is bad enough, but when you are standing on the front row because you are short, it is even worse. There is nowhere to hide! Tracy Hall, who is here with the Barretts doing math research on a project, sang the second verse as a solo. He has a beautiful voice anyway (and is a very good wall painter!), but this time he really did have the voice of an angel. We also sang "Redeemer of Israel" (#6).

President Browning, the district president, sat with the Russian speakers and did simultaneous translation for them. I sat with the Spanish speakers and translated for them, with my back to the speakers. I wasn't able to take notes, but this is what I remember from the talks. Most of the speakers spoke of faith, and gratitude, and the challenges and blessings connected to this building. And everyone spoke of the view! Sister Samuelson had used the story of a small boy praying to show gratitude. After he had thanked Heavenly Father for his parents, his friends, etc., he said "and I am even thankful for the stupid old cat." After the meeting when we went outside for pictures, Yaron pointed out to me an old cat rolling around in the parking lot "just like in the lady's talk!" I loved it.

David McMillen from the Presiding Bishop's Office read Malachi 3: 16-17. He said that the verses refer to all those who remain faithful, but especially today referred to the faithfulness of the Galilee Branch members throughout the years. He told us to remember that our names were being recorded in heaven and that we needed to remain faithful until the end.

Pt. 3 coming next...

Elder Samuelson spoke about the need to stay on the right track, and the danger of even small deviations. Jim Kearl spoke a little about the history of the building, and the First Presidency's desire to have a permanent meeting place for us.

Sister Holland spoke also of gratitude, and of the gratitude she had felt for the priesthood blessing which had enabled her to be in good enough health to make the journey to Israel. She also spoke of the changes that she had seen in the country and the church in the nearly 40 years that she and her husband had been coming here.

Elder Holland spoke of the Savior, and just a few of the events in His life which had occurred in the Galilee. He read from Matthew 4: 12-16, and from Isaiah 9:2. He told us that the prophecy had been fulfilled with the coming of Christ, but that it had also been fulfilled a second time with the dedication of this building and the dedication of the branch members! He emphasized the geography from verse 15, and the bringing of light in verse 16. He spoke about how they had all come over one evening earlier in the week to sit on the balcony and look at the lights around the lake, and how the lights from the chapel would be brighter and more beautiful than them all, because it was the Lord's house. He spoke of the need to remain bright, and thankful, and faithful. He also spoke of the difference between those who have ears to hear but hear not, and those that do. He also brought up an interesting point. To do the things that he needed to do in order to fulfill the prophecies, Jesus went to Jerusalem. But when he wanted to restore his soul, he came to the Galilee.

Elder Holland also used a lot of humor, and a very personal touch. He talked again and again about the cultural, national and linguistic diversity of our branch. At one point he pointed over to the wall where the 4 song boards were (Hebrew, Spanish, Russian, English), and laughingly said that this was probably the only unit in the Church where there were more languages than people. He also spoke of how many people, including other General Authorities, would have given almost anything to have been there on that day, and to be where we are every day of our lives. He also made personal reference to the members who have been here a long time. We have been told by at least two district presidents that the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve pray for us by name, but it is still very sobering to have this confirmation from the mouth of an apostle.

After his talk, Elder Holland asked us to all join in the prayer of dedication, with himself as voice. I wasn't sure if I should be translating the prayer, so I asked President Browning, who asked Elder Holland. He immediately said, yes, of course, it was important for everyone there to understand the words of this prayer and blessing. I have been translating in Church for years, but I have never, ever translated for something of such solemnity (Elder Holland did not write out the blessing beforehand). I can't describe how that felt, but it was further confirmation of the power of the Spirit. The blessing itself had two parts - a blessing on the building and a blessing on the branch members. He blessed that the building would be protected against natural disaster, vandals and thieves. He also blessed it that it would be an island of safety in times of violence and war. And what particularly struck me was when he stated that in the future the building might be used "for whatsoever purpose the Lord sees fit". My soul shook with those words. He blessed the members of the branch that we would be more united and that our faith would be strengthened. During the blessing he also said that the Lord had made this building possible for us because of His love for us, and His recognition of our faithfulness throughout the years. That was also very, very humbling.

After the blessing, as a congregation we sang "The Spirit of God", and then Anatole offered the closing prayer. Everyone spent a few moments visiting, and then we all went outside for pictures. Everyone was euphoric. The Jerusalem group had to leave to go down and speak at conference for the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv branches. Our branch stayed and had lunch together. It was such a luxury to have tables and chairs for everyone. And only after half of the people had gone home did I remember that we hadn't taken a branch picture!

It was a glorious, glorious day.

Ann

The country is still recovering. Many of the families whose homes were damaged by shells still haven't received government compensation, and some don't have the money to replace the windows, etc. by themselves. Over a million people left their homes, and most of them have filed claims which still have to be processed. Hundreds have lost their businesses, or are struggling. Hisballa, on the other hand, handed out money right away to families in South Lebanon. The hundreds of bomb shelters in Northern Israel which were checked after the war and declared unsuitable for use, have still not been brought up to standard. Less than 50 of the schools have adequate shelters (school goes until the end of June).

Of our LDS branch's five soldiers, 3 have finished their military service, including my son. He will be in the reserves now for about 25 years. Since he was released in November he has upgraded his certification as a medic, and has been working at various jobs, including teaching school children nature and survival skills. He is currently working as a shepherd in the hills above the South end of the Sea of Galilee, near Mt. Tabor. Of the two soldiers still serving, one is still near Sfat and the other is a tank commander on the Northern border. His younger sister is in basic training now. We have another new soldier who is a driver in the North. Two more of our young women (including my daughter), will be going into the army in a couple of months.

Our branch numbers have gone up and down, but we had the very great blessing of having our new branch building completed, and then dedicated by Elder Holland in March. During the dedicatory prayer he blessed the building that it would be an island of safety in times of violence and war. This chapel has certainly been a source of great joy to the branch members.

Just after the war ended, I had the opportunity to participate in a special project for teachers of English all over the Middle East, which was sponsored by the US State Department. As well as having the chance to get to know teachers from Muslim countries both professionally and personally over the months, we actually had the chance to meet each other at a professional conference in Cairo in January. It was quite interesting to sit with the participants from Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine and compare notes from last summer. (Syria did not allow their delegates to attend the conference.) I had a good relationship with the teachers from most of the countries, but I formed friendships with those from Palestine, Yemen, Bahrein and Egypt. Most of them told me that initially they had been very hesitant to have anything to do with a teacher from Israel who wasn't Arab (my partner was a Christian Arab), but after meeting me their opinion changed. I was touched by their real, and very warm welcome to me as a friend, and their own willingness to put aside long-held beliefs and suspicions in order to do so. It was not an easy thing for them to do. I treasure the time we had together, and hope our friendship will continue. Hopefully a few bricks were taken out of the walls which separate our countries and our cultures. When we related to each other as individuals and not as countries, we found the things we had in common to be much greater than our differences. It was an important reminder for me.

I would like to thank you all again for your prayers and words of encouragement last summer. I have been very, very blessed this past year, and you have been a part of those blessings.

Ann

Several people have asked what is going on in Gaza, so this is my explanation:

The political entity of Palestine is made up of two geographical chunks separated by Israel. One chunk is what is called the West Bank - literally on the west side of the Jordan River. It goes from Hebron and Bethlehem in the South (just South of Jerusalem) to Jenin in the North (by Afula / Megiddo in Israel). The city of Ramalla, in the West Bank just a couple of miles from Jerusalem, is the temporary capital (Jerusalem is the official capital, but under Israeli control). In the mid-90s, Yasser Arafat became the president. Thanks to massive contributions from the European community, especially the Scandanavian countries, millions of dollars were poured into Palestine to build infrastructure and industry. A lot of the money was used to build beautiful government offices and the government tv station. Ramalla houses the presidential compound, the parliament building, the main police / security forces headquarters, and most of the government offices. The majority of the West Bank's population are Fatah supporters and Sunni Muslims, but more secular in nature. Fatah is the PLO. To put a perspective on things, "Fatah" is the group which world politicians and media consider the "moderate" party in the area. From the early 1960s they got most of their funding from Saudi Arabia, but that stopped in the first Gulf War when the PLO supported Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Since the 1990's the funding has come from the European Union, but that money dried up last year when Hamas came into power. So in effect this is a government without a penny to its name.

The Gaza strip sits between Israel and Egypt. Anciently it contained the Philistine city where Samson destroyed the temple and himself (see Judges 16, especially from verse 20 to the end). Today it is one of the most densely populated, and poorest, areas in the world. It also contains branches of all the government offices. However, the Hamas control this area. They are Shi'ite Muslims, religious, and funded by Iran. In the past year Hamas government ministers have several times crossed the border from Egypt carrying suitcases with millions of dollars in cash which had been donated by Iran. The Hamas forces are trained and armed by Hisballah, with some help from al-Quaida. The Hamas have also been steadily bringing arms, ammunition, rockets, etc. into Gaza through a network of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. One of Israel's kidnapped soldiers, Gilad Shalit, is in the hands of the Hamas or one of their allies.

A year ago, Hamas won the democratic elections and took over the government, although the president still remained a Fatah man. (The prime minister is actually head of state, and the president does more ceremonial / diplomatic things.) It has been a stormy relationship from the beginning, and several efforts were made to purge the government of the Fatah people. One of the things Hamas did was to stop paying the salaries of Fatah people, so the EU cut off the funding to Palestine altogether. For several months the two groups have been doing their best to annihilate each other through kidnappings, bombings, street shootings, lootings, arson and assassination. Nobody wanted to call it a Civil War, though. During the past week Hamas increased their efforts, and during the last part of the week systematically attacked and took over every single important security target in Gaza. Much of the fighting was quite brutal, and captives were not treated kindly, to put it mildly. Many were shot to death in front of their families. One of the positions captured was the Presidential Guard / Intelligence, which contains all the security files on Israeli, Egyptian, Hamas, Iranian and Fatah intelligence, and their suspected snitches. This will be very dangerous, as you can imagine. Since Friday thousands of Palestinians have been trying to get out of Gaza however they can - most into Egypt. Water and electricity supplies are almost non-existant, food is scarce, and the medical facilities full way past capacity, with almost no supplies available to treat the wounded. Hamas soldiers are also doing house to house searches trying to root out anyone they suspect of collaboration with or sympathy for the Fatah. And it goes without saying that looting is rampant.

In the West Bank, the Fatah president (Abbas) has declared the Hamas illegal and formed a new cabinet. Fatah people are looting and destroying Hamas property and searching out its people, and Hamas has vowed revenge, and promised that they will soon control the West Bank as well. They usually keep their word.

So, Israel now has Hisballah (controlled and supplied by Iran and Syria) on its Northern border, and Hamas (controlled and supplied by Iran) on its Southern border. Part of its eastern border is a very unstable Fatah (PLO)-controlled West Bank. Our western border is the Mediterranean Sea.

Distances - Gaza City to Tel Aviv is about 65 kilometers, or about 40 miles.
Gaza City to Jerusalem / Ramallah: 70 kilometers / 42 miles
Ramallah to Jerusalem: 15 kilometers / 10 miles
Ramallah / Jerusalem to Tel Aviv: 50 kilometers / 31 miles
Lebanese border to Tel Aviv: 130 kilometers / 85 miles
Damascus or Beirut to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem: 125 miles

Allen spent most of the year serving in the Rostov, Russia mission. He was released in October. It has been a joy to have him home again. He still prefers Russian over Hebrew or English, and luckily for him he lives in a country where about 20% (at least!) of the population are Russian-speakers. He is trying to find work so that he can go to university next year. In the meantime our branch president has put him to work as the Aaronic Priesthood teacher, young adult coordinator and general home teacher to the Russian-speaking members.

Bryan worked for a few months as a dishwasher in the restaurant in our village. Working nights allowed him to go hiking during the day, and to continue volunteering at MDA (Magen David Adom) as an EMT. He also taught two groups of grade-school children each week. He taught appreciation of nature, hiking and outdoor skills, etc. He really enjoyed that. In the spring he and some friends took a small vacation to the coasts of the Sinai peninsula - mainly swimming and snorkeling. They had wanted to hike in the interior, but since there are roving bands of armed criminals, it wasn't safe to do so. After Sinai he got a job he loved working as a shepherd. He and a few others his age lived in an old trailer house on the hills between the Sea of Galilee and Mt. Tabor. Their main responsibility was in tending the sheep - walking them out to pasture, milking them, etc. There were also a few other animals on the premises - a camel, horse and some deer. He loved the job, and the place was like being in another world. It was just beautiful. Unfortunately, his employer didn't see the need to pay his workers promptly (and sometimes not at all), so that too came to an end. Soon after, Bryan was chosen as one of two youth volunteers to represent MDA/Israel at an international Red Cross conference in Turkey. Upon his return he was part of the MDA delegation here which hosted another international conference here. In between the educational parts, they had a side trip to Jordan for a couple of days. He next got a job building wooden houses on the Golan, but only lasted a month. He holds the longevity record, there however. Most employees couldn't take the boss more than a few days! Bryan is currently hiking in the South, and will be doing a diving course in Eilat. He was also assigned to his reserve unit and did his first week of reserve duty.

Eliana had been doing her senior year of high school in Arizona. She had the chance to see a lot of the US, and to visit with family. She graduated in June and returned home. We were thrilled to see her again, especially since her original 5-week trip had turned into a year! We knew she was back because the telephone basically started ringing non-stop again. She spent the summer catching up with friends and working at a local gas station. She was drafted into the air force in September and will begin as a course organizer and instructor next week. She is currently at a base in the South finishing up on-site training and signing off on the skills she will be teaching. Her ulcer continues to make its presence felt and she has had some other health problems as well, but she tries not to let them slow her down any.

Yaron spent most of February in the hospital in Haifa. In September of 2006 he had been bitten by a parasitic sand fly, and the treatment he was on wasn't effective enough. He had stopped going to school even because his face was so disfigured that the kids were making fun of him. While he was in the hospital he could get a much higher dose of the medication because it was given to him intravenously. The staff at the hospital was wonderful, and within days we could see the difference in his face. Michael stayed with him most of the time, and I would go out and visit in the evenings, and took one weekend. Bryan also stayed with him a few times. Yaron is better now and there is only some scarring left on part of his nose. When he got back to school he was just in time to participate in rehearsals for the 6th grade play. It was the story of a young Polish girl during the holocaust, and was based on a true story. The play was beautifully done and quite professional. The highlight for the children was when the real girl, now a woman in her 80s, came to the school to visit them and to see the play. An article appeared in the national papers. Yaron loves an audience and relished his bit part as one of the partisan fighters. He spent a lot of the summer playing with the puppies (Bryan's dog gave birth to 11 puppies, 10 of whom survived). In September he changed schools because he is now in junior high. The school he is at now is on the banks of the Jordan River in the upper Galilee. It also has a program for Asperger /PDD kids like his old school. They take some classes together with the regular classes, accompanied by a teacher's aide. The other classes they take in their own separate class. They also stay several hours in the afternoon and come on Fridays so that they have time for their own curriculum. This includes work on personal communication skills, personal health and growth, home etc. (lots of cooking) occupational therapy (for coordination, etc.), art therapy, hydrotherapy and horse-riding therapy. They also have a separate sports teacher in addition to their regular sports class. Yaron was introduced to rugby this year, and loves it. His afternoon sports teacher likes to take them for walks and other activities on the banks of the river, so Yaron is in seventh heaven. The school is about a 45 minute drive each way, and he has his own driver and taxi to take him. The driver is from our village and the father of one of Eliana's friends, so he has really adopted Yaron and is like an uncle to him. We have been really lucky to find this school. Yaron's voice has gotten much deeper and he is getting taller, but his pride and joy is his peach fuzz "mustache". He was ordained a deacon this year.

Michael continued his least favorite tradition of being hospitalized a couple of times. He has constant internal bleeding and literally runs out of blood. They usually hook him up to all kinds of monitors, give him several units of blood, and do all sorts of tests to find out where and why he is bleeding. Then, since they never do find out where and why, they wait until he is stabilized and his hemoglobin count is a bit higher (the low end of normal), and send him home again. This usually takes about 5 -6 days. It's frustrating for him. He has been busy with all sorts of things related to church, and continuing to compile information about the history of Israel.

I started out the year by traveling to Cairo, all expenses paid by the US State Department, to attend an academic conference. I was gone for 8 days, including a 24-hour layover in Jordan. It was so exciting to meet other teachers from all over the Middle East, and no hardship at all to wander around Cairo in my spare time! Going back to work after wards was a bit of an adjustment, though. February was spent between school and going to see Yaron in the hospital. March was spent helping to move out of the old chapel and get ready for the dedication of the new one. The dedication of the Galilee Branch House by Elder Holland was an intensely spiritual experience and a milestone in the history of the Church in Israel. In May an old friend from university came to visit. It was fun to see him again, and gave us a good excuse to play tourist. June and July were overshadowed by the threat of another war, and trying to get ready for it. Luckily it didn't materialize, but most of us in the North were very tense nonetheless. I also spent a lot of the summer being Mom the Taxi. School started well, and we had nearly a month before the Jewish holidays began. It was a good thing, because a week after the last holiday ended the high school teachers went on strike. We were on strike for nearly 50 working days. Last week the government went to the High Court and got a back-to-work order for us, beginning Thursday at the end of Hanuka. I don't know how much good it will do, though. Another strike will probably be called, or work sanctions. Many teachers have stated they will defy the order and/or resign. We spent all of last year on sanctions and accomplished nothing. The reasons for the strike are: 1) agreements signed after the strike 6 years ago still haven't been honored by the government; 2) teachers receive the lowest pay of anyone in the public sector. Beginning teachers with a BA degree make the same pay (and often less) as an unskilled factory worker. I have an MA, 20 years on the job and am the department head. I make much less than a garbage collector, a bank teller or an average secretary. The government has expressed concern that the university-aged generation is generating very few new teachers! They are choosing to go into law or high-tech instead, for some reason. 3) Curriculum reform - Changes in the government curriculum have led to progressively worse test results when compared to other countries in the Western world. In math and science, for example, we have gone from being in the top 10 down to the low 30s in comparison to European countries. 4) Teaching hours and class sizes - Over the past 5 years, hundreds of thousands of teaching hours have been cut. On an average, each school has lost around 80 -100 weekly teaching hours each year for the past five years. That means the loss of about 5 full-time teachers each year. Less hours and less teachers means less classes, with more students in the classes which remain. Crowded classrooms mean less effective teaching. The government has been singularly unresponsive to any efforts to negotiate a change. Who knows what will be. I at least have had my night classes at the college. I tried to get a day job as well, but there is little work of any kind around.

All in all, it has been a good year. All of the children are back in the same country again and it has been a joy to have them all at the same table. That hasn't happened for years. As a family we have been blessed with unity and safety, something I don't take lightly. Having the gift of the Branch House continues to bless us in more ways than I can describe. And most importantly, we have the gospel to bless our lives and give us direction.

Thank you for your friendship and your support. It adds richly to our lives. May this coming year be one of joy.

The Hansens

A few people have asked me how the situation in Gaza is affecting our family, so I would like to take a few moments and give kind of a general rundown of what is going on as I see it.

Israel first conquered the Gaza Strip in 1967. Before then it was controlled by Egypt. For nearly 40 years Israel maintained a military control of both the city and the Gaza Strip. In the South Israel shares borders with Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority (Gaza). Since the year 2000, Palestinian militants have been firing missiles and rockets into Israeli cities and farming communities in the South. In the summer of 2005, the Israeli government made the decision to completely leave Gaza. Not only were troops withdrawn, but all Israeli civilian communities were abandoned (many of the people were literally dragged out of their homes and put on buses) and razed, except for the synagogues. This withdrawal was part of an agreement reached with the Palestinians. In addition to withdrawing, Israel would continue to supply water, electricity, gasoline, food, medicine and jobs to Gaza. Israel would also give up most of the border crossing points, which would be turned over to the Egyptians to operate. In return, the rocket and missile attacks against Israeli civilian targets would stop. This was the agreement.

The reality is far different. Israel has continued to supply everything agreed upon, but instead of halting the rocket attacks, the various Palestinian groups actually use the ruins of the former Jewish settlements as a base to launch their rockets. The ruins allow them to get much closer. In the year 2007, over a _thousand_ rockets and mortars were fired at Israeli civilian targets. Many landed in schools and homes. Israeli civilians, including old people and young children, have been killed by them. This month (January 2008) there have already been nearly 400 mortars and rockets fired into Israel, and the month isn't over yet.

In addition, scores of tunnels which cross under the Israeli border have been dug by the militants. These tunnels are used mainly to smuggle weapons, drugs and personnel into Israel. On our side the army continues to search, find and destroy many of the tunnels, but there are always more. In the summer of 2006 a group successfully tunneled under the border, attacked a tank with explosives, and succeeded in killing 3 crew members and kidnapping the remaining crew member, who was wounded. This was Gilad Shavit, who is still being held hostage by the Hamas (he was originally kidnapped by another group).

In August, Hamas took total control of the Gaza strip, driving out most of the Fatah people and killing many of them. Hamas took over all of the government buildings and refused to pay salaries to non-Hamas supporters. They rule with an iron hand. They have also increased their calls for the destruction of Israel, and receive extensive financial support from abroad, especially Iran. They have stepped up their attacks against Israel. What concerns me even more, though, is the return to tactics used for decades, and most recently during the first Intifada. There has been an upsurge of drive-by shootings both in the South, and in other areas of Israel close to Palestinian areas. Two weeks ago Palestinian snipers were positioned in places which overlooked the agricultural fields of one of the kibbutzim. When the farmers came out to work in the fields, the snipers started firing. A young volunteer from Ecuador was killed. A news team sent to cover the story was also attacked and pinned under fire for several hours. The missile barrages intensified both in number and in the damage they could cause.

Throughout this all, Israel continued to supply Gaza with food, electricity, medicine, etc. . . Last Thursday, the prime minister of Israel decided to close the crossing points into Gaza, and cut off the electricity supplies which supply about a third of the cityout this all, Israel continued to supply Gaza with food, electricity, medicine, etc. . . Last Thursday, the prime minister of Israel decided to close the crossing points into Gaza, and cut off the electricity supplies which supply about a third of the city. Olmert told them that this would be the situation until the people of Gaza stopped harboring the terrorists who fire the rockets.

In response, there were massive "spontaneous" demonstrations throughout Gaza, complete with pre-printed signs and banners in Arabic and English. Israeli and American flags were burned in abundance, as were effigies of President Bush and PM Olmert. The rocket attacks were temporarily halted, under Hamas orders, so that the Palestinians would look more sympathetic in the world news. Pictures of the children of Gaza who would starve to death, freeze to death or die through lack of medical care were plastered all over the world press. Gas stations closed, as did bakeries and most grocery stores. Few cars were out, due to the lack of gasoline. Most men were home, because they couldn't get to their jobs in Israel. The city was blacked out at night - no electricity. Surprisingly, one of the first things to run out was cement. As one Gazan said, "You can buy guns, ammunition, rockets, grenades here. You can't get cigarettes, gasoline or food."

The international press continued to cover the story, emphasizing the plight of the innocent victims. Gaza is crowded, extremely poor, and very unstable. I would not want to live there. On the other hand, most citizens openly support and give refuge to the militants. Also, Israel is only one side of the picture. Gaza also has fairly open borders with Egypt, through which they could have brought in gasoline, oil for the hospital generators, food and medicine. Israel has supplied Gaza for years.

Bowing to pressure, on Sunday Olmert allowed gasoline, humanitarian supplies, and coal oil for the hospital generators to cross through into Gaza. Soon after, hundreds of rioters overran and then took over one of the Egyptian crossing points. The E. soldiers on duty did nothing to stop them. (I can't say I blame them. What are a handful of soldiers when confronted with dozens of angry men carrying loaded guns?!) At about the same time, several explosive charges were systematically placed along the metal fence which separates Gaza from Egypt. These were then set off, and over 350,000 Palestinians pushed the remaining fencing aside and literally ran into the stores in Sinai, buying anything they could get. The two biggest items were cigarettes (favorites on the black market) and cement (so much for starving). We saw people coming back over with mattresses, clothing, housewares, and even some food. Every store on the Egyptian side has basically been emptied. It looked like the sales on Dec. 26. Many of those interviewed have also said that they just like going back and forth witout having to go through passport control. Egypt has been getting a lot of pressure from Israel, the US and France, and has said that on Sunday or Monday they will close up the border again. In the meantime they are "providing humanitarian assistance." One major concern is that when these 350,000 people come back into Paliestine, some of them are bound to be Hamas people - fully armed and equipped, and probably carrying cash and more weapons donated by the Iranians or Libyans.

Hamas has responded by claiming a huge PR victory. They made Israel look bad in the eyes of the world and have successfully diverted attention from the causes of it all. They have also said that now that they know how easy it is to tear down the border fences they will not allow Egypt to put up their border fences again. Furthermore, their next target will be the Israeli crossing points. I see no reason to doubt their intentions. Several militants were arrested in Israel today as a result of hot tips the army and police received. In addition, the main highway in Southern Israel which parallels the border was closed to all but certain specified military traffic today because of fear of attacks. The highway will remain closed until further notice. By the way, we have two branch members at this moment serving in the army along this border. (I have a feeling my son will get reserve duty there soon.) The Israeli government has also issued travel advisories after receiving very credible information that the Hamas is planning to kidnap Israelis on vacation in Sinai. So, the situation is volatile.

And one more thing. In the past two weeks we have had several days and nights which were well below freezing - not something we have had to deal with a lot, nor are equipped to do so. Long story short, most of the winter crop of fruits and vegetables have been ruined (frostbite, etc.). One farmer interviewed said that in a single evening he lost 3,000 dunam (about 750 acres) of potatoes. Nearly all the bananas near us are gone. Nothing was safe - carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, cabbage . . . - nearly all gone. That means that for the next few weeks produce will not only be hard to get, but it will be very expensive too. Prices on most basics have already more than doubled and the prices will continue to climb. So not only will we not have enough for our own citizens, but there won't be much to go to Gaza either.

In short, the residents of Gaza cannot get on with their lives. The residents of Southern Israel continue to hit with rockets, and the only winners in this mess are the Hamas.

Ann, Israel

PS - It is now midnight and just a short while ago there were two separate terrorist attacks in Israel which have left at least two Israelis dead. One was at a police roadblock where two Fatah members (the "moderate" Palestinians we are supposed to be in peace negotions with) pulled up and showered the two policemen with machine gun fire. The other is an attack on a kibbutz, and the attackers are still at large somewhere within the kibbutz, it is believed.

The president of the Palestinian Authority has stated that the obvious solution is to let Fatah back into Gaza to take control of all the Gaza crossing points on both the Egyptian and the Israeli borders. Right. These are the same Fatah men who ran for their lives, bravely leaving behind their wives and children (shades of the priests of Noah?), when Hamas took control of Gaza this summer. These are the same Fatah men who staged one of the terrorist attacks on an Israeli community Thursday night. These are the same men who were involved in the murder of two young Israeli hikers earlier in the month. These are the same men who were only allowed to carry unloaded weapons during Bush's visit this month because they couldn't be trusted not to use their weapons on the American president while he was visiting. These are the same Fatah men who were once Arafat's military arm. Give them control of the border crossings? No comment.

On our side, one of the two roads into the city of Eilat is still closed, as are several others in the area. This morning on the news they read off a series of roads, tourist sites, and hiking trails in the South which are temporarily closed off except to the military. All of the communities in the South and near any border point are on high alert. My son now works for a company that provides security to some of the big hotels in the resort city of Eilat. He was supposed to be home this weekend, but had to cancel. And finally, Israeli security forces received specific information on 11 intended terrorist attacks yesterday alone. The travel warning for Sinai still remains in effect.

Yahoo news had a good article today. The link is below.

Ann

the following link was valid as of 1.26.2008. To find the article, you will have to search through archives. (good luck)

Betty and Karl recently received a letter in which the writer voiced concerns about the "propaganda that she [Ann] is being told and relating to us" concerning what is going on in Gaza.

It has never been my intention to stir up anger or hatred against anyone. And although it is impossible to ever remain neutral about anything, I have always tried to present both sides of the picture and report as factually as I can about events. If you check the news sources of any country in the world, including Arab sources, you will find that the sequence of events I reported concerning the breach of the border in Gaza is factual. My information was not based on anyone's "propaganda", and I hope I am intelligent enough to distinguish between fact and opinion, no matter what the source. In this case, my information was based on news coverage from Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian sources, as well as Al-Jazeera, the BBC, Sky News, and Fox News. I doubt anyone could regard the majority of these sources as friendly to Israel. ( And just as an aside, take a look at today's article from Al Jazeera and see if there is any discrepancy between what they printed and what I wrote.)

The residents of Sderot are fed up with the government's lack of action or care (on the morning after this attack both the prime minister and the defense minister went overseas), so they have been staging demonstrations and sit-ins in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in order to try and raise awareness to their plight. One of the things they have been doing is to block traffic on major highways. They wear red shirts, carry pieces of rockets which have fallen on their homes, and then they all fall to the ground when a recording of the warning announcements is played. On Sunday more than a thousand school children are planning to come up from Sderot and demonstrate at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. The mayor of Sderot said that in the past year over 4,000 people have moved out of a town which only had about 32,000 people to begin with. None of them have been able to sell their property, of course. Several major employers have had to close down because the rockets keep hitting their factories. After an attack earlier in the week, the defense minister (former PM Ehud Barak) made a pre-dawn visit to Sderot. He was greeted with boos. One resident aptly put it: "You do nothing for us, then try to slip in and out like a rat in the dark."

Earlier in the week the large town of Dimona had its first terrorist attack. Two suicide bombers went into the center of town. One of them was successful and bravely killed a 72-year-old woman, severely injuring her husband. The blast happened just across the street from the medical clinic, so all the medical staff rushed to the scene to help. It was only then that one of the nurses discovered that the man she was helping, severely injured by the blast, was also wearing an explosive belt. The police tried to evacuate everyone as quickly as possible, since the injured second bomber was still trying to blow up his own belt. He was finally shot by one of the police bomb squad. This was the first successful suicide attack in a year. Like the previous attack in Beersheva, this target was also in Southern Israel, close to Gaza.

One of the aftereffects of the Gaza border breach is not only the weapons and ammunition which came into the Gaza strip (guns, ammo, explosives, rockets, missiles), but also the number of people who were able to leave and go elsewhere in Israel and the territories, including terrorists. Figure that 3/4 of a million people crossed back and forth; many of them just "disappeared". In the week following the initial breach, Israel got specific information about over 350 planned attacks on Israeli targets. On an absurd note, already by the second day many Egyptian shop owners closed up. They either had nothing left to sell, or they didn't feel like accepting the counterfeit Israeli currency or, in some cases Monopoly notes, that they were being offered in payment! Egypt is trying to get the border sealed up again, but in the meantime there is a pretty steady stream of people crossing into Israel.

The Northern border is a worry now as well. As you may have heard, yesterday Imad Mughniyeh, one of the most successful terrorists of all time, was assassinated by a car bomb in Damascus. He was a member of Hisballah, and was responsible for the bombing of the US embassy, the French military headquarters and the US Marine headquarters in Beirut in the early 1980s (1984?) in which hundreds were killed. He also killed the CIA station chief in Beirut. He arranged the kidnappings of several foreigners, including journalist Terry Anderson. He also hijacked a TWA plane, then murdered a US sailor on board and dumped his body on the runway. He was directly connected to the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. He has a long list of credits to his name. It has been suggested that Bin Laden studied his Beirut bombings before planning the first attack on the Twin Towers.

One Israeli expert I listened to attributes Mughniyeh's success to the fact that not only did he have a love of killing, but he was extremely intelligent and creative in his plans and methods, plus he had no need to feed his ego in public. That meant that he never gave an interview and rarely had his picture taken, so it was really hard to identify him. He has been at the top of the US's Most Wanted list for 25 years. The US frequently accused Syria of harboring him, a charge which was vehemently denied. It is interesting, therefore, that he met his death in Damascus. He was returning to his car after speaking to a school (great education!).

Both Iran and the Hisballah have accused Israel of the assassination. The official response is that Israel didn't do it, but is happy that this man is dead. In this case I believe the official version. It doesn't quite have the feel of an Israeli assassination. I do believe, however, that Israel probably supplied a lot of the intelligence, and possibly helped in the logistics. And this happened on a day when both the PM and Defense Minister were out of the country (plausible deniability, to borrow from Yes, Minister). It doesn't matter. Hisballah and Iran have vowed revenge on Israel and Jewish targets throughout the world. After the funeral this afternoon in Beirut, Nisrala declared war on Israel; Iran went farther and promised to destroy us. I have to be honest, I thought long and hard (and prayed) before sending my son off to school this morning. His school is near the border with Lebanon, and a rocket attack would have been entirely in keeping with the funeral proceedings this afternoon.

I think, though, that the first phases of this revenge will take place overseas, probably in Europe or at tourist areas in Asia. It doesn't help that Timor is in an uproar again, either. And then there is Passover in April. Major holidays are always targets. And because of the government's mishandling of the 2006 war, the protective "shield" once provided by the reputation of Israel's army no longer exists, so the Hisballah are not afraid to attack. I do believe, though, that an all-out attack won't happen until the weather clears up. For some reason, all the wars here only happen in good weather, not during the rain and mud.

In the meantime, the country is on alert, especially in the North, and the army is reinforcing its border positions. There have been a lot of military helicopters and jets flying in our area day and night as well.

The news has just said that four more rockets fell in the South today. The locations show that the rockets are hitting farther and farther North, closer to big population centers. That is another result of the border breach - many of the rockets and missiles which were brought in to Gaza have a greater range capacity than the Kassams which have been used so far.

So, that was our week. I hope that this next week will be quiet, but I'm not too optimistic.

Ann

It's been a busy two weeks. One thing I don't seem to have to worry about is getting bored. The new semester at college is just beginning, and the one at school is ending. In both cases, that means lots of work. One college course ended, so this semester I only teach two evenings a week. The first night of class was also the eve of a huge storm coming in, so attendance was sparce and we ended up going home about halfway through. There were ferocious winds, and snow was predicted, which means icy roads (Sfat is one of the highest cities in Israel). The winds continued all the way home, and on the bridge below Sfat I thought I was going to get blown off. We got a lot of rain, but the snowstorm never materialized. Sfat only got a little bit, although Jerusalem got some.

Since then it has been fairly warm (and we enjoyed a dust storm for a few days as well), which means that the wildflowers are blooming everywhere. I feel sorry for my husband, who can't see most of the glorious colors. Today as we were driving to Haifa we passed fields of white and red anemones, surrounded by the deep yellow of the wild mustard, and a kind of white babie's breath. There are also huge patches of the pale lilac "carmeliot", which look like little Crusader crosses and are named after the nuns on Mount Carmel. They are some of the first to bloom, and one of my favorites. When they were little my children used to come in from the fields with handfuls of them for me. I even bought some really small vases so we could display the flowers appropriately. I can't seem to separate the beauty of the flowers from my memories. I think of my father planting and tending huge gardens of my mother's favorite flowers, and I think of my grandmother telling me how hard she tried to keep the cows out of her flowers in the window box, the only pretty thing she had. She also taught me to make dolls from hollihocks. I also remember the time when I was about 7 and saw some pretty buttercups growing in the ditch on my way to Primary. They were so pretty I picked some and happily presented them to my teacher. She looked shocked for a minute, but then smiled and thanked me. I didn't find out until years later that she was highly allergic to buttercups. What a lesson she taught me in being thoughtful of others' feelings. The other really pretty thing we saw today is something that usually happens later in the year - the olive groves are literally carpeted with pale pink blossoms, and tiny yellow flowers. It is just stunning. The wild almonds are also in bloom, as are many of the fruit trees. It's like the 2 months of spring flowers all bloomed at the same time. It is pretty, but it also means that our rain is probably done for the year. We didn't get anywhere nearly enough.

I've been swamped at school with all four classes having final exams for the semester, which means they also need to be checked. In addition, we have to have all the grades into the computer, including all the homework, etc. I normally try to put work in as I grade it, but there has been a problem with the computer program and we could only get into it about a week ago. In addition, in Israeli schools the teachers sit at the end of every quarter and literally go over the status of every single student in the school. Normally you only have to be at the meetings of students you teach, but since I am department head I feel like I need to be at all of them. Each meeting takes hours, and they are always held after school. The entire set of meetings takes over a week. So I was trying to go to meetings, check tests, and get grades into the computer, as well as teaching. I don't know how many times I've fallen asleep this week with my face in a test. Part of the agreement the teacher's union signed to end our strike was that in return for a 10% raise (although prices on day to day necessities have risen 50-200%) each teacher has to donate 1-2 hours a week of tutoring after school to students, so that also takes up a lot of time. (The tutoring may only be an hour, but you sometimes have to wait until the students can come.) Report cards go out next week, so I will be glad when that is done. And my 11th grade class is participating in a national pilot for a new literature program, so every week my day off is spent developing lesson plans for the pilot. Fun, but time-consuming. By the way, we saw a good example of bad translation today - there was a big, fancy new tourist bus with its name on both sides, the front and the back: MIDLE EAST TOURIST TAVEL.

Speaking of school, I have a lot of high-strung girls in my 9th grade class. A couple of weeks ago we had just sat down and started on a test, when one girl arrived late and started insulting another. Within 3 minutes the two girls were in a fist fight to the death. It took 7 of us to separate them! I still don't know what the feud is about, but it evidently goes back several months and shows no sign of letting up soon. So much unncessary anger. Needless to say, we did the test another day.

My nephew's class sent me a Flat Stanley last week, so it has given me a good excuse to go out picture-taking. I had to take the car to get inspected last Friday, so when I was done I went further north to Tel Hatzor, the Hula Bird Refuge and to Joshua's tomb. The day before had been glorious, but of course when I returned on Friday with the camera everything was hazy (dust storm) and you couldn't see anything. It was still fun to be out of the cage for a couple of hours. I was also talking to the Beduin guard at Tel Hatzor. He said they will be digging there this summer, so I may volunteer. I like the Roman/Byzantine period better, but this would be a good opportunity to learn. I'll see how the summer goes. The last time I planned to dig all summer the Hisballah changed my plans.

Oh, I almost forgot. Two weeks ago our branch president called and asked if we would be willing to be interviewed for a radio program. The BBC correspondents out of Jerusalem were putting together a program about LDS people in Israel, and wanted to interview a family. They had already interviewed the leadership in Jerusalem, and a couple of students also, I believe. The same day they interviewed us they also interviewed our branch president and his wife. Their work in Africa really impressed the reporters. When our turn came it was such a beautiful day we ended up doing the entire interview outside. The interviewer was a young, very pregnant woman from England. Her father was a German Jew and holocaust survivor; her mother was also German, but much younger. Both went to great pains to put their German past behind them since being German in the 50s in England wasn't too popular. Their daughter later learned German when she was posted in Austria for a few years. Her next assignment was in Spain, where her husband is from. She now works out of Jerusalem and covers most of the Middle East. She said that there is only one other female correspondent who has children, although most of the males do. After the interview we had a nice conversation. She said it seems very strange sometimes to spend one day talking to militant leaders in a Lebanese refugee camp, and then to spend the next one in Jerusalem going shopping for baby things. I have no idea how the final program will turn out, or how the interview went, but I did enjoy talking to the reporters afterwards.

Two weeks ago our district visitors from Jerusalem brought a couple of the BYU students with them. One was a spanish-speaker, one Portuguese, and the third one spoke Russian. He had served in the Crimea (in the Ukraine), and had actually served in the same branch where some of the Tel Aviv members joined the church. When he walked in he asked if any of us knew a young woman named Yulia Stasovich, because he had been a missionary in her small branch (about ten people) when she had just joined the church at about age 13. One of his later companions had said she had moved to Israel. Well, Yulia is not only in Israel, but in our branch! My husband had dropped us off and then gone off to Haifa to pick her up for church, so she walked in a few minutes later. She didn't remember him, but she remembered his companions and other missionaries. It must have been really fun for him to meet with someone from his mission, so many years later. The spanish-speaking missionary was also from the same family as John Clark, one of the early missionaries (19th century) who died of smallpox and is buried in Haifa. JC is one of my heros, and it was fun to talk about him. We had almost no branch members there that day, but it was still a very good meeting. It was also fun to watch the reactions of these three young men to being in the Galilee- they could hardly take it in. The students haven't been up to the Galilee yet, so they were the first.

Last week we had even less people. After meetings we had lunch together, then watched the Leadership Meeting broadcast which the Cooks had recorded. It was a long day, but well worth it. This morning we went to Haifa to visit Eliana on her base, and to take her provisions for the weekend, pick up her laundry, etc. It still seems funny to me to see her wearing army boots, toting an M-16, and yet wearing rings and earrings. We got a couple of great shots of her and her friend with their guns, holding Flat Stanley. As we were talking and laughing, she said that one of her complaints was that she got my short genes, so carrying the M-16 was very uncomfortable (it is almost as big as she is), but she wasn't quite short enough to qualify for the shorter version of the weapon. Her father and brother weren't too sympathetic! It was also strange to see her sitting in her uniform, at an Israeli base, carrying a weapon which is stamped with "Property of the US Government".

The rocket attacks in the south continue, and are getting greater in number. Several people were injured, and one man was killed when a missile fell on the car he was driving. Several houses have been severely damaged, and a couple of rockets have fallen on or near schools and kindergartens. I think the hardest moment for me was seeing a news team there when a rocket fell, and an older man literally fell to his knees, and then fell apart, crying "what kind of life is this?!!" His nerves finally broke under the strain. The government continues to talk big and do nothing. Tonight they talked to a 7 year old who was in hospital after one of the rockets fell on his house. His mom was still at work when it happened. In a calm, too-adult voice, he told about how when the rocket fell through the roof he turned off the computer, took the keys and locked the door on his way out, then went down the street to his grandmother's. She saw blood coming from his arm and took him to the hospital. When they asked his mother how he could remain so calm, she said he has never known anything else, and was home the last two times rockets have fallen on or near their home.

Another result of the destruction of the border in Gaza is that they now have a lot more bigger and better weapons and munitions. They have been firing bigger missiles, which cause greater damage. They can also fire farther, and the southern city of Ashkelon has been hit so many times in the past two weeks that it has now officially been classified as a danger zone and the residents are being taught how to repsond when the missiles fall. Several of the agricultural settlements are also getting hit, as well has being the targets of almost continuous snipers. Egypt is still working to get the border fences back up, and has officially said that anyone crossing over from Gaza without permission will be shot. And just one more piece of news: The YMCA facility in Gaza was attacked about a week ago by a group of armed men. They broke in, roughed up the people there, then fire-bombed the library, staying there until the last book was burned. They do not want a Christian presence in Gaza. Incidentally, the Catholic Bishop of Iraq was kidnapped today.

On the lighter side, a "food" item unique to Israel is a sweet chocolate spread which is our equivalent of peanut butter. It is an acquired taste, but something every Israeli child grows up loving. (I have yet to acquire the taste.) Yesterday, someone broke into the warehouse of the biggest producers of chocolate spread and stole their entire stock! The police have no clues so far.

Here's hoping next week will be a little slower and a lot quieter.

Ann

The freshest pictures in my mind are of the terrorist attack in Jerusalem last night, which left 8 schoolboys dead. Just as a little background, it is very traditional in religiously-observant Jewish families to send junior and senior high school-age children to study in religious boarding schools. The girls go to an "ulpana" and the boys to a "yeshiva". They study some "regular" subjects such as math, etc., but most of the day is spent studying the Old Testament, the commentaries of the sages and renowned rabbis, and various aspects of the Jewish religion itself. They have a very long day, starting at dawn with the first prayers of the day, and usually ending at 8-9 o'clock at night. Religious holidays are occasions for celebration, including dancing, etc. This also includes the beginning of each new month in the Jewish calendar. Last night was the beginning of the month of Adar, which is one of the most joyous months in the year. It not only marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring, but also the Feast of Esther (Purim), which celebrates the survival of the Jewish people when an enemy had planned their total destruction. It is a time of joy and rejoicing. On the first day of the month (which officially began last evening) there are no classes and no studying in the religious boarding schools. Those close to a holy place go to pray, and then return to school for an evening of dancing and partying. Also on this day the students vote one of their classmates to be the "rabbi" for the day, and he makes all the rules about what will be done that day. It's kind of a combination of Carnival, April Fool's and Halloween, except that religious standards of behavior and modesty are maintained. In short, it is one of the funnest days of the year.

Yesterday evening, the boys at this yeshiva (one of the most famous in Jerusalem) had gone down to the Western Wall for their evening prayers, and then returned to the yeshiva to get ready for the party. They had gathered in the library. An Arab from East Jerusalem, with an Israeli ID card, had come to the yeshiva carrying a cardboard box. He wasn't checked by the security outside, which leads the police to believe that he was either a familiar face, or that he was being expected as one of the delivery men bringing supplies for the big dinner and party. Inside the box he had a gun and ammunition. He went upstairs to the library (which also shows that he was familiar with the layout of the school) and opened fire. From eyewitness reports and from police statements, he very deliberately shot at people one by one, and then put a bullet through the head just to make sure. Remember, these are unarmed religious students - boys between the ages of 14 and 16 getting ready for a party. Those that could tried to hide in the stacks of the library. The shooter methodically went up and down each aisle of books, firing and killing. The pictures haven't been released to the foreign press, but in the pictures shown here almost the entire library floor is soaked red with the blood of these boys. The stretchers of the emergency crews are completely red. I have lived here nearly 30 years and I haven't seen such a quantity of blood after an attack. Within the space of minutes this person emptied 8 double clips, or about 480 bullets. A paratroop officer who lived across the street had just gotten home when he heard the shooting and the screams. He ran over with his own weapon and was able to kill the shooter before he got any further. The police found that the attacker still had several more unused clips ready.

No one has taken responsibility for the attack, but Hamas has cheered it, with celebrations in Gaza. The UN has refused to label this as a "terrorist attack".

Of those who were wounded, there are two types of injuries. The first are those who were shot but not killed. They have severe abdominal injuries, and some also have leg injuries. The second group are those who tried to escape by jumping out the windows of the second-floor library. Their injuries include broken legs, etc. And of course nearly all the students are suffering from shock, as is the country.

The entire country is on high alert today, especially because it is Friday. This is the Moslem holy day, and traditionally all the males go to the mosques for a sermon and prayers. Often the occasion is used to stir up feelings which end up in riots. The funerals of some of the yeshiva boys killed will be held at about the same time as the prayers in the mosques, so feelings will be running high on both sides. BTW, the funerals will be on Mt. Scopus, near the BYU Center. In addition, Friday is a short day in the Jewish week, because the Jewish sabbath begins at sundown. Friday is also a day when Jews go to the Western Wall to pray. Today especially, because of what has been happening in Gaza, and with the attack last night, Jerusalem is a tinderbox. Extra police and border patrol people have been brought into Jerusalem, and army and police have been reinforced throughout the country, especially in the North (rumblings from Hezbollah).

The police suspect that Hamas have been able to establish several very strong cells in East Jerusalem, which is a worry, since all of the residents of Jerusalem have Israeli ID cards and are therefore not subject to the same security restrictions as those from the West Bank. In addition, the number of drive-by shootings has increased dramatically in the past month, which was a tactic used in the two intifadas. There has also been an increase of attack attempts using guns and knives on smaller targets, like the attack on the parking ticket police this week. These are also tactics used in the intifadas. About the only positive thing that can be said is that it shows that the much-hated wall is doing its job. Unfortunately, the wall hasn't been completed, and obviously the need is still there. What happened last night hasn't happened for a couple of years. Before the wall it used to be an almost daily occurrence.

Ironically, the traditional Jewish greeting to each other on Fridays is "Shabbat Shalom" - a peaceful sabbath.

Ann

I wholeheartedly support the call to be prepared "for any emergency" as the saying goes. We never know when an emergency situation will arise, and the emergency can take all forms.

I think back to all the letters I've read in Betty's groups in the past two years, and the kinds of emergencies that sisters have been through:

1. unexpected family tragedies:
   health problems, unemployment, depression, arrest, drug use, having to move, car accidents, premature babies, divorce, gambling, . . .

2. natural disasters:
   the fires in Nevada and California; flooding in Washington, Oregon, Texas; drought; ice storms; never-ending snow storms; tornadoes; hurricanes

3. financial disasters:
   unemployment; stock market losses; inflation; price fluctuations

4. politically - related:
   war; regime change; curtailing of civil rights; terrorism; persecution; religious intolerance

What can we do to be prepared, especially if we are limited financially? Do as much as you can. The Lord will take care of the rest.

A few suggestions from someone who is constantly broke, has limited storage space under less than ideal conditions, and who has had to live off of my storage several times:

1. Have enough water for several days. A mimimum requirement would be 1-1/2 quarts per person per day; 3 quarts is better, more is best. A two-week supply is also recommended; if that isn't possible then have enough for at least 5 days. In any sort of emergency it usually takes a few days to get help in and to set up emergency relief. You're on your own until then. Another consideration - you may be prepared, but your neighbors may not be. You will have two choices - either share from your own supplies, or be prepared to tell you neighbors that you don't have enough water to share with their crying children.

   It is also important to have a supply of water-purification tablets and/or chlorine, so that you will be able to use possibly-contaminated water supplies later on. Another recommendation is to have a good portable water filter. Very few people have space to store even a month's worth of water. Purification supplies take up very little space.

2. Have a supply of food which doesn't need to be cooked, or isn't water-intensive (pasta, rice). You may not have cooking facilities, or you may not be able to cook (no fuel, gas, electricity). If there is a shortage of water, you won't want to use your daily drinking allotment for cooking macaroni. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a reserve of pasta, wheat and rice (you should), but have an alternative as well.

3. Even on the strictest budgets, try to have a couple of "luxuries" among your supplies. These can include koolaid, a different seasoning or spice, dried fruit - anything that is different from the routine. During an actual emergency the adrenilin in your body is an amazing thing, but when it wears off you hit bottom quickly, and the landing is hard. Part of what happens when you are in a postition of limited choice and options (either financially, or physically) is that you are in a constant state of high stress, and that takes a heavy toll physically and emotionally. Picture a day when you were in a really bad mood, and imagine living that way day after day for months or even years. Imagine everyone in your house in an even worse mood. Emotions are volatile and tempers are short. A change of routine works wonders. Have a couple of games, a deck of cards (whatever kind you prefer), crayons for younger kids, a book of games - anything you can do without additional resources to have a moment of fun. This is especially important if you are in a confined space with people outside of your family.

4. Know how to use / cook / prepare what you have stored. I still remember stories of people who had a two-year supply of wheat, but no way to mill it, and no idea what to do with it if it wasn't ground. Get your families used to eating the kinds of things that can be stored. An emergency situation isn't a good time to try and force new food on someone.

5. Start learning to live on less. The US is a wonderful country - it isn't perfect, but the general standard of living is so beyond the experience of most of the world that you can't even begin to imagine the difference. Much of the world's population can't even depend on eating once a day. Get out of debt as soon as possible. Live within your income. Try not to use credit cards. If you need to, use debit cards instead. If you pay for groceries, etc. wtih cash, you will be very interested to see the change in your shopping patterns. Do not depend on your monthly income for future spending, because you may not have that income in a month or two.

6. and last, as a personal example: in the past year, my actual buying power has gone down by nearly 40%. That means that as a family we have to live on half of what we did a year ago, which wasn't much even then. The price of regular bread has more than doubled in 9 months, and it will go up even more next month. Flour (and therefore pasta products) has gone up more than 50% in the same time period. Water rates have gone up 30%. Egg prices have gone up 25%; dairy - nearly double; meat - 250%; fruit and vegetables - nearly double, and in some cases 400-500% (much of the produce crop froze this winter); cooking oil - 35%; cooking gas - nearly double; electricity - more than 25%; gasoline has always been at least $6 a gallon, and is sometimes more. The biggest problem is that sometimes there are shortages and you can't get gasoline. Mandatory insurance and licensing fees have gone up, and go up every year. After a two-month strike the teachers got a 10% raise; it doesn't even begin to cover the rise in the cost of living.

What happens in one part of the world affects us all. Be as ready as you can.

Ann Hansen, Israel

I just read in a Scottish newspaper that the central memorial monument in the British Commonwealth War Cemetery outside of Gaza was deliberately blown up by Palestinians last Thursday, April 3. Britain maintains cemeteries all over the world for soldiers from the Commonwealth who were killed during World Wars I and II. The cemeteries in Israel and in Gaza have the graves of not only soldiers from the British Isles, but also many from New Zealand and Australia.

It looks like my weekly letter is turning into a monthly one. At least I haven't had time for my life to get into a rut!

It has been a month of highs and lows. The month started with the suicide of my friend's son, who was 18. He had suffered from depression most of his life, and was receiving professional treatment. His suicide had been planned out ahead of time, and he left a long letter for his mother and brother. I can't begin to describe what this has done to them. The neighbors have been wonderful, and what can be done has been. Still, I don't think that anyone who hasn't gone through this can begin to understand how devastating suicide is to the family. My friend is dealing with her grief as well as can be expected, but her son is having horrific nightmares, and is now going to a special trauma center (set up for victims of terror) for help. Last week was the end of the official 30-day mourning period. On Wednesday night several of the men in the village came over to the house to say the special prayers, and then a light supper was held for anyone who wanted to be there. Several women in the village prepared all the food. The next day we went over to the cemetery to say the final prayers and to bless the grave and the headstone. Because the numbers in Hebrew are also letters, each separate prayer in the prayer book has its own letter/number. When the prayers are said for the dead person, the prayers are chosen which spell out the person's name. It is actually quite touching.

The gravestone itself was just beautiful. Noam was an artist, and in addition to drawing loved working with metals, especially wrought iron. He had made a guitar out of scrap metal, which had been displayed in a school art exhibit. His shop teacher (who was like a father to him), his half-brother, and another neighbor whom he had worked with, found a beautiful rock, which they made the headstone out of. The kids in his shop class made a metal plate with his name on it, copied from his signature (which they got from some of his drawings.), which is in the center of the upper part of the stone. Another metal plate with his birth and death dates and his parents' names on it. On one side of the stone is a hanging lantern to put memorial candles in, and his metal guitar rests against the other side. On the neck of the guitar are some of the words from one of the last poems he wrote: Freedom calls me. The grave itself is surrounded by beautiful stones (it has to be "fenced" because his death was a suicide), and several friends brought wildflowers and branches from flowering trees to put on the grave. It was very peaceful. While we were there I somehow got to talking to two of his friends, who also have a history of attempted suicide. We had a long discussion about why suicide looks so attractive to them, and what holds them back at the critical moment (worry about what will happen to their loved ones left behind). It is so tragic to me that suicide is such a part of their lives at such a young age. I have a real respect for the healthcare professionals who work with these children, and for their parents who never give up hope. I have also been blessed to see how the Lord has opened up Sara's heart to the possibility that this life is not the end. By nature she is optimistic, but her life and the life of her son will never be the same again.

During this month Michael had long-delayed hernia surgery. His recovery has not been easy, and his mobility is limited. About a week after the surgery he was back in the hospital for a week's stay, this time because of internal bleeding. This happens about twice a year, and the hospital staff know him by name. In the years this has been happening he has had every test known to man, and they have still never been able to determine what causes the bleeding, or where he is physically bleeding from. He always goes in with a very low hemoglobin count, and stays until the count goes back up close to "normal", assisted by the transfusion of several bags of blood (I can't think of the word in English).

This same week, one of my teachers at school got a call that her father was in intensive care in Jerusalem. She, of course, took off for Jerusalem, so I had to take over and teach her hours, which meant coming in on my day off (This eventually went on for three weeks). After a week he died, which was very difficult for her. He was in his 80s, but she still wasn't prepared for the death of a parent. She and her parents emmigrated from Lithuania when she was in high school, in the days when the Baltic Republics still belonged to the Soviet Union. One other teacher and I went down to Jerusalem to visit her. It was quite interesting, because her mother greeted me in Russian, and straight away quoted Pushkin (something to the effect of never trusting in the future, but living in the day) to me. She knows I don't speak Russian, but with a twinkle in her eye she said "I know you can understand anyway" (only a few words, but I guess our hearts understood each other). Once in a while she would throw out a word or two in Hebrew. She also showed me pictures of her daughter when she was a little girl, which were fun to see. While we were there a cousin whom they had last seen over 30 years ago in the USSR showed up! What a reunion.

The ride down to Jerusalem was just beautiful. It was a cloudy day, and the clouds were casting the most incredible shadows over the mountains and over the Jordan River valley. Because it was in the middle of the day, the shepherds were with their herds of sheep and goats. It was also stork migration season, and the skies and fields were full of them. I love to watch them take off and land. The teacher I was with had grown up in Kazakstan, and had never been down the Jordan Valley before. It was fun to see things through her eyes. It was also the first time she had been through an army roadblock. On the way back, as we were on the Jericho bypass road, we passed a long convoy of trucks carrying the concrete roadblocks which the Israeli army had used in the Jericho area. As part of the many "gestures" to Condoleeza Rice during her visit here, these roadblocks were being dismantled. The security is now being handled by a private company. In interviews with Palestinians who went through the new crossings, they said they would much rather have the soldiers, who were "nicer" to them.

Also during this month, by next-door neighbors had to take their infant daughter to the hospital because she had stopped breathing twice. The first time was in her father's arms. He had been an army medic and knew how to get her breathing again. The second time was about 30 minutes later when their next-door neighbor, a doctor, was examining her. She had to be in ICQ for nearly 3 weeks, and is now home connected to a monitor for a couple of months. She was one of twins; her brother is very robust, but she evidently didn't develop as fully.

The government also came out with some ominous statistics - they estimate that at least a third of Israeli citizens do not eat at least one meal every day because of poverty. While acknowledging the seriousness of the problem, the government has denied any responsibility for finding a solution or offering help. In the words of an official spokesman, there are food banks and charity kitchens who take care of that kind of stuff! In an interview with the head of one of the organizations which runs several food banks, he said the situation is dire. He took the news crew on a tour of his warehouse, which is nearly empty. Because of the worsening economy, not only have the donations gone down to a fraction of what they were a year ago, but the numbers of people applying for help have also gone up dramatically. I think this current government is one of the worst we've ever had.

Because of rumblings on the border, last week the government held a week-long emergency exercise all over the country. The schools held bomb shelter drills (a third of the schools still don't have adequate shelters), and the army, police and emergency services held several drills and exercises. Even though we knew the siren was going to go off on a certain day, it was still a weird feeling to hear it again. The South of the country is still being hit with rockets every day, but here in the North it is relatively "quiet", although the army is on alert, especially with Passover coming up. Also, for the first time in the nine years I have worked at the college, the lecturers all got a letter about what to do and which bomb shelters to take our classes to if the emergency siren goes off. (The college was hit several times during the war.) Hopefully our need to know will remain theoretical.

Ann

Temperatures are close to 110 today, which pretty well takes away any initiative to do much. It is on days like this when I wish we had air conditioning! Eliana is on duty at her base this week, but since most everyone is home for the week she is planning to put a mattress in her office (air conditioned) and sleep there instead of in her barracks (no a/c). Smart girl.

I guess the heat is getting to everyone. On Sunday the Israeli Border Police had to be called to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem to break up a huge fist fight between Greek and Armenian monks and their supporters. For both churches it is now Easter season, and the monks got into a fight about the times for mass. The news film looked almost like a scene from a movie, with the armed soldiers having a rough time trying to keep the robed monks from each others' throats. Fights between monks actually happen every couple of years, not only in Jerusalem but in Bethlehem as well. I remember several years ago when there was a fight in the Church of the Nativity and several monks ended up getting their ears bitten off by other monks. Not exactly the image of brotherly love.

Last week there was one day when the lake was so incredible. It went from being jade green to turquoise, dark green, blue and even purple. I have never seen it like that before. There was another day of weird rain, with rays of light shining through the clouds in beautiful patterns, highlighting the fields and the lake. I never get tired of the views here.

We had a lot of visitors in our branch the past month, which should do our attendance statistics a lot of good. We started out with a visit by the BYU students, who were having their week in the Galilee. Half of them meet with us in the morning, and the second half meet in our building in the afternoon. My RM and one of the young ladies in the branch stayed on for the second group, but I needed to go up and visit Michael in the hospital before coming back home for the fireside.

That evening, another friend of ours gave a really good fireside to the students (my son and I crashed the fireside). We first met him just before Allen left on his mission, and have stayed in touch since then. He is now back in Jerusalem for two years as the person responsible for Religious Affairs at the American Consulate. This is quite a plum post, especially for a first overseas posting. Kyle explained how he came to work for the State Department, how his language skills (Arabic, French, German) have helped him, and what his job entails. But most of his time was spent on the importance of living your beliefs, and how this affects the people around you, especially when you are in a position when you can't actively proselyte. His very powerful message was that people will always notice what you do and say, and your conduct may one day lay the groundwork for how others perceive not only the Church, but Christianity in general. He is young, unmarried, and an engaging speaker with a good sense of humor, so he made an impact on his listeners.

The same day the students were with us, we also had another wonderful surprise- Truman and Ann Madsen walked in! I haven't seen them in over 15 years, since they were here as directors at the BYU Center. It was so good to see them again, and to remember people and stories from the "olden days" of the Church in Israel. It is really fun to talk to them, and the strength of their testimonies is almost a physical presence. After meetings Ann had a long conversation with my daughter Eliana and Yulia, who are both serving in the army right now. She was very interested in what it is like for them being LDS and serving in the army. The Madsens are in Israel for a month filming a new project.

We also got to visit with them the following week, when there were a lot fewer of us there. That same evening (because of the time difference) was the broadcast of General Conference. It was the first time that we had ever watched Conference together live as a branch. When I first moved here, we only got the conference issues of the Ensigns, and that was usually several months later, if at all. Then we started getting the recorded videos, also several months later. I was thrilled the first time we could get conference on the internet, although the transmission was bad and we couldn't always get all the talks. Still, what we did get was the same day as the messages were delivered! Since then I normally listen to conference on the internet. I sometimes fall asleep in the afternoon sessions, though, since they don't start until 11 pm and Sunday is a working day here. So it was very moving to sit with a few other members of the branch, and the Madsens and some of their crew, and watch the live broadcast of conference. It was also the first time that I have ever been part of a solemn assembly, so I told my son that he was doing something at age 13 that I was doing for the first time at nearly 50. It was a moving experience. I especially liked when each quorum was called. When the patriarchs were asked to stand, we had Truman Madsen. When the high priests were called, our branch president and one of the Madsen's film crew stood. Then the elders were called, and my husband and oldest son stood. After the Melchizedek priesthood sat back down and the Aharonic priesthood were asked to stand, there was my youngest son, standing all alone, as he does nearly every week when he passes the sacrament. It was powerful. We also drove back that night at 11 pm to watch the second session. There were only 6 of us there. I got home at close to 2 am, and had to be up by 6. On Sunday I watched both sessions at home.

The week after that we had friends visiting from Australia. He is a bishop in Melbourne and she works in the temple and is a stake missionary. They both spoke, and bore moving testimonies. They were also with us last week, as were our branch president's son and his family. His family gave all the talks and even did a musical number for us. It was also fun for my son and I to have them in the youth gospel doctrine class. It turned out that the BPs son has a good friend who is the mission president in the same stake in Melbourne where Konrad is a bishop. The Church makes the world so small!

Next week we have District Conference in Jerusalem, so it has been an unusual month.

Last week I also took a day off work and went down to Jerusalem to take my son to a Young Adults activity. The activity was organized around the footsteps of Christ. We started out at the BYU Center, then walked down to the area above Gethsemane, then over to the church of Peter and the Cockcrow, then through the Old City to the Garden Tomb. At each spot scriptures were read and discussed. It was a good activity, but no effort was made to introduce the two groups of kids to each other (the Israelis, and the children of American diplomats or people working for international corporations who are here temporarily), or to accommodate the non-English speakers. Luckily my oldest son and I were there, so we translated for the non-English speakers. I also met a really interesting lady at the Garden Tomb, and had a long talk with her. She lives in the Basque area of northern Spain. She and her husband had first come to Israel oer 30 years ago, and knew then that they would return once more. She spoke to me of the miracles that had happened in their lives to allow this to happen, of the spirit she felt here, and especially of the spirit that she felt at the Garden Tomb. I found that quite interesting, because most Catholics do not go there at all. They consider the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City to be the site of the tomb. We had such a beautiful conversation, and she shared some very personal things with me. I wish I had been able to tell her to contact the missionaries, but I was a good girl and didn't. Her Spanish was beautiful, and very different from the Uruguayan and Argentinian Spanish I normally hear. It was a pleasure to listen to.

Our trip down to Jerusalem was a lot of fun. In addition to my oldest and youngest sons, Jules and Konrad (our friends from Australia) came along as well. We drove down along the Jordan River, and stopped at a rest stop between Jericho and the Dead Sea. Jules was able to buy some oil lamps to take home to her children, and then she and Yaron both had their first ride on a camel. I always enjoy watching the faces people make. It is impossible to remain straightfaced or dignified while swaying around on a moving camel! It is especially fun to watch their faces when the camel goes back down on his knees so they can get down. It is really quite scary and you feel like you are going to slide down and land on your nose! The faces are great. We also drove around the north shore of the Dead Sea and up to the parking lot at Qumrom, so that Jules and Konrad could see a little of the area. They also were interested in all the Beduin camps along the way. It's fun for me showing places I love to others for the first time, and seeing their reactions. On the way home the first part of the journey was done at sundown. As we were driving down below sea level, there on the horizon were the silhouettes of a mother camel and her baby, being led my a young boy. You couldn't have found a more perfect postcard.

Jules and Konrad were on the second part of a family history trip. Her father left Cyprus at the age of 18 to emigrate to Australia. Jules, the only LDS member in her family, was able to go back and spend 2 weeks with her father's family, learning the family stories, getting photographs, and seeing where her family lived and still live. Many, many doors were opened to her. She and Konrad came to Israel from Cyprus, and had two weeks here before heading home. I was able to travel with them for a couple of days. The weather even cooperated. We had a couple of days with low visibility due to sandstorms, but for the most part the weather was beautiful. And when we were at Banias we even saw a wild boar at close quarters! On the day we went to Mount Tabor, and later to the monument on Mount Carmel for the battle between Elijah and the priests of Baal, visibility was terrific. We also stopped in the druze town of Daliat El Carmel and bought Druze bread with labane (a tart yoghurt), olive oil and zatar (a spice made out of hyssop). NUMMMMMM!

Earlier in the week I also had a reunion with my kibbutz mother, whom I haven't seen in 25 years. She was up here in the north, vacationing with her son and grandchildren. We have been in contact a few times over the years, but haven't seen each other since before my wedding. She had come to SLC to visit me. I got a call out of the blue from her two weeks ago. She lives in the south, and had been on a train with a woman whose sister lives in Hatzor, where I work. Batia asked her if she knew a teacher named Ann (she had forgotten my married name), so this woman called her sister, and before the two of them got off the train she had my phone number! When I lived on the kibbutz back in 1979, we were assigned kibbutz families. When Batia heard there was a Mormon in the group (the rest were all Jewish), she asked for me because she was a longtime fan of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and had all of their records. Nearly every week we used to go into Tel Aviv together, along with some of the men. They would drop us off at the concert hall (she had season tickets to the Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Mehta) while they went to the basketball game. When the MTC was here on tour in the 1990s I was able to help her get tickets to their concert. Anyway, I went to her hotel. It was so good to see her again. It felt as if the years just melted away. We talked for nearly three hours.

Saturday night was the Passover seder. For the past few years we have been going with an old friend and spending the seder with his uncle at a local kibbutz. This time we also had Jules and Konrad with us, plus three of our four children. Last year at this time Eliana was in Arizona, and Allen was in Russia. It felt so good to see them together with Yaron. Yaron and Eliana can both fold their tongues (such a useful talent), and at some point they had a contest to see who could keep their tongue folded the longest. Konrad got a great picture. Bryan is still in Eilat, working. The kibbutz seder is a little different from the more orthodox seder, and focuses more on settling the land. This kibbutz also uses a lot of music. When the part came in the story where the Children of Israel leave Egypt, all who wanted to lined up behind a bagpipe player (this kibbutz was settled by a lot of Jews from the UK), and then followed him as he wound his way around and through the dining hall. It was kind of like watching the Pied Piper, and lots of fun. Allen Yaron and Jules all read parts of the seder. I was really proud of Jules, because she read hers in Hebrew. The food was also catered and served by ladies from the beduin village next to the kibbutz. As our friend said, when the beduin ladies from Tuba start making gefeltifish for Passover, you know that anything can happen in this country.

Eliana had the weekend off for Passover, but she is on duty all this week, plus the next weekend. Nearly everyone else is off for the week, but it is her turn to be on call. (She was also home for a couple of days with severe bronchitis two weeks ago.) She had so much to take back with her that I decided to drive her back. Because there wouldn't be too many people there, the kitchen wouldn't be working like normal, plus the Passover restrictions limit what can be eaten. She made a lot of things to take back with her. Her pack had to weigh at least as much as she does, and is almost as big. At one point it even pulled her over backwards! We tried to get a picture but couldn't find the camera fast enough. When I got back home, there was a huge flock of storks flying over my village. There must have been close to 300. It was beautiful. I am so lucky to live here.

Now I have two days left of vacation. I guess I should start checking the piles of homework I have waiting for me!

Have a great week.

Ann

It's hard to believe this month is nearly over. It has gone by so fast.

Israel's Memorial Day was earlier this month, and very moving, as always. On the day before, and the day of Memorial Day itself, the radio and television stations broadcast appropriate materials, especially songs associated with this sad day. One of the stations broadcast several of the "classic" memorial day songs, but also told the story about why each one was written. It made each one even more meaningful. The radio and tv also will broadcast short pieces about one of the soldiers who died. They try to take stories from throughout our 60 year history. I don't know why, but it is harder for me to see the tears in the eyes of someone whose loved one died decades ago than it is to see someone try to deal with a relatively fresh tragedy. I guess it's because it shows how deep and lasting the grief is, and how it changes people's lives forever. Sometimes I'm driven to listen to as many of these stories as I can. Some years I can't deal with it at all. Those who have lost family members and friends have no choice. It is with them always.

This year I saw an interesting program which interviewed women whose boyfriends were killed. Because they weren't officially family members, they have no status, receive no counselling and aren't invited to official memorial functions. They have to deal with the loss but without an official support system, so they have formed their own organization. This program dealt mainly with a woman whose fiance was killed in 1973 trying to help a young woman in her early 20s whose boyfriend was recently killed in Gaza.

Another very sad story involved two brothers, the oldest and youngest sons in a very large family. Their parents and the rest of their siblings belong to an ultra-orthodox sect which doesn't recognize the state of Israel (only God can be the head of a country) and most certainly don't approve of their sons going into the army. The oldest son was disowned and pronounced dead by his parents when he told them he wanted to go into the army. He ended up living in one of the kibbutzim in the north, and went into an elite unit. About a year later his youngest brother decided to do the same, although he went to live at a kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee. While the older brother flourished in his new environment, the younger brother still had a difficult time being separated from his siblings and decried by his parents. The older brother gave him as much support as he could, even taking a week off of work to be with his brother. The younger brother was still torn between his feelings of responsibility to his country, and love for his family. A few hours after the older brother left to go back to base, the younger brother committed suicide. His parents didn't even come to the funeral.

The small community that I live in always has a special ceremony the eve of Memorial Day. It is held in a small outdoor amphitheater built especially for the purpose, after the son of one of our families was killed in a training accident. We all wear white shirts, and gather at dusk. At 8 pm we stand at attention for 2 minutes while the siren rings. Hearing all the sirens in the vicinity go off took me back to the summer of the war. Eerie. Then one of the children currently in the army lowers the flag to half-mast and then salutes it. This year my daughter was asked to do it. She hadn't known beforehand, but seeing her there in her uniform, with her feelings of love, respect and loyalty so readily apparent - my throat choked up, as you can imagine. Then there are a series of readings and songs. One of the speakers this year was the father of the young engineer who worked for the government office in charge of new settlements. He was the one who had chosen the site where our community was built and pushed to get it approved. Very soon after the paperwork went through, the 1982 war in Lebanon broke out, and his reserve unit was called up. He was killed early in the war, at the age of 26. His father spoke about his son, and how pleased he would have been to see what became of his vision. Then the little sister of the soldier who was killed in the training accident spoke. Her family basically cut themselves off from the community after their son's death, and wouldn't let the younger children out of the house for anything but school. It hasn't been easy for them. The girl, who is now in high school, spoke about what the past 12 years have been like, and how much she misses her brother still. She spoke as if she were talking to him, and talked about going into his room and looking at the mobile he had made, and listening to the recordings he had made playing guitar. She talked especially about his smile, and his endless optimism, and what she had learned from him. It was beautiful, and and her thoughts and feelings echoed much of what my friend is going through right now (her son commited suicide two months ago). I was sitting with my friend, and we both were sobbing. At the end of the ceremony a torch is lit which spells out "remember", and then we sing the national anthem.

The next morning should have been a quiet day, with just the ceremony at school to go to, but things changed. My 13-year-old is in a special program for Aspberger kids at a high school near the northern border, so he has a driver who takes him to and from school every day (it's about an hour each direction). The driver is one of our neighbors, and has become like an uncle to my son. Those two have a very special bond, and he has done so much for my son's self-confidence. Anyway, Meir (the driver) was a paratrooper in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, and lost many of his friends. He also fought as a reservist in the 1982 war. Memorial Day is always hard for him, and he spends much of it going to various cemetaries to attend memorial services for his friends. He had arranged for another driver to pick up Yaron (my son), but something came up and he couldn't make it, so Meir asked if I would be able to take Yaron myself so that Meir could go to the cemetery. I of course agreed, so I hurried to get ready. Another tradition here is that anyone in the military who can get the day off returns in uniform to the high school they attended for the school's ceremony. My daughter was home, and she wanted to go to her ceremony on the Golan Heights. So we left home by 7:15, drove an hour north to let Yaron off, then went up onto the Golan to take Eliana to Katzrin (about another 40 minutes). It was a beautiful day, with blue skies and chrystal clarity. I enjoyed the time I had to be with my children, and share memories. After I dropped Eliana off I stopped at a nearby mall to go to the bathroom, and ran into a couple whom I had known 20 years ago. It was wonderful to visit with them. Then I drove back home (another 45 minutes, part of it along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee) to pick up my husband and take him to the doctor, before going to school. When I was nearly to school my daughter called and was at the bus stop in town, so I picked her up and we went to the ceremony at my school. Most of the teachers at school have known her her entire life, so they were excited to see her in uniform, looking so grown up. I also got to visit with former students, which I always enjoy.

After the ceremony we picked up my husband, then rushed back north again to pick up my son, before heading home. I spent a lot of time in the car that day! While driving I heard the news at 8, 9, 10, 12, 1 and 2! And the whole time I was driving, I was physically reminded every couple of kilometers that nearly everywhere I had been that day had been the site of at least one battle if not more, from biblical times to the present. My freedom to drive there and to take my children to and from school had come at a price paid by others. It was sobering.

This year Israel's Independence Day fell on May 8, the day before Russia's Victory Day. Because the town I work in has a lot of Russian immigrants, they have a ceremony every year. Back in the 90s I went to a few of them, eventhough I know about 5 words of Russian. In those days the number of WW II veterans filled the stage, all of them with rows upon rows of hard-won medals, pain on their faces, and tears in their eyes. About a third of them were women.

So at the end of Israel's Independence Day, Allen and I went back up to Hatzor for the Victory Day program. It was my first time there with someone who could translate for me. Allen spent his first V-Day in Russia in the city of Volgograd, which was known as Stalingrad in those days. I think this evening was almost as moving for him. The daycare center where my kids were closed a few years ago, and is now the community center for the Russian immigrants. They have a small library, and a meeting hall. When we arrived they were serving dinner, which I hadn't expected. The front table was reserved for the veterans, who were there wearing their medals. There are so few of them left now, compared to 15 years ago. They had a small but excellent choir, who throughout the evening sang patriotic songs, and songs which were popular during the war. They were accompanied by an accordianist, one of the best I've ever heard. He also played in between songs, and nearly all of the older couples got up and danced with each other. It was almost like stepping back 60 years, watching them together. It was beautiful to see their commitment to and love for each other. One of the math teachers from my school spoke about the children who faught in the war (her own grandparents among them). Everyone was in tears, and there were parts that Allen was too emotional to translate. The resident poet read some of his poems, and others spoke about different aspects of the war. In the middle of the ceremony, while the musicians took a break, the cook brought out a big aluminum pot of the type common during the war. He then told us we were all going to get a taste of trench rations, which had been nicknamed "shrapnel". He even offered double helpings to the veterans, which brought a few laughs. It actually wasn't too bad - boiled, salted barley. (Of course, this was fresh barley cooked in a sanitary kitchen.) Towards the end of the evening a special gift of a warm, fuzzy winter blanket was given first to each of the veterans, and then to each of the survivors of the siege of Leningrad. Again, many of both of these groups were women. A lot of them had worked in the factories while the men were on the front lines.

After the evening finished, I stayed to talk to some of the people there whom I am acquainted with. They made me feel very welcome. One of the leaders of the Russian community is our family doctor. One of the things that she had mentioned was that after about 5 years of pushing, nagging and pulling strings, a memorial marker to the Russian veterans had finally been erected on one of the city's squares ("Tank Square", so-named because there used to be a Russian tank there when my kids were little. Ironic and fitting.) It was going to be dedicated the next day, so they invited Allen up for the ceremony. After the dedication they also planned to go to the home of each veteran who had been unable to attend the ceremony the night before. As we were talking, I asked her if any of the veterans' stories had been recorded. She got a little teary-eyed, then gave me a huge smile and grabbed my arm to take me to the library. She proudly showed me a book (literally called "The Book of Remembrance") which several of them had been working on for five years. It contained the story, picture and a poem or other bit of prose about each of the veterans, including her own father. It was in Russian, and beautifully put together. I come from a background of oral history and archives, so my next question was if a copy had been sent to Yad VaShem, the country's holocaust memorial and archives. They have a huge collection of autobiographies from the war period, including several taped interviews of survivors (sponsored and paid for by Steven Spielberg). She said that they hadn't done so, because they wanted to have a Hebrew version as well, but didn't have the money to pay a translator. The long and short of it is that Allen has volunteered to do the translating, not only into Hebrew but also into English. I don't think they quite believed someone would do this for free. They kept saying, "But we can't pay you. There isn't any money!" It touched them beyond words that someone without any personal connection to them would see the importance in what they had done. Needless to say, Allen is no longer an outsider.

The next morning I couldn't face another day driving, and Allen missed the bus, so neither of us got to the dedication of the memorial stone. But I don't think anything could have had more of an emotional impact than the evening before. I was so grateful that we had had the opportunity to be at the ceremony that evening.

And I couldn't help but think how history brings everything full circle. My grandfather, a teenager from the desert of southern Arizona, served in Siberia with the US Army of Occupation during WW I. The Americans had gone in, trying to "save" Russia from the Bolshevic Revolution. I grew up in the US during the Cold War, when there was no contact whatsoever between citizens of the USSR and the USA, and each considered the other as an enemy. Then I married the grandson of Ukrainians who had immigrated to the US right before WW I. We live in Israel, where our children's friends, and many of ours, are immigrants from the former USSR. Then our oldest went to live in Russia and now feels more Russian than Israeli. We can allow politics, religion, language and culture to drive us apart, but if we want to enough, our humanity can bring us together. It is our choice.

Ann

The week before Independence Day in Israel, is the day we remember the victims of the Holocaust. It is never an easy two days.

The evening before the teenages of our community did a short, but moving ceremony for us. It was hard for my friend, but she felt she needed to attend. Her son had been dead for only about a month, but both of her parents were holocaust survivors, and she wanted to honor their memory as well. Later that night I also watched part of the ceremony which was being broadcast from Warsaw, Poland. It was being done by Israelis who were in Poland to participate in the Walk of the Living.

The next morning at school all of the lessons were devoted to holocaust studies, and to listening to the stories of survivors. Most of those who are still alive were children during the war. The lady who came to our school this year has come several times before. As we were sitting in the teacher's room during the morning break, she was talking to us about different things. Somehow we got onto the subject of tatoos, and she started talking about her own experience of having the number tatooed on her arm - how it felt physically, but even more about how it felt to be dehumanized, and the fight to keep a sense of her own humanity. As they say in Hebrew, may we never know.

After the break we all gathered into the sports hall for the main ceremony. At 10 the siren went off, and we stood at attention. During the siren there were some doves flying around in the eaves, cooing. It was surreal to hear the symbol of peace while listening to the siren symbolizing war. The students who had been in Poland last year did the ceremony, and then the two survivors who were there lit the candles, and a special prayer was sung. One of my English teachers, Ina, had a hard time. Her parents are both survivors, and her father died last month. After the ceremony, there was a play about a grandmother remembering her childhood during the war. In some ways her story was a lot like that of Ina's father, so we had to go outside a few times when everything got too much for her.

That afternoon I watched a very interesting program about an American family who had gone back to Poland to find the family who had hidden their father. When the war started, a Jewish family had three young sons (5, 7, 10). They lived in a rural area of Poland, and when the Germans invaded and started rounding up Jews, everyone in the village knew it was only a matter of time. A farmer and his wife and their married daughter and son-in-law built a cavern under their haystack, and offered to hide the three boys there. They knew if they got caught their entire family would be killed. The Jewish parents were rounded up and killed, but the boys spent the entire six years in the hollowed-out space under the haystack. There were several close calls, but they all survived, and later made it to the US. The middle son's married daughter, son-in-law and adult grandchildren felt a need to find the family, if possible, and thank them. It took a lot of time and work, but in the end they found the family. The parents were long dead, but the married daughter and husband were still alive. The daughter, now a grandmother, was literally bent over double with arthritis, but still smiling. As the Jewish family were visiting with the family, they asked the mother why she had done what she did. She replied, "We all knew what would happen to them if the Germans found them." When asked what she would say if she could meet with the three boys now she stopped, the smile left her face, and she said with tears in her eyes, "I would ask them why they never let me know what happened to them afterwards. I would ask them why they never let me know that they were still alive." When the Jewish family asked the granddaughter her thoughts about what her grandparents had done, endangering their own lives in order to help the three Jewish boys, she said that she wasn't surprised because that was how her grandparents were, but that she herself had always resented the fact that not one single one of the boys had ever said thank you afterwards.

When the family returned to America, they asked their father/grandfather why he had never tried to find the Polish family, or write to them. He replied that at first he was too busy trying to find what had happened to his parents, then getting to the US as an immigrant without any money, family or even the language. He also didn't know how to write. I hadn't thought about it before, but he had never had the opportunity to go to school, not even to first grade, which is when we learn to write. He also had no money. Later the iron curtain cut Poland off, and years later he was too embarrassed that so much time had gone by, plus he thought they must be dead by now anyway.

Anyway, he and his remaining brother, and several of their grandchildren, set up an education fund for the grandchildren of the Polish family. The Jewish daughter, her sons, and her grandchildren went back to Poland a year later, with Shevach Weiss, who was then the speaker of the Israeli Knesset and himself a holocaust survivor from Poland. At a big ceremony at the town hall, Weiss awarded the Polish family a special commendation from the Israeli government and Yad Vashem, bestowing on them the title of Righteous Among the Nations, an honor given to those Gentiles who helped Jewish people during the holocaust. They Jewish family also brought letters from their grandfathers for the Polish family, and expressed their own thanks on behalf of their families. They also had their grandfather, who was too ill to make the trip, speak on the phone to the Polish family who had saved him. The Jewish family then officially presented the Polish family with the education fund they had set up, and the grandchildren met and talked with each other. It helped bring some closure to all of them, I think.

I also watched the March of the Living from Poland. This year, Israel's Chief of Staff went to Poland, and spoke at the ceremony. I can't describe what it means to see the head of the Israeli army, in full dress uniform, speak at the very site where the attempt had been made to annihilate the Jewish people, the nation he now represented. It was powerful.

Ann

Hi Everyone,

I'm finally taking a moment to catch up on things, if that's ever reall possible. It has been a busy, busy month for me, mostly because of school. The junior high still goes until nearly the end of July because of the strike, but the high school kids are finishing up next week. Then comes the round of finals, followed by matriculation exams. The college semester is also nearly finished. Basically I've spent the month making up and grading tests, checking homework and doing grades, plus doing my own homework for a course I'm taking. It never seems to end.

School hasn't been all study, though. A couple of weeks ago, during the last period, all of a sudden my 9th grade class just emptied out of the room literally in seconds. I think they must be like sharks and can sense blood in the vicinity. Just outside of the school grounds two ninth-graders (both with big police files before 7th grade) had gotten into an argument, and one pulled a knife on the other. Bystanders quickly called in reinforcements in the form of big brothers and friends from 11th grade, who came to settle accounts. By the time we got everything stopped and the police got there, kids from 7-11 grades were involved. The next day the battle continued on between the two extended families, to the point where border police were called in. They were subsequently attacked by the families for "getting involved in something that was none of their business", and they had to call in reinforcements! And this all started over an insult. Just a few days later in the neighboring Beduin town, an 11th grader was stabbed to death by one of his classmates. This is not something that normally occurs here.

We also had a very sobering assembly for the 10th and 11th graders the same week. Two years ago, a former student of mine, along with her toddler, her newborn son and her sister, were returning from a visit to a third sister. As they rounded a curve they were hit head on by a car travelling in the wrong lane, driven by a young drunk driver. My student and one of the passengers in the other car were killed immediately. Her baby was severely injured, and her sister was in the hospital for months with mulitple injuries and broken bones. The family and the community were devastated. She was only 26, a beautiful, intelligent, talented young woman with an MS in engineering. She wasn't only smart, but I remember that she was always ready to help whoever needed it, and she often spent her breaks at school helping other students in math or English. The reason I am telling all of this is that her family, and her workplace, have established a scholarship fund for two outstanding students from the high school who are doing graduate studies. This was the ceremony for the first recipients. I was pleased by their choice, especially the young man, also a former student of mine, and one of my favorites. Sadly enough, his own uncle - whom he was very close to- was also killed by a drunk driver. A representative of the company spoke to the students, and then former teachers also spoke. Then her father addressed the students. Many of them know him. He talked about how he died inside when he heard the news, and how he had decided to starve himself to death. It was only a week later, when he was visiting his other daughter in the hospital, that a change came. He was trying to feed her (one arm and her other shoulder were broken, so she had to be fed), but she refused to eat until he did. That finally broke through to him, and made him think of the rest of his family as well. Then he started thinking of the young idiot who had caused such devastation in his life, and determined to let the other family experience the loss that his own family was feeling. He said that he even got the money together and found someone to "take care of it". But first he wanted to see for himself what kind of monster would do this. He arranged to meet the monster, and was shocked to discover that this was a normal young man, who was inconsolable because of what he had done. That changed everything for the father. He then looked at the students and told them that the difference between the monster he had expected, and the broken young man whom he had met, was the influence of alcohol. He then begged them never to drive if they had been drinking, and held up the picture of what was left of his daughter's car. After that, an actor gave a one-man play, based on his friend's life, about a young man who woke up in a hospital a paraplegic because of an accident he had caused while driving drunk. He goes back and tells the story from the beginning, occassionally interupting the narrative to come back to the present. It was very effective, and I hope left a message on these kids. Afterwords the mother and I had a long hug and cry. It was so hard. I sometimes go to see her at her store, and we talk about her daughter.

Eliana has also had a busy month. In the same week she and some friends from base went to the big football (soccer) championship game in Tel Aviv. The team she was rooting for won, so she was ecstatic. Two days later she got a new group of soldiers in. The next day one of them tried to kill himself. She went with him in the ambulance to the emergency room, and stayed with him for hours. Then she had to do the rounds of questioning by the base commanders, military police, etc. She took it very hard. She has dealt with suicidal soldiers before, and earlier in the month talked one out of trying suicide (the girl was in a different unit, but Eliana was the duty officer that weekend), but this was one of her own soldiers. She said this particular soldier was the last one she would have suspected of being suicidal, and he had no previous history of suicidal behavior. I have never seen her this shaken up before. Maybe I am just more aware of it the past while, but it is frightening to me to see how much suicide is a part of our lives now.

Yaron has had a good month. In addition to the holidays, he has had a couple of hikes at school, plus a 3-day school trip to the Jerusalem / Hebron area. The trip included lots of hiking with sites connected to modern Israeli history. He had a wonderful time and came home with a huge smile on his face. He has matured a lot this year, in addition to growing several inches! Yesterday his class had a day of "challenge" sports, mostly based on something to do with water. For example, they strung a rope bridge (the type where you have to walk along a rope while holding on to the guide rope above) over the Jordan River, and then had to try and cross it together in groups. Some of the girls in his group did something which disrupted the weight distribution (sort of like getting off the teeter totter on one end), and the whole group ended up in the drink. Since it was over 100 degrees F, no one complained much, though. He also had his last horseriding session of the year, and those involved in the riding therapy had a party afterwards. Yaron loves parties.

Last weekend was Lag B'Omar, a fun Jewish holiday (post-Biblical period) in which you get to build bonfires and shoot pretend bows and arrows. Our community usually meets up by the synagogue, and we build a big one together. Of course, there always seem to be several smaller "satelite" bonfires as well. It is a fun evening, and commerates the Bar Kochva revolt against the Romans. It is one of Yaron's favorite holidays.

This is also the beginning of the annual Hebrew book week, when it is traditional to buy a Hebrew book, and there are huge book fairs with substantial discounts into the bargain. With the advent of computers and a TV in every house the book week isn't anywhere near what it was 20 years ago, but is fun nevertheless. On the way home from school on Thursday Meir, Yaron's driver, stopped and let him choose two books. Meir is such a wonderful man, and he has been so good for Yaron. Yaron chose two more mythology books in a series he has been accumulating for a couple of years.

We've had a lot of visitors at church this month. Early in the month there was a really nice group, mostly from California. Their busload really upped our attendance! There was also a really good spirit in the group, and we enjoyed meeting them immensely. One of them is a prominent Joseph Smith scholar (Richard Bushman), so Allen had him autograph one of his books that Allen is reading right now. Also, an old friend of mine was here, along with three other BYU professors. They are each going to be teaching at the BYU Center in Jerusalem in the next couple of years, so they were here to physically become acquainted with the field trips, etc. they will be leading. Chad has lived here many times, and was in our branch for a year. In fact, it was fun to show him his old fan which is in one of the closets now. He gave a wonderful talk. One of the others who was hear also sings in the Mormon Tab. Choir, so he sang "Our Savior's Love", and I got to play for him. It will be the only time in my life I play for a musician of that caliber, since I am at best a mediocre pianist! It was wonderful to listen to him. Then for two weeks we had a young family visiting from Oregon. It was fun to have young children in the branch again. Last week we also had a young family from Tel Aviv, with their young children. Michael loved teaching primary again! We also had a visit from the new couple in Jerusalem, who were actually here 3 years ago, and had seen our chapel before the remodeling started. They were amazed at the change! Last week we had visitors again - this time from one of Allen's missionary companions and his parents. They had just picked their son up in Russia, and then come here. Tomorrow we get the two BYU student groups. It sometimes feels like we are a visitor's center, but on the other hand we also get to see how the spirit of the place affects those who come, and we get to meet so many wonderful people.

So, that was our month.

Ann

June has been a very busy month for us so far, especially me. At school it was time for final exams, grades, meetings and the matriculation exams. That also included all sorts of homework and makeup work turned in at the last minute for grading, tutoring before the tests, etc. I also tested for the oral exams at another school. We also just had the final exams at the college last week. At least it is all behind me for the time being. I still have about 3 more weeks of school because of the strike, but Yaron's school is officially over. He goes everyday, though, for summer activities. Sunday they did all sorts of games in the pool, yesterday they went to a neighboring kibbutz for some activities in their zoo, and today they are kayaking. It's going to be a rough summer for him!

Seventh grade here is also the year most kids have their bar mitzvah, so one of the things that the 7th graders work on all year is called "roots". They are supposed to research and compile their family history, and there is a big party at the end of the year where they present their projects. I think it is a wonderful idea, especially since so many children have no idea whatsoever about the lives of their parents or grandparents. At Yaron's party, his teacher had each of the kids read a short paragraph from their work. Some read about themselves, some about parents, and some about grandparents. It was quite interesting to listen to the stories. One girl told about her grandmother, who was a lookout girl for the Irgun (Menachem Begin's pre-state organization- the Haganah's rival). She lived at the entrance to Tiberius. Whenever she saw British military or government vehicles coming, she put out black laundry. If she saw Arab vehicles, she put out another color, etc. The grandparents of another child had told about growing up in the early years of the state, with the enemy army just across the fence, literally. Another grandfather told about being called up by the army, after his retirement, to work with the Philangist resistance groups in Lebanon during the 1982 war. The teacher then asked one of the fathers to tell his own story. He checked with the relevant authorities first to get permission, and he didn't give details, but we can assume he was the Israeli equivalent of a SEAL. In 1981 his unit was given orders to go to Eilat and buy some motor boats, then start sailing south. After they had been asea for a few hours, the commander opened the sealed orders telling them to head for the coast of Sudan and look for a deserted piece of shore that could be used to transport large groups for people for a long period of time. That's all it said. The area had to be accessible both by land and by sea. That's all they were told, except to keep a low profile and not to tell anyone they were Israeli soldiers. The father then laughed and said, "As if it weren't perfectly obvious. We were white in a black country, and we had crew cuts at a time when everyone else had very long hair!" They were also told that there were two groups of people to watch out for - the human slave traders (especially dealing in children) and a small group of cannibals who lived in the area! After doing their job and finding a suitable place, the soldiers later learned that they had selected the pickup spot for Operation Moses, in which thousands of Ethiopian jews were secretly gotten out of Ethiopia and brought by sea to Israel for over a year and a half. The operation came to an end when the oposition had gotten after the prime minister during a knesset session for not doing anything to help the Ethiopian jews, and in an unusual show of temper he said that they had been bringing them in for over 18 months already. Once the news was out, that ended the operation. (This was the operation in 1981-82, not to be confused with the massive airlift of Operation Shlomo later in the decade.) Anyway, it was an interesting evening. There was a program for all of the classes afterwards, but Michael wasn't feeling well so we went home. We found out the next day that Yaron had gotten an award for good behavior and excellent grades. I felt bad, but he was philosophical, and he got the award in front of the class anyway.

Allen has also gotten a lot busier. He was recently called as the second counselor in the branch, and finally found a job which doesn't require him to work on the sabbath. He is working at a cannery in the town where I work, doing the packing, labeling, shipping, etc. He is enjoying it so far, and seems to be working with a nice bunch of guys. The only drawback is that he starts work before the buses run, so I get to take him to work each morning, but that does allow me to watch the sun rise each day!

Eliana keeps busy in the army, and is back working at the local restaurant as a waitress when she is home. She hasn't figured out yet how to incorporate the concept of rest / sleep into her life.

Bryan is still working (lots!) in Eilat, but seemed very happy when I spoke to him last. He has reserve duty in August.

Church has also kept us busy. The BYU summer abroad students were up the last week of May, and then a group of 70 BYU students studying Arabic were here last week. They are doing a semester abroad based in Jordan. It was fun to meet with them. They are usually a lot more down to earth and a lot more serious. A male quartet sang a beautiful hymn for us. Our new district president and his wife were up another week.

There has been a lot of military activity in the area, especially air activity. This is also the second anniversary of the kidnapping of the soldier Gilad Shalit. I can't imagine what it must be for his parents to know he is alive, but not be able to get him released. At least the Hamas allows the exchange of letters (heavily edited and much of the content dictated) every few months. With this idiotic ceasefire engineered between Hamas and Israel (another rocket landed in the Negev this morning, only 4-1/2 days into the ceasefire), there is a very great possibility that control of the border crossings will be given to Hamas. If that happens, it is very likely that Gilad will be moved out of Gaza and into a neighboring country. Then there will be no way to find him. His parents have petitioned the High Court to prevent transferring control of the crossing points. The government is playing deaf, dumb and blind again. Also, the chief rabbi of the army has declared the other two kidnapped soldiers to be dead, with their burial place unknown. This was done at a time when the government is in negotiation for getting them back, and was announced to the press within minutes of notifying the families. The families are furious, and rightly so. I have believed all along that these two men are dead (from the wreckage, no one could have survived that blast), but that doesn't mean that their grandparents and siblings should have to hear about it first on the morning news. Just when I think this government cannot get more insensitive, they prove me wrong, yet again.

Summer is officially here, and we have the heat to prove it. Sometimes it is like walking out into a blast furnace. As a result of the short, dry, warm winter we are also experiencing two plagues - one of ticks, and the other of vipers. I have never seen so many of either in my life. In the past three weeks the hospitals in our area have treated 5 people who were bitten by vipers (which have an extremely poisonous venom). All the victims were bitten in or near their yards, and one of them died. We had two dogs killed by a viper. So we have told Yaron to stay out of the fields and be careful where he walks. Also, there was a report on the news the other day that a little girl on the Golan Heights got lightly bitten by a wolf (yes, the nearly extinct wolf!) which had wandered into her house! She had evidently seen it come in, yelled for it to skat, and kicked out at it, at which point it took a bite. Her parents shooed it into a bedroom and locked the door, then called the nature authorities. Now there's a story which doesn't happen every day! The wolf tore out the screen and left by the window, but was trapped soon after. Both the girl and the wolf are fine.

And on that cheery note I will wish you a safe, fun week.

Ann

We had an interesting week, especially the weekend. On Tuesday evening our family went to Tiberius to help clean the building, and so that Allen and Michael could meet with President Cook for a presidency meeting. Afterwards the Cooks invited us for supper, so it was a nice opportunity to visit with each other.

Wednesday I spent in the elementary school, testing the 6th graders who are coming to our school next year. It is going to be a tough year. Out of over 50 students, only 8 even passed the test. Most of the scores were below 20! Most of those couldn't even read enough to fill out basic details - name, address, age, birthday, etc. There is a LOT of work to do!

On Thursday Allen came home from work with a big cardboard box labeled "Pocahontas baby peeled carrots, made in Israel". Inside were a couple of dozen ears of corn. At the end of the week the workers can buy produce like that for pennies. I just had to laugh at the name, though. "Pocahontas" is evidently an American company based in Virginia which imports vegetables from Israel! I am still chuckling.

I had the highschool graduation party that evening, but fell asleep during the afternoon and didn't wake up in time, so I missed it. I woke up later that night, around 11 pm. By then it was cool enough to breathe and to think, so I made brownies to take to Eliana the next day, and got other stuff ready.

Friday morning I did more baking before setting off for Haifa to visit with Eliana. She is in between groups right now, so was sent to a smaller base to help with guard duty for a week. The base was originally built by the British in the late 1930s, and hasn't had much done to it since. There are no kitchen facilities, and the fridge had broken down. Their meals are brought up from another base, but by the time they get there they aren't exactly piping hot. The bathroom facilities were more like conditions soldiers in the field face - portable chemical toilets and a trailer with shower heads inside. Eliana admits she has gotten spoiled, but she didn't get a lot of sympathy from her father or brothers! Anyway, the base is really small - about 18 permanent soldiers and another 7-8 guards who come in for a week (like Eliana). She said the permanent staff were nice, but some of the guards were the pits. Luckily she was there with one of her very best friends. Anyway, I took them lunch and food for the weekend. Eliana met me at the gate, and we walked in. It is still strange for me to see my daughter so non-chalantly walking around with an M-16 slung over her shoulder. They scarfed down the food (the Israeli version of quiche, cucumber/tomato salad, stuffed grape leaves, brownies and juice), and we had a good visit. I knew the girls were bored, so I had found gotten a couple of silly things to make them smile: childrens' toothpaste which came with free toothbrushes emblazoned with fighter jets (they are air force girls, after all!), and some bottles of bubbles. It was fun to see them laugh. By the time I got home, it was time to shower again and get ready for the evening.

One of our branch members is actually a Moslem, who is in charge of all the Ministry of Education Arab kindergartens in the north. Her only daugher was getting married, so she invited the Cooks, Spencer and us from the branch. The wedding was at an outdoor events hall near Akko. We all met at the Cooks, and they drove us in their car. We were among the first to arrive, and were there in time to see the bride arrive. She was absolutely beautiful, as was her dress. The last time I saw her was when she was about 6. The bride's family set up a reception line, and her mother was absolutely beaming. The groom was nowhere in sight, but we assumed he would show up later. About 40 minutes later the bride made her official entrance. She was surrounded by four young men dressed in traditional costume, playing drums. There was a trumpet fanfare, followed by bagpipe music (bagpipes are traditional instruments in the middle east). A wall of sparklers was lit, and then Mendelssohn's Wedding March was played, complete with Arabic lyrics. I thought it ironic, especially since Mendelssohn was Jewish. Still, it was quite stirring. The groom was still nowhere in sight, even when the bride's mother read a beautiful tribute to her daughter and future son-in-law. At this point I pulled out the invitation, and noticed that the wording said "the bride's party". Evidently the wedding was actually a couple of days later! So we never did get to meet the groom. After the tribute the bride did a solo dance, and was later joined by the female members of the party. After that she made another entrance, this time carrying two very long candles (about 2-1/2 feet long each), which she carried in front of her like swords. I don't know what the significance of that was. I could understand a lot of her mother's Arabic, but not much of anyone else's. This was followed by more dancing. The musicians were really good, especially the two dabuka (Arabic drums) players. The food was also delicious - every kind of salad imaginable, with some delicious seasonings I hadn't thought of before. Our favorite had cherry tomatoes, pine nuts, seasoned walnuts, and white cheese. The kubeh (shredded meat and pine nuts, rolled in sesame sauce, then coated with a cornmeal dough and deep fried) were some of the best I've ever eaten. Later there were shish kabobs, and yet more salads, including shrimp - which we don't see a lot in the Jewish sector because it isn't kosher. Michael and Sister Cook loved it. We were at a table with several other people, including a family with two young children. It was fun to visit with them, and watch the antics of the kids. At about 11:30 we decided to leave, since we had a long drive back and there was church in the morning. We went to take our leave of Ramzieh, who begged us to stay just a little bit longer and see her daughter in her "second" dress. Sure enough, soon after her daugher made another entry in another gown. This one was nearly identical to her wedding gown, but was bright yellow. I don't know why the bride wore two different dresses,but I would like to find out. And to think that the groom missed all of this! We left soon after, just as the main dish was being served. I would imagine the party went on for another couple of hours. It was a fun evening.

The next morning we had a visitor at church, a Canadian woman who is here to attend a medical conference in Jerusalem. She is an emergency room nurse in Calgary, and was sent to attend the lectures on trauma medicine. As you can imagine, Israel has a lot of experience in that! It was fun to meet Deana, who has been here before. She had been with a group recently which volunteered on an Israeli army base near Gaza. After meetings Allen and Yaron took her on a tour around the lake, including Job's well, and then the southern Golan. I was exhausted, and hoped to go home for a quick nap, which never happened. When we got home I made a cake to take for dinner that evening, while Michael shucked and cooked the corn Allen had brought. I then lied down to nap, but my mom called. I had a long talk, which was nice. Usually when I call it is after 2 a.m. my time. We were supposed to be back at the church at 5 to welcome Elders McMillen and Neuenschwander, who were arriving from Jordan that afternoon. Their flight was delayed by about two hours, though, so our pot luck dinner was put back as well. Brother McMillen is the person in the Presiding Bishop's office who did the legwork on the SLC end to get our chapel done, and he was back on an inspection visit. After their business was done, they had potluck dinner with some of the branch members who lived close. It was fun for us to get to visit with them.

The ceasefire with Gaza is still on, even though rockets and mortars continue to fall in Israel every day. In addition, the government has just agreed to release one of its top terrorist prisoners back to the Hisballah in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped two years ago. I still remember of when I first heard of this man. It was back in 1979, the first time I was in Israel. He broke into an apartment house in the coastal city of Nahariya, and took hostage a man and his 5-year-old daughter. Meanwhile the wife had been in another room. She managed to grab their baby and hide inside a closet. She covered the baby's mouth to keep her from crying out, and accidently smothered her death. In the meantime the terrorist dragged the father and the older daughter outside and to the beach, where he killed them both. This man is also responsible for the deaths of many other civilians, and is the idol of Hisballa members. It is reprehensible that he is being released. It also strengthens the position of the Hisballah, and gives more incentive to the Hamas in Gaza in our negotiations with them to get back the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.

I am still in school because of the strike days, but there are no students! It is ridiculous. Yaron is in summer school and having a ball. They've gone river rafting, had activities at a local zoo, and today they went bowling and out to pizza afterwards. He's having lots of fun.

Have a good week, and happy 4th of July and Canada Day!

Ann

I don't know how many of you saw the news today, but there was a nasty terrorist attack in Jerusalem this afternoon. Michael and I were on our way home just before noon, when the radio program was interrupted with the news that reports were being received of a tractor attacking a bus at that moment in Jerusalem. As soon as we got home we turned on the TV, but nothing was on yet (it usually takes about 20 minutes after an attack to get things on the air), so we went back to the radio. When the pictures were shown on TV, they were pretty horrific. Most of them haven't yet appeared on the international news.

From what is known now, about 14 hours after the attack, this is what happened. A light rail system is being built in downtown Jerusalem, so part of the town center is a construction zone. Nevertheless, the downtown area is always crowded with both motor and foot traffic. This morning, one of the heavy machinery drivers was late to work. His boss sent someone to pick him up. At about 11:45 he got into his digger/shovel/earth mover, drove out of the construction area and onto one of Jerusalem's main streets. He deliberately ran over two cars, crushing them (and their drivers). He then rammed into a bus stop shelter, crushing it, before reversing and turning onto Jaffa Street, one of the busiest streets in the capital. He headed towards an oncoming car, lifted the shovel to the height of the driver's head, and rammed the car. He backed up, changed angles, and continued down the street at high speed (someone filmed him with their phone). He rammed a couple of other vehicles, including a service truck full of flammable materials which miraculously didn't explode. He also bumped a bus, then reversed, lifted his shovel to driver's height again and deliberately rammed the bus, dragging it at least a hundred yards. Most of the serious injuries came from those inside the bus. When the driver saw him coming back with the shovel raised, he yelled for his passengers to get out quickly, and that is what saved many of them. Another bus ended up on its side. He ran over other vehicles, and also tried to run over pedestrians on the sidewalks.

Within minutes of the beginning of the attack there were policemen and border patrol on the scene. However, their bullets bounced off the heavy glass which encircled the cab of the digger. Another border patrol person had managed to climb up to the door of the cab, but fell off when the digger swerved. Soon after a guard at a clinic on the street managed to get up and inside the cab, as did a policeman. They were trying to get control of the steering wheel, and to get the terrorist's feet off the gas pedal. By this time a young off-duty soldier (he was the one in shorts and blue t-shirt you could see in the video) who was just a couple of streets away managed to climb up onto the cab, and had gotten a gun from somebody along the way (local reports in Utah say he was legally carrying the handgun as a concealed self-protection weapon). He put the gun into the window of the cab and shot the driver twice. By this time a SWAT policeman had also managed to climb up, saw that the driver was still moving, and shot him dead. Between the first and second shootings the driver had yelled "Alla hu akbar".

One of the miracles of the day was a 6-month old baby, who was found on a sidewalk near one of the crushed cars. Her mother had seen the earth mover coming towards her, realized there was nowhere she could go, and had managed to get the baby out of the car seat and throw her out the window, hoping for the best. The baby survived without injury. The mother was killed instantly.

It took a couple of hours to get the last car out from under the earth mover. The driver, of course, was killed. What is left of the car is unbelievable. A mid-sized sedan was crushed to a height of about 8 inches. The whole scene on the two streets looked like the final scene from "Transformers". You can get an idea of how horrific an attack is by the reactions of seasoned emergency-response personnel. In today's attack everyone interviewed, including people who have been in several attacks, were horrified.

The terrorist was an Israeli Arab (with Israeli citizenship) from east Jerusalem, the same neighborhood as the man who attacked the yeshiva in March. This terrorist is 30 years old, married and with two children. He had a good job and was obviously a skilled, experienced operator of heavy machinery. He had a police record, including two years in jail for rape. It is still unknown whether he operated alone or was a member of some group. Three different groups have claimed responsibility. When his mother was told of what her son had done, she rejoiced and raised her arms, praising him. His brother in law and other family members were horrified. The leader of Hamas praised the action. The prime minister of Palestine did not condemn the attack, but said it was understandable.

The young off-duty soldier, 20 years old, turns out to be the brother-in-law of the soldier who finally killed the terrorist in the Yeshiva attack last March. The soldier said that his brother-in-law's example helped him risk death by climbing into the cab to stop this new terrorist.

The official toll so far: 4 dead (including the terrorist) and 74 wounded, including two babies, small children and old people. The statistics don't reflect what the impact will be on the families of all of those involved, especially the children.

Ann

Two years and four days ago, Hisballa forces crossed the Israeli border with Lebanon and attacked Israeli soldiers on patrol. A month before that there had been another attack by the Hisballah which resulted in a very heated battle for a couple of days with Israeli forces (including my son). In the second attack in July 2006 they attacked two hummers with RPGs and other anti-tank missiles. There was almost nothing left of the vehicles. The Hisballah grabbed 3 of the soldiers and took off for the border, which was about 50 yards away. Other Israeli soldiers nearby quickly chased after them. In the chase, the Hisballah dropped the body of one soldier who was dead, but made off with two other soldiers. Several Israeli soldiers were killed in the next couple of hours in an attempt to chase and recover the soldiers. This opened the war in Lebanon which lasted just over 5 weeks, led to the death of hundreds of Israelis and Lebanese, and caused so much damage to both sides.

Since that day over two years ago, the families of these two soldiers have had absolutely no contact with their loved ones. The Red Cross was not allowed any contact either. The families did not know if their sons/husbands/brothers were alive, wounded or dead. The Hisballa's policy is to give no information whatsoever because it causes even more pain to the enemy, and it strengthens their own bargaining position. We learned this with the three soldiers who were kidnapped from Israeli territory in the year 2000. Their families were led to believe for 3-1/2 years that their sons were alive. In the end they got back bodies. That is what happened today as well. Truthfully, I expected it. I don't see how anyone could have survived the attack on that vehicle. What has turned my stomach (even more than the price paid) was the behaviour of the Hisballah negotiator. He came out and very arrogantly made a statement to the press: "For over two years we have said we will provide no information to the enemy, and we have kept our word. We have made them suffer. We have made them beg. We have brought them to their knees. Today we have made them give us what we want, so today we will give them the information they are so hungry for. Here it is!" And with a huge smile on his face, and his chest all puffed out, he signalled to his henchmen who very proudly brought out a coffin and displayed it at several different angles, as if it were a prize on a game show. Then they brought out the second coffin as well. And then in a voice ringing with pride and success he sneered, "And this is how their precious sons have been the whole two years! See how little we had to do to get out heroes back!" If this man had lived in a previous century, I think he would have been the first to cut off the heads of his captives and hang them on the city wall. (If you remember your bible, this was the fate of King Saul and his son Jonathon, not too far from here.) I can't adequately describe how chilling the actions and attitude of this man were, because he truly did radiate pure evil. It is scary, because there is no way to reason with someone like this. He is educated, intelligent and dedicated to slaughtering an entire people.

This is what I wrote over two years ago:

As I said, it has been a busy week. Thursday morning I took Allen to Nazareth so that he could buy a Christmas present for Katia. So much has changed in our lives since he went with me to Nazareth 11 months ago! Again, it was a pretty day and a pretty drive. We parked at the Greek Orthodox Patriarch's parking lot, which is where I usually park, and then walked down through the suq (bazaar) to Nisar's, our favorite souvenir store. Last year at this time we were almost the only ones there. This year it was crowded with tourists, and he even had lots of assistants to help. It was good to see. It was also fun to get a glass of fresh date juice - there's nothing better on a hot day. When the crowd finally left Allen chose gifts for Katia and her family, then we went across the street to a store which sells Armenian pottery ware and tiles. Armenian craftsmen were brought over centuries ago to make the tiles which cover the Dome of the Rock, and there has been an Armenian community here ever since. The Armenian quarter is in the southwest part of the Old City. He found gifts for his missionary trainier, who just got married, and for some other friends. As we looked across the street we saw two Russian priests. One of the priests, who looked like he could hold his own with any Mauri rugby player, had a huge golden crucifix about 5-6 inches high hanging from his neck which reflected the sunlight almost like a mirror. He disappeared before I could get my camera out, but I did get a picture of his less brawny companion, whose own crucifix was much less showy.

I treated myself to a glass of freshly-squeezed pomegranate juice, then we headed back into the suq to go to the car. Along the way we decided to do some of our last-minute shopping for the youth conference. We went to Yaron's favorite spice shop and bought gummy sharks for our lesson on the miracle of the loaves and fishes. (There weren't any "fish", and gummy "fried eggs" just didn't give the same message.) From there we went across the alley and bought a small squishy ball for one of the games. Further on Allen found a good deal on home-made olive oil, which they poured out of a metal jerry-can into a plastic mineral-water bottle. We use a lot of olive oil at our house! We also got two flats of eggs, which were cheaper there than we can find where we live. We also bought what must be the last two styraphone water coolers in the country. They used to be everywhere, and since they are so cheap they are great for trips, picnics, etc. Ours didn't return from a beach trip last summer, and suddenly this summer no one has them for sell! We've checked everywhere! Anyway, one of the shopkeepers in the suq thought he might have one left in the storeroom. He actually had two, so I bought them both. They came in very handy for the youth conference.

When we got back to the car we called Sonia, one of our members who lives nearby. She has been sick, and we wanted to give her a blessing. She is the type of lady who doesn't ask for help and hates to take people out of their way, but when I told her we were ten minutes aways she was very happy to see us. Sonia has known my kids all their lives, and she first met Allen when he was just a few days old and we went to meet her in the immigrant absorption center just after she had arrived from Uruguay. We casually mentioned that we were in Nazareth to buy a gift for Allen's fiancee. Her mouth fell open, then "Did I hear irght?", followed by a huge smile and even bigger hug. She was so cute. She just beamed as she said, "Now I feel better! Now I have a good reason to be happy!" Allen showed her pictures of Katia, and we talked about her granddaughter's Russian boyfriend Vitali, and had a really good visit. Finally, because she does tire easily, Allen gave her a beautiful, inspired blessing which left us all in tears, and then we took our leave.

On the way home we stopped in Cana (miracle of the water into wine) to buy some of the large, flat Druze-style bread covered with labaneh (a tart, white cheese made from goat's milk) and sprinkled with zatar (the biblical hyssop). In my opinioin, there is nothing in the world which tastes as good, not even chocolate!

Eliana also got home that evening. She got a particularly troublesome group last week, and had slept only a few hours all week. She was in bed asleep already by around 7:30, slept until nearly noon the next day, got up for a few hours and then went back to bed again. For once she didn't go to work in the restaurant, and even turned down offers to go out with friends! She slept Saturday until nearly 2 in the afternoon, and had a wondrful meal ready for us when we got home from church.

Friday was also a busy day. I spent a ot of the morning making applesauce cookies (your mom's recipe, Leone) to take to our neightbors for Rosh HaShana (the Jewish New Year), finishing up the activities and schedules so that Allen could translate, and generally wondering all day what I had forgotten to do. I hadn't actually forgotten anything, but since I usually forget I just assumed I would, And yes, I do make lists, but then I forget to put something on the lists! I also did a lot of laundry, which is taking a bit longer since our washer is broken this week. Hopefully we can get the repairman out enxt week! Our neighbors are really good about helping, but I don't want to be using their machine every day!

That afternoon I was kidnapped for an hour by a dear friend. We went over to her house and had lemongrass tea while we nibbled on dates and had a good visit. The break was nice!

Saturday at church we were again very short on numbers (8 of us for sacrament, 6 for classes), but it was a good meeting. Allen talked about the importance of temples. He told of how just a month ago he and Katia went to the site where the Kiev temple is being built. It looks like a construction site, and the temple itself is just a big concrete building at this point, so if you didn't know what it was you wouldn't understand why on earth a young couple would want to have their picture taken there. He said the bulders who offered to take their picture kept trying to pose them in front of a very attractive building nearby and couldn't understand why Katia and Allen wanted their picture in front of an ugly, unfinished building. But, as Allen told us, they were so happy there. There was a feeling there at the temple site that wasn't felt anywhere else. It was a beautiful talk. Michael talked about the sacrifices that went into building the Kirtland and Nauvoo temples, and the imortance of remembering this sacrifice when we attend the temple ourselves.

After church we sat down altogether to have a last meeting before the conference, and to check that everything was ready. As always our meeting turned into a wonderful visit. When we got home Eliana had woken up and had a wonderful lunch ready for us. Allen cooked dinner, and I enjoyed the combined results of their labors!

The next morning was school as usual. I got Eliana out early to catch a ride to the bus stop to go back to base. Yaron and his class had an all-day hike through the Hatsbani River with his class, so he came home a very wet but happy person! It was a kind of weird day anyway. We only had school on Sunday, then had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off for Rosh HaShana. You can imagine how hyper the kids were! I planned accordingly for my 7th graders, and had a pleasant surprise the second hour. The school had hired someone to come in and do activities with the class which taught about Rosh HaShana and the other holidays coming up. I only had to supervise, so it was a nice morning. At the big break all the teachers met in the faculty room and we had a New Year's toast together. At the same time, one of the soldiers who supervises our airforce cadet program received his rank of first sergeant, so he got his new stripes and we had a celebration for him as well.

I took off after that and went home to get ready for the conference. I even managed to get in a nap, which I desperately needed. (Eliana and I had stayed up way too late Saturday night talking!) So by the time Yaron got home and showered and changed, and we packed what seemed like half the house into the back of the car, I felt a little better equipped for the next few days. We left later than planned, but at least I wasn't totally out of it!

The Youth Conference, the first one that I know of in the Israel District in the 27 years I've been here, went really, really well. Beforehand I had written to as many parents as I could and asked for information about their children, funny stories, etc. While I was reading most of their replies I got the idea that most of these descriptions were of kids who were too perfect - athletic, good in school, helpful, musically-talented - you get the picture. I must confess that I was quite prepared to take this information with a grain of salt. What I wasn't prepared for was that everything the parents had written was true! I think we were incredibly lucky in having such a good group of kids. Truthfully, they were cooperative, non-complaining, helpful, talented and well-behaved. They had a fun sense of humor, and loved to play games. When we ran out of games to play, they had plenty of their own. At the end of the conference when Brother Thomas sat them down and asked what they would like to do at the next activity, they suggested a games night! Now does this sound like the generation of youth who grew up with tv, computers and video games? The youth seemed to have a really good rapport with their adult leaders, and when we played we did it as a group - adults and youth together. There was a lot of good-natured teasing back and forth, and the youth weren't afraid to be just as competitive with the adults as they were with each other. Considering that this group consisted of youth from Palestine, Israel, Ecuador, the Ukraine and the US, the unity they developed was impressive. There were 15 youth and ten adults.

The first evening we had dinner together, then an hour of activities designed to help the kids get to know each other. Eliana showed up in her uniform, straight from her base. She helped with the games, and made a big impression on one and all. After the official activities we had told them they could watch movies, talk, do whatever they want - they chose to play more games! We also took a list of those who wanted to be woken up for the sunrise, and about 11:30 people started heading off to bed. I "slept" out on the back porch with most of the girls. We had the Sea of Galilee in front of us, and the stars above. What could be better? As was to be expected, they talked long into the night. A comment I heard a lot was "I can't believe I'm here!"

The sunrise next morning was pretty, but the colors weren't as intense as they can be due to the light rain we had on Friday morning which washed the dust out of the air. So instead of the brilliant reds, we had pretty oranges and yellows. It was still pretty, and it was fun to be there in the early morning, listening to the birds and watching the changing colors. We served a typical Israeli breakfast (cucumbers, tomatoes, a variety of white cheeses, boiled eggs and hot pita with zatar), and there were no leftovers! We had set up all the tables on the back porch, so all of our meals were outside overlooking the lake. We even manged to clean up and leave on time.

We drove to the Mt. of Beatitudes, where we sang a hymn, had a prayer and then talked about Matthew 5-7. After everyone had a chance to wander around on their own for a bit, we took a group picture, then headed on down the hill for our walk. On the way down we stopped and learned "Wiseman/Foolish Man" in Hebrew, sang some primary songs, then walked down to the olive gorve. We found a big tree to sit under and read the scriptural accounts about John's death, Christ's desire to be alone, then teaching the multitudes before feeding them. We talked about his compassion, which was shown by taking care of not only their spiritual but their physical needs, and by his willingness to stay and teach them even though he wanted time to himself. We then talked about the miracle of the feeding, and had lunch (tuna in pita bread, with apples and gummy sharks for dessert). After that we went across the street to the churtch at Tabgha, where they were fascinated by the ornamental carp in the pool in the courtyard. We also walked next door to St. Peter's primacy, where we read about the calling of the disciples. Something that also impressed me throughout the three days was how familiar most of the kids were with their scriptures.

From there we went to Ginnosar where we boarded the boat. Each of the boats is named after a disciple. Ours, appropriately, was "Simon". I think all of the youth, boys and girls, also enjoyed watching the group before us get off the boat. They were a group of 100 young, very tanned and fit, teenagers from Norway! Of course we read the story of the walking on water and calming the seas, and sang "Master, the tempest is raging", but we decided not to have the tesitmony meeting. They were having too much fun looking out over the sides, and being up in the prow.

After the boat ride we went back to the north shore where a waterfall feeds into the lake. They went swimming, skipped stones, and visited the waterfall, but there were "weird guys wearing speedos" so they came back to the lake. We brought our ice cream maker, so while people were taking turns churning they played another game. Each person took a turn telling something they had never done. If someone in the group HAD done it, however, they had to put down one of their fingers. The first person with all ten fingers down had to tell something embarrassing about themselves. One of the girls said that she had never been romantically kissed. When she said this, another girl put her finger down. When her older brother saw this, he let out a howl of rage, demanded to know who had kissed her and then poured ice water down her back! Ah, big brothers.

That evening the kids got a jitterbug demonstration from Brother Thomas, then we had a short explanation about Rosh HaShana and Eid el-Fitir (the end of Ramadan), before having a good dinner. Again, most everyone played games until early in the morning.

The sunrise next morning was spectacular. Of course, this was the morning when nearly all the youth were still asleep! But most of the adults were awake, and I got some beautiful pictures. After breakfast Brother Thomas got everyone together for a room inspection and then a feedback session (very positive), then we had prayer. Also, one of the leaders read us the letter that the youth had written for all of us (the adults), which was very touching. Some of the youth helped to clean the building, take out trash, etc. Then we played one last game before everyone packed up for home.

When we were planning this we had three aims: that the youth get to know each other better, that they have a spiritual experience, and that they have fun. I think the conference accomplished all three. We had great kids to work with, I think the adults involved worked well together, and we had a lot of support from the parents and the district leadership. And I am more grateful than ever for having this beautiful building which made all of this possible!

We have district conference in Jerusalem in three weeks, so it will be fun to see everyone again.

Ann

Oct. 14, 2008

Well, it has been a different week than I normally have. I'm not used to being home nearly every day!

I had the delayed surgery last week, and was released home just hours before Yom Kippur began. This time my hospital roommates were mostly Druze women. I have a lot of respect for the Druze community, and they are some of the nicest people I have ever met, but it also meant that the room was always full of visitors. Because the hospitals here in the north serve a large geographical area, and travel is difficult, visiting hours are basically from daylight to 9 pm. And because the Druze usually have large, close families, when someone is in the hospital most of the village comes to pay respects. And since I had two Druze roommates from two different villages, there were a lot of people there! But they were very nice, and always included me in the hospitality. One of the families brought some of the largest grapes I have ever seen - almost the size of a golf ball! They were some of the sweetest, juiciest grapes I have ever eaten.

Yom Kippur was very quiet. I basically rested most of the day, or read. Eliana went to the afternoon service in the village synagogue as she normally does. When she came home she told me that they had had a special prayer for me, and nearly everyone in the village was there to pray for me! I was very moved.

Just minutes before Yom Kippur ended we heard a roar, and the sky was full of fighter planes and helicopters. This is what was written in the Jerusalem Post:

"Two jets and an attack helicopter were scrambled to the border one hour before the fast ended after an unidentified aircraft was spotted flying very close to the border. The aircraft, together with ground forces, conducted searches on the ground and shortly later returned to base after the plane turned around and flew back north into Lebanon.

"The IDF was on a general high level of alert throughout the country throughout the holiday and particularly in the North, where intelligence officials have said it is possible that Hizbullah will carry out a cross-border attack during the holiday season to avenge the assassination of arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh earlier this year."

It was kind of disturbing since it was the 35th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. And the article said two jets and one helicopter, but there were more.

Also the same evening there were disturbances in the city of Acco, which is unusual. Unfortunately, in the past couple of years it has become a kind of game for some of the Arab guys (late teens, early 20's) to drive around Jewish towns on Yom Kippur and deliberately make noise, etc., especially near a synagogue. Last year in Tabor a little Jewish girl was killed when she was hit by an ATV which was speeding through the street. This year a man in his 40's, along with his 20-year-old son, decided to drive through a Jewish neighborhood of Acco with his car stereo playing as loud as it could. When some of the Jewish residents started shouting at him to leave, he turned around and drove down the street yet again and again. At this point some of the the Jewish residents started throwing rocks at him, and the police had to be called in. Somewhere in all of this rumors were started in the neighborhoods of the Old City, which are Arab, that the Jews of the city were launching a fullscale attack on all the Arab neighborhoods. Men started streaming out of the Old City, rampaging down the main street of Acco and destroying the windows of stores and all the vehicles parked there. Meanwhile the police had called in reinforcements and were trying, not very successfully, to keep things from getting worse. The next day was Friday, which is the Moslem holy day, so things heated up again. Also, Arab families living in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods were attacked, and two of them had their homes completely torched. Luckily no one was hurt.

I don't know how many homes, businesses and vehicles were damaged or destroyed, but the damage is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dozens of people were arrested and some are still in jail, including the driver and others who escalated the violence. The annual Acco Festival, which is a series of outdoor street plays and entertainment staged in the streets of the Old City every Sukkot, has been cancelled, which means a huge loss of income to the store-owners, both Arab and Jewish.

What is really scary, though, is how quickly this all escalated, and how deep the hatred and distrust goes on both sides. Acco is always held up as THE example of a city where there is peaceful co-existence between Arabs and Jews. This weekend it became very clear that this harmony is only on the and is a superficial covering of something much uglier underneath, unfortunately. The police still have the city under a semi-lockdown; the fear now is that the violence will spread to other cities. The whole thing was so needless. The driver shouldn't have gone there looking to make trouble, but there wouldn't have been riots if other people hadn't reacted violently as well. It was like everyone was just looking for a reason to let themselves lose control and "settle" a few accounts. This week in Acco doesn't provide a lot of hope for the future.

Hopefully next week will be better!

Ann

In the West Bank there has been a lot of violence on both sides. The army has deterred several suicide attacks, and there have been a few attempted attacks on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Many of the settlers there feel that the army didn't respond adequately, so they are trying to take the law into their own hands. Unfortunately, there have been several incidents where Palestinian farmers were beaten up by gangs of young settlers. Another favorite tactic is to rip up the olive trees which are such an essential part of Palestinian agriculture. In addition, there is a very real fear among Jewish settlers that the government will try to evacuate them from their homes, like happened in the Gaza Strip 3 years ago. This fear is being fanned by the soon-to-be changes in the Israeli and US governments, and the push to get a peace treaty signed before Bush leaves office. Israeli intelligence has reason to believe that the settlers are in the process of arming themselves.

Because of several factors, especially the controversial wall, it has been getting harder for suicide bombers to get into Israel, so we are getting back to what life was like in the 90's - knife attacks done by individuals. About 3 weeks ago a man armed with several knives was on his way to a school in Gilo, a suburb of Jerusalem. As he got close to the school a police car happened to be driving by. One of the policemen thought he looked suspicious, so he got out of the car and asked the man to stop. The man stabbed him, then ran off. The policeman was wounded, but still shot at the man. While he was running away, the terrorist saw an old man (83 years old) taking a walk, so ran up and stabbed in the back, killing him. Soon after that the policeman got close enough and one of his shots killed the terrorist.

Gaza continues to be a pressure cooker. Since June we have had an agreement with Hamas that Israel will not conduct military raids within Gaza as long as no rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel. The agreement is for six months and expires December 18. On the very day the agreement went into effect several rockets were fired, as there were for the rest of the week, but Israel did nothing. Since June over 40 rockets have been fired into Israeli territory from Gaza. Israel has not responded, especially since they are still negotiating with Hamas for the release of Gilad Shalit, a young soldier who was kidnapped 2-1/2 years ago and is being held in Gaza (we think). Part of the price for his freedom is the release of nearly a thousand Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, most of whom have been actively involved in terrorist attacks (known in Israel as prisoners "with blood on their hands"). The list had been whittled down to about 200, but when Israel release Samir Khumtar as part of the agreement to get back the bodies of two soldiers a few months ago, Hamas raised the price again. After all, it worked for Hisballah.

Another problem we have is that dozens of tunnels are being built in Gaza all the time. Some go under the border to Egypt, and others into Israel. On the Egyptian side the tunnels are used for everything from bringing in weapons, ammunition, cash and key personnel to smuggling in food and electrical appliances. They've even been used to smuggle in most of the animals - including a lion - which are now in the Gaza zoo! Israel has constantly complained that Egypt is not doing enough to stop the tunnels. The ones on our side get found pretty quickly, most before they are finished. Some of the tunnels are just dirt, but others are quite sophisticated. One of the more sophisticated tunnels was recently discovered. It was built of concrete, was large enough for several people to stand side-by-side, and came complete with electricity. It started in a house (of course, civilians are never involved!) about 300 yards from the border with Israel. The intelligence reports stated that it was intended be used for kidnapping Israeli soldiers AND CIVILIANS from inside Israel and then bringing them back into Gaza to use as hostages. Israel sent in a commando team to destroy it it the early hours of Wednesday morning, our time. I think it was planned for that day and time because it would have been the evening of Election day in the US, and most of the world's press was focused on Chicago and not on Gaza. (It was only even mentioned in the last five minutes on the Israeli news that night. I had heard about it on the 6 am news in the morning.) When the commandos went in they were attacked by Hamas-con tolled militants, and a firefight ensued. Some Israeli soldiers were wounded, and some militants killed. The soldiers fought their way out and got back to our side of the border. Soon after that the air force went in and bombed the tunnel entrance, destroying it and killing six of the militants. The AF says that their footage shows the militants with rocket launchers in their hands at the time. Within minutes rockets started being fired into Israel. In the first hour (about 6:15-7:15 am) 20 rockets landed in Israel, most of them in populated areas. By 5 pm that afternoon 45 rockets had landed, including three in the large port city of Ashkelon. One of those landed in an elementary school. Hamas kept threatening making news announcements that Israel had violated the agreement, while at the same time sending more rockets over! They have threatened that if there are any more incursions, the deal is off. They don't see the building of a tunnel to kidnap Israelis as a violation, however. And by 7 am today (Friday), there were already two more rockets fired.

So, while there are changes coming in some parts of the world, not much has changed here.

Have a good weekend,

Ann

While focus in the US has been on Thanksgiving (and rightly so), I've been more or less glued to the news coming out of India since Wednesday night. I don't think the world will ever be able to comprehend the extent of the evil done there during the past few days. As one expert put it, a group of highly skilled, highly trained, and highly motivated young men filled with hatred went on a killing spree.

The personal tragedies will never be fully known, except to those who experienced them, of course. Globally, this is yet another chilling reminder of the very real threat that the world is facing, regardless of who you are or where you happen to be. People determined to perpetuate evil will always find a way, and an excuse.

Terrorist attacks in India are not new, unfortunately. My worry has been how this will affect the situation in Pakistan, which in turn will affect Afghanistan, and so on -like a row of dominoes. Pakistani forces have just finished a two-week campaign intended to damage the Taliban forces in the northwest of Pakistan. The country has a new government and is very unstable anyway. If Pakistan collapses, the entire region will go up in flames. Pakistan and India have been at war since both countries were created in 1948. The fact that most of the terrorists who committed the attacks in Mombai this week are of Pakistani origin will pour fuel on the flames of an already tense situation. The attacks are also more proof of the extent and organization of the terrorist organizations who are operating in that area.

Something that Michael noticed was that the Indian forces are using very old, anitquated equipment. Many of the weapons they are using are from the 1950's, and were retired from use in most western countries by the early 1970s. Even the snipers in the elite commando units were using rifles that haven't been used, even in training, by most armies in decades.

On a more personal note, the Nariman House which was in the news was the Mombai chapter of Chabad. Chabad-Lubavitchers are a stream of orthodox Jewry who are known for their charitable works and outreach programs. Ultimately they would like all Jews to return to the fold, as it were, but the function of a "Chabad House" is to provide a home for any Jew anywhere in the world. There are literally thousands of Chabad centers around the world. For example, while on his mission Allen and his companion attended Passover dinner at the Chabad House in the city in Russia where he lived at the time. The houses are usually staffed by a married couple (a rabbi and his wife) and have an open-door policy. If you are Jewish, no matter how religious you are or aren't, you know that you can go there, get a free meal, just sit and feel at home, get help with problems, find refuge, participate in prayers if you choose to do so - whatever you need physically or spiritually. After doing their army service, many Israelis travel around the world for several months (a way to clean out their heads). Their parents know that they can send packages or leave messages at the Chabad houses along their routes of travel, and their children will receive them when they get there. If Israelis get arrested, the Chabad people are often the ones who are the middlemen, and who provide legal help.

This particular Chabad house in Mombai was very well known to the thousands of Israeli backpackers in India. The rabbi was only 30, and his wife was 28. In addition to being warm, friendly people, the rabbi also ran a rehab facility to help Israelis who had become addicted to drugs during their stay in India. One of the Israeli stations yesterday rebroadcast a documentary made two years ago about this couple and the work they were doing. They were such wonderful people - helpful, cheerful and non-judgemental. What was chilling for me was to see in the background the woman who saved their son this week. The same station also interviewed returning Israelis, who were shocked. One of them had stayed with this family just the day before the attack. He said that everyone knew they had a big brother and sister there, and could be sure of a warm place to sleep and a good meal there.

That this particular place was included among the targets also shows the hatred towards Israel and Jews. Unlike the other targets, this was an apartment house in a residential neighborhood which didn't attract American or British tourists, and certainly not rich, high-profile targets. I find it particularly sad that the rabbinit met her death at such an early age in India, of all places. She grew up in the city of Afula, which isn't too far from me. Afula is very close to the border of the Palestinian territories, and has long been the target of terrorist attacks. In the late 80s and early 90s in particular, when she would have been in elementary school, Afula suffered a series of bus bombings, with dozens of civilians killed. That she grew up in a city which was the target of terrorist attacks, and went to India to offer selfless service to others only to be killed herself by terrorists, is tragic. But at the same time it is a symbol of hope. Even though she was surrounded by violence and suffering her entire life, she herself could find joy and a love for mankind, which manifested itself in the service and love she showed to others. It is a lesson we should all take to heart.

Ann

BYU Jerusalem Center has been put on lockdown by BYU Security.

This afternoon after church we were over at the Madsens watching a DVD of a high school band competition (their daughter is the band director/teacher) and at the end the TV automatically came on . The fact that there was a news broadcast meant that there was something wrong. Israel doesn't normally broadcast news on the sabbath.

What we learned is that over 80 Israeli air force planes and helicopters bombed more than 150 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip today, resulting in a lot of damage and several deaths. The air force was doing pinpoint bombings, but the problem is that Gaza is densely populated, and the Hamas always operate out of civilian areas. Palestinian sources are claiming over 150 deaths so far.

In retaliation, they have been firing rockets into Israel. At least two rockets have landed in apartments in different cities, and one person at least is dead on our side. Everyone in the towns, cities and villages in Southern Israel within 20 miles of the Gaza border are being asked to go into protected spaces. This could be a public bombshelter, or in newer buildings-the bombshelter inside their house (like we have). The idea is to be able to get inside the protected space within 5 seconds if you live within 2 miles of the border (these people have actually been asked to get into a bomb shelter and stay there), 10 seconds within 6 miles, and 20 seconds of the time they hear the siren within 12 miles. The problem is that most buildings in this area are older, so they have thin walls and roofs, and the public bomb shelters are few and far between. It is also an area that has a large population of older people and immigrants. There really isn't anywhere for them to go.

Just to give a sense of distances: Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are only about 60 miles from Gaza. The city of Ashkelon is 7 miles. Israel's largest port city - Ashdod - is about 15. Beersheva is about 17. The kibbutz where I used to live is within range. Tel Aviv, our largest city, is 11 miles from the Palestinian Authority (West Bank). In other words, nearly half of the country is within range of rockets fired from Gaza in the South. Nearly half the country is within rocket range from rockets fired in Lebanon or Syria in the north.

All of the Israeli stations are broadcasting instructions about what to do if you hear a siren. If your home isn't protected, they recommend going into the stairwell and trying to go down at least one story. If you can't get to the stairwell in time, lie down on the floor on the side facing away from Gaza. If you're in your car, stop immediately and look for cover.

In the south, all public gatherings, Hannuka activities, plays, etc. have been cancelled. The mayor of Ashkelon has asked that no one go into the shopping centers, etc. (One of the rockets today fell into a mall.) School is still out for Hannukah vacation, so the kids are home. We just spoke to someone at the BYU Center in Jerusalem. BYU security has put them into lockdown until the situation becomes more clear.

The news is reporting that there have been demonstrations in several Arab countries. Israeli soldiers have been attacked at places in Israel and the West Bank. In Jerusalem there have been attempts in Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to block streets and major thoroughfares by pushing trash dumpsters (the big metal ones) across the way, including the area around the BYU Center. The police are on high alert since there will probably be rioting.

Why did Israel attack? Since the year 2000, the Hamas and other militia groups in Gaza have been firing rockets and mortars at civilian targets in Israel. They claimed it was because Israel was occupying Gaza. In the year 2005 our government decided to withdraw completely from Gaza, in return for cessation of rocket attacks. Instead of stopping the attacks, Hamas increased them. And because they were now several kilometers closer and could use the former Israeli settlements to fire from, the attacks were more deadly. In the past 3 years they have fired thousands of rockets and mortars into Israel. Even after a "Quiet" was agreed upon last year, we were still getting dozens of rockets a week. The "Quiet" expired a few days ago. On Christmas day alone over 80 rockets and 20 mortars landed in Southern Israel. Several landed on buildings and houses, including one that landed on a 12-year-old girl's bed. Luckily she had just stepped out of her room. We know that Hamas still has thousands of rockets left in their arsenal. They could easily fire 100 a day for several weeks. In fact, Israeli security forces are now estimating that we're going to get 200-300 rockets a day for the next little while.

Israel and Egypt have been trying to get the Hamas leadership to back off for a few weeks now. Israel even closed down the crossing points to try to make their point. At a pilot graduation ceremony this week, our chief of staff said very publicly that Israel had the means to retaliate, and that the plans were already drawn up. It was just a matter of when, if the situation didn't improve soon, but that Israel did not want to attack. Then two days ago our prime minister (who is generally an idiot so nobody takes him seriously) went onto the Arabic TV stations and broadcast a message to both the Palestinian Authority and to Hamas in Gaza that we wanted to quiet the situation down, but that we were ready to attack if necessary. Nothing helped. And remember that one of our soldiers, Gilad Shalit, has been held a prisoner by Hamas in Gaza for over three years now. He was kidnapped from Israeli territory three years ago. So we know that when we attack Gaza, his situation only gets worse. And never mind that two weeks ago in a goodwill gesture, Israel released over 250 Palestinian prisoners - many with a history of violence against Israel - without asking anything in return.

When watching the news out of Gaza, someone said that we were "killing the children as they came home from school." No mention was made of the fact that all of the rockets fired here are aimed at civilian targets, and that a great many of them, repeatedly, are aimed at schools and kindergarten. One of the reasons Israel hasn't attacked Gaza before is because there will be civilian casualties, something we try to avoid. No matter what happens, this situation is tragic and will only get worse.

The Defense Minister has said that this operation will go for several days minimum, or "as long as necessary". Since Hamas is vowing revenge, "days" could equal weeks. I predict that the Hamas will bring out some of their more sophisticated rockets and missiles, and try to hit more important targets within Israel. I predict a lot of rioting here and in neighboring countries. I predict that Northern Israel will get a few rockets from militia groups, including Hisballah, from Lebanon. (On Christmas day a farmer in Southern Lebanon discovered some katushya rockets and alerted the Lebanese army. The rockets were aimed at Israel and were on timers set to go off during the early evening.) I think Egypt is going to be the target of terrorist attacks since many Arab countries blame them for not stopping Israel. (Egypt is on the other side of Gaza, and they also have a lot of security problems on their border.) We are in for a tense time. I am hoping that Bryan doesn't get called up, and I worry about Eliana's friend(s) who are serving in the Gaza area.

I am reminded of the words to the Christmas song that Longfellow wrote during the American Civil War - "There is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of Peace on Earth, good will to men." And yet somehow there is still good in the world, and there can be peace in our hearts if we let it, no matter what the circumstances in which we find ourselves. I just wish there was more of it here.

Ann

I have searched online to find information about how Hamas deliberately places civilians around their centers of terrorist activities, but couldn't find any media reporting it. Instead, I only find articles about how many people Israeli forces have killed or wounded. Perhaps they deliberately withhold this information...

When Israel destroys terrorist targets, innocent people are killed, which is tragic. The news reports do not even mention this kind of horrible planning by the Hamas. There should be an outcry against the Hamas and their wickedness, but I can't read it anywhere in print or see it on TV. It is horrible that they even place children in danger.

Update from Ann, days 3-5:

Right now it's 3:30 in the afternoon on Wednesday, December 31. Since I wrote last the expected rocket attack by Hamas has begun in earnest.. It still hasn't been as intensive as we had expected, but it has been deadly nonetheless. What has happened, though, is that Hamas has been firing the longer-range missiles that we knew they had (the ones used so far were made in China). This means that not only can they fly farther, but their warhead is larger so the damage they cause is greater. And as Hisballah did in 2006, the Hamas people have packed the warhead with steel ball bearings (like large BBs) and bolts. The rocket itself can cause damage for about 100 yards from the point of impact, but the ball bearings are like shotgun pellets and cause even more damage. They shred everything in sight, and can penetrate concrete.

Monday night for the first time, Beersheva was hit by rockets. Beersheva is only 50 miles from Jerusalem, and 65 from Tel Aviv. The first rocket fell straight into a kindergartern. Luckily it was night, so it was empty. Very few children would have survived the blast, judging by the damage. Today rockets also fell near a hospital, and one fell directly into a school. When the Beersheva city engineer went to inspect the damage, he was shocked not only by the extent of the damage, but also by where the rocket had penetrated the building. It was right over his daughter's desk! Because New Year's is not a holiday in Israel, we are back in school now. Again, it was lucky that school in Beersheva (including the university) was cancelled. For those who do celebrate New Year's, the army has recommended staying at home.

The closest town (Kiryat Gat) to the kibbutz where I used to live has been hit several times, as well many other towns in the area. It is north of Beersheva, about 30 miles from either Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Yavneh has been hit, as has the city of Ashdod. Monday night the first rocket to hit Ashdod killed the mother of 4 young children. Mortar rounds near the border killed a soldier, a Druze officer from the city of Daliat HaCarmel, near Haifa. Of the four Israeli dead two were Jewish, one was Arab and one was Druze. I spoke to my kibbutz "mother" this morning. She is naturally quite stressed out. And this is a woman who was a baby during the Holocaust, and has survived 7 wars, and who is married to a man who was a paratrooper in the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War.

Some of the cities have found that their sirens aren't working correctly, so all of the television stations show a flashing red circle when there is a rocket incoming, along with the name of the area. It is a weird feeling to see it. In 2006 we got messages on our cell phones, as well as the sirens. As of 4 pm, 45 rockets have fallen into Israel today.

One thing that the army learned from Lebanon is not to let the journalists broadcast live from the scene. Two years ago the journalists could pretty well go where they wanted, and Hisballah used the broadcasts to aim their next volleys. Now the army is restricting access, and all news footage has to be okayed before being broadcast. No live broadcasts are allowed from areas which could provide information to the enemy.

I'm off to work, so more later.

Ann

Editor: I received the following image through a newsletter I receive from TraditionalValues.org which depicts the methods of warfare employed by both the terrorist organizations, and Israel, and other military organizations.

Click on the image to visit the article posted on the Traditional Values page.

The other day, when Gazan civilians stormed the border crossing point into Egypt, and Egyptian soldier was killed in the stampede. President Mubarak has had some very pithy comments about Hamas, and today he really let loose on the Hamas leadership.

The house of a major Hamas leader was killed today. It looks like there will be civilian casualties. The explosion was bigger than expected because he had explosives of some sort stored in his house. He had planned several terrorist attacks into Israel. He had also planned the attack on luxury hotels in Sinai a couple of years ago in which dozens of people were killed. Two of his sons were among the suicide bombers.

On the other hand, Israel is still allowing food and medical supplies into Gaza, and yesterday they brought 20 wounded children out of Gaza to receive medical care in Israeli hospitals.

Monday Eliana told me that they had been warned of attempts to kidnap female Israeli soldiers. Yesterday was the first attempt that we know of, and it was here in the north. An air force girl was walking from her base near Sfat (where I work) to the corner to catch a bus. Even though the base is like half a mile from the city, the road goes through a forest. It is one of the places I take my kids to play in the snow, when there is some. She noticed a car on the other side of the road, and thought she saw a kaffiyeh (the checkered Arab headdress) in the back. It made her nervous, and she became even more so when she saw someone walking behind her. She sped up, and so did he. She put a clip in her gun, then turned around a pointed at him. Luckily he took off. But it has made Eliana and many others nervous. Most of the air force girls don't carry weapons when they leave the base, and of all the branches of the military right now, Hamas is especially angry at the air force.

The vast majority of Israelis are in total support of this operation. When a 48-hour cease fire was suggested yesterday, we were all terrified that the government would agree to it. Cease-fires are used to regroup and to re-arm, not to calm down the situation. Our experiences in Lebanon with cease-fires were disastrous. And during our 6-month "cease fire" with Hamas (which expired two weeks ago), about 1,000 rockets were fired into Israel. The parents of the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, who is being held in Gaza, have publicly demanded that Israel not accept any cease-fire agreement which did not include Gilad's release. He has now had 3 birthdays in captivity. I can't even imagine the hell his parents must be going through right now, wondering what is happening to him and how he is being punished by his captors this week.

Yesterday 3 buses of children from the south arrived in the northern city of Kiryat Shmonah for a long weekend. K Sh. is the city which was heaviest hit by rockets two years ago, so the residents can relate to the trauma the kids from the south are experiencing. The community center has planned all sorts of activities for the children, and local families are hosting them. The city of Tiberius is also hosting 150 kids, most of them members of the junior sports leagues in the south. Among other things, they have organized a 3-day soccer tournament with some of the local junior teams. Many families here have also opened their homes to those who want to get away for a few days.

However, the north is also on high alert: the army, police and hospitals. We have a lot of planes flying overhead. People in the street are extremely tense. Most of us have family or friends, or sons and daughters of friends, who are on duty in the south. And here in the north we all have very fresh memories of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a rocket. Every time I go to work at the college I walk past trees that are stripped of half their bark, and still bear the pock marks from the ball bearings which were in the rocket which fell through the building in 2006.

"When I went to class Wednesday night things were also different. We have guards at the entrance to each building who check our bags, etc. before we can go in. (Schools and kindergartens also have guards.) I know nearly all of them, and usually stop to chat with them at some point during the week. On Wednesday not only were they checking each student's bag very carefully, they also very apologetically checked mine each time I went in and out. I figure, better safe than sorry. Many of the Arab students were wearing kafiyehs around their necks, like scarves. After class all my Jewish students had gone, and I was talking to the Arab and Beduoin students. Most of them told me that they were very nervous, and were trying to keep a low profile. They were sorry for the population of Gaza, but at the same time none of them wanted to live there.

"I had a different class this morning. Most of the students in this class are older, and I don't have an Arab students. I have two Druze students, whose husbands are in the army. We were also talking about the situation and how we all felt. One of my students, a beautiful girl, is the communications officer with a paratroop regiment and a career soldier. For the first time, she came in uniform today and looked like she hadn't slept in a week. She told me that she didn't know if she would be here next week, and asked if she could do her homework later! Another man is with the border police. He has been messing with the demonstrators in Kfar Kana and the surrounding area all week, and told me they were being transferred south very soon. He got a call from work about halfway through class and had to leave. He also looked exhausted. His biggest concern was leaving his wife, a school teacher, alone with their two young children and no one to help her. Another of the girls told me that her sister is now in Gaza. The sister is a combat medic with a unit which does search and rescue work, especially for things like earthquakes, bomb blasts, etc. Another of my students is about my age. Her son was recently sworn in and is now in one of the paratroop units. He is also now in Gaza. We had a really good lesson today, and I decided not to give homework this week. Everyone has too much to deal with.

"After work Wednesday night I stopped at a supermarket to pick up milk and bread. The poor girl at the checkout had to put my member card through three times, once because she had pressed the wrong key, and again because she had put the card in the wrong direction. She apologized profusely and was so upset I was trying to make her feel calmer. It looked to me like she had a huge headache, and was really tired. When I was talking to her she started to cry, and apologized again, before telling me that her boyfriend was in an infantry unit on the Gaza border and that's why her head wasn't on her job.

"There have been several large demonstrations at most of the country's universities and colleges. At the college south of Tiberius the police had to be called in. There continue to be demonstrations in Arab towns in the north, especially in Kfar Kana, Reina and Nazareth. The police are keeping things under control. I think the demonstrations haven't developed into the violence of the year 2000 because the agitators who came up from Gaza in 2000 are not available this week! Police arrested over 170 people last week for causing public disturbances; 90 are still in custody. Last night rocks were thrown and tires burned in Nazareth, and then later a bunch of 10-year-olds started burning things also. The police are treating the incident as copy-catting their older siblings rather than as a nationalist-motivated attack. Cars traveling in Wadi Arah continue to get stoned.

"Around the world there continue to be violent demonstrations against Israeli and Egyptian targets. The other day we saw a protest sign on the news we particularly liked. It was being held by an Arab man in traditional dress in a European city. On his sign was written: "Death to juice!" I'm assuming he meant Jews. I can't imagine anyone getting that upset by citrus products. On a more serious note, two Israeli tourists in a shopping center in Copenhagen were shot by someone speaking Arabic. Luckily their injuries were not life-threatening.

"And one last group of victims in this conflict are the farmers in the south. It is too dangerous for them to work in their fields so their vegetables are rotting in the ground. Last winter we had an unusual freeze and they lost most of their crops. This year it is the war. But even before the attack on Gaza, they and their workers were often the targets of sniper fire from Gaza.

"So, that has been our week so far."

Ann

We completely surround Gaza City and Jebalya, but have not actually tried to go in yet. Those will be the areas where we will have the fiercest resistance, and will have the most casualties.

Earlier this evening the main power line in the Gaza Strip was cut, either by their mortars or something of ours. No one knows who did it, but the entire Gaza Strip is now blacked out, except for a couple of home generators here and there.

Hamas has between 16,000 - 20,000 highly trained and armed fighters who know every corner and alley. They are also well-armed, and many were trained in Iran. In addition, some of the other Iranian-trained and armed militias are also waiting. Recent intelligence has said that both the Hamas and the other militia men have taken off their uniforms and are wearing civilian clothes, so it would be impossible to distinguish them from the civilians they are hiding among. And despite the 100 or more tunnels which we have destroyed, there are still numerous tunnels in operation, mostly on the Egyptian side. That means that they are still being resupplied with ammunition and weapons.

They still continue to launch rockets, but not in the numbers we thought they would. Today they have also gone back to using more mortars. The two Israeli soldiers killed were killed by mortars. Mortars are more accurate and can cause a lot of damage; their drawback is that they have a very short range.

Some of the reserve units being called up are comprised of soldiers who have actually fought several times in Gaza, and know the areas.

The northern border is still on high alert, and units are being sent there as well. There has been an increased police presence on the road.

Public opinion in Israel is still overwhelmingly in favor of this operation. The reaction is generally "It's about time!"

The defense minister repeated today that we aren't even close to reaching our objectives yet, and that this operation will go on for a long time. We're already getting a lot of international pressure, and the French president arrived here today. We're hoping the government will stand fast and not give in to overseas pressure so that the army can do what needs to be done and finish what they started.

We know that the terrorist attacks will never go away completely. The objective is to hamper the quantity and quality.

In the next couple of days I will try to write a brief history of Gaza, and scan a map of the area for those who are interested.

Ann

How did this happen? School in Gaza, like in southern Israel, has not been in session since the war began. Classes were not in session at the time the school was hit. The building should have been empty. However, a few hundred people had evidently taken refuge inside the school, and that is why there were so many civilian casualties.

The reason the school was targeted is that it was being used by Hamas to fire mortars at Israeli troops. Over the period of two hours, several rounds were fired. The IDF has the battle footage to prove this. The decision to fire on the school building (not realizing that it was full of refugees) was taken in order to eliminate the source of mortar fire which was endangering Israeli soldiers. And for at least two months before the war started, Israel officially complained to Hamas about the use of this particular school to fire rockets from.

Hamas has also continuously used schools in Gaza to store munitions in, and to fire rockets from. Below is a link to a short clip taken in 2007.

The resolution does not specify who is going to supervise the ceasefire, when it will go into effect or how long it will last. It does not specify who is going to ensure that the ceasefire isn't used to re-arm the "militant combatants" inside of Gaza.

Israel has repeatedly said it will be happy to quit the war in Gaza as soon as viable arrangements are made to ensure that (1) the smuggling tunnels are closed, (2) the crossing points are regulated to prevent smuggling (of people, arms, drugs, money, humans, etc.), and (3) Hamas agrees to stop the launching of rockets at Israel. The Israeli public overwhelmingly insists that any agreement also include the return of our kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, but I am not so sure that when push comes to shove the government will insist on this, unfortunately. I haven't heard his name mentioned recently.

So far Hamas has rejected each and every suggestion of coming to some sort of agreement. They have refused to attend a conference between Arab heads of states to try and work out a ceasefire agreement. They have vowed never to surrender, and to continue attacking the "Zionist Enemy" whenever, wherever and however possible until Israel no longer exists. It should be noted that the "when / where / how" includes Israeli, Jewish and "western" targets all over the world. "Western" refers to anything European, American and non-Moslem.

The question before Israel now is whether to back off a bit or to intensify the fighting over the weekend in order to achieve as much as possible before the UN sits again on Monday. It has been our experience that with the exception of the decision back in 1947 to create a Jewish State, not a single UN resolution has been in Israel's favor over the past 60 years. And Israel was severely condemned two years ago for responding to the Hisballah attack upon us. Israel has made several appeals to the UN in the past 8 years to condemn the rocket fire on civilian targets in Israel. Since each and every appeal has been rejected by the UN, we are not holding out much hope that this time will be any different.

And after all the cries to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza, Israel decided this week to suspend fighting each day from 1 pm to 4 pm so that the humanitarian supplies could be brought in. Yesterday, only the second day of the humanitarian ceasefire, the UN declared that it would no longer bring in any more humanitarian supplies. Each convoy is coordinated with the Israeli army, but Israel does not actually bring the supplies into the Gaza Strip itself, or accompany the vehicles. This is up to the UN and the Palestinians. Yesterday the driver of one of the trucks was killed by sniper fire. The brother (friend?) of the driver claims that the driver was killed by an Israeli soldier. The IDF is investigating, but it is highly unlikely that one of our soldiers would have done this. The snipers especially are very carefully screened so that you don't get someone who would let personal feelings get in the way of his assignment.

In the north things have been quiet since the three rockets were fired yesterday, but the army and emergency services remain on high alert and all public bomb shelters have been opened.

Ann

The most recent events are probably the most significant. Israel has a female tennis player named Shahar Perets who is usually ranked in the top 20 in the world. Yesterday the street outside the hotel where she is staying was filled with angry demonstrators carrying some vicious signs, and shouting abuse at her. As she said in a press conference, she is a tennis player, not a politician.

In addition, an Israeli basketball team playing in Turkey was mobbed at the beginning of the game. Swarms of people (including a lot of women) wearing kaffiyehs ran onto the court shouting "intifada, intifada". Security people rushed the Israeli team into their dressing room and barricaded all access points. The team was holed up in there for over an hour and a half while the police tried to subdue the crowds both inside and outside the sports arena. The level of hatred was scary, especially since Turkey has been our ally for decades. It is one of the favorite destination points for Israeli tourists, and during a horrific earthquake in Turkey ten years ago Israel not only sent rescue teams, but also tons of food, clothing, bedding and supplies donated by the Israeli public.

Most international teams scheduled to play in Israel have canceled. The only exception was the Tiberius marathon yesterday.

Most teams in Israel this week have decided to cancel all events until further notice. For many of them, some of their players are now in the army. For others, their homes and training facilities are all in areas being hit by rockets. And early on in the war it became very clear that in the soccer teams which had both Arab and Jewish players that there were going to be problems. One of the Arab teams staged a huge protest during the game itself at a home game. Since this was the same soccer field in which a riot broke out two years ago and the Jewish fans were locked into the press room for over 3 hours, the team they were to play at the weekend (Kiryat Shmonah) declared that they would not play against Saknin, and if the the bus tried to enter KS it would be stopped. An Arab playing on an Israeli team, and two Jewish players playing for an Arab team, requested a temporary leave of absence, as they felt it would be dangerous for them to attend training in a hostile area.

One of the first civilian casualties of this war was the wife of one of the trainers. She and her sister were coming home from the gym when a rocket fell next to their car.

And one of the top competitors in Israel's newest season of the TV reality show "Survivor" was called up on the first day of the war. He is an officer in an infantry unit.

On the positive side, junior sports leagues in the Tiberius area have been hosting their counterparts from the south. A sports tournament has also been set up.

In ancient times it used to be traditional for any fighting to be temporarily halted during the Olympics. Would that it were so today.

Ann

It's now almost 11:30 at night and we just heard the roar of several planes flying overhead, going north. This is very unusual, and not a good sign.

Three rockets from southern Lebanon were fired into the western Galilee on Thursday. Yesterday another bank of katushyas was found in southern Lebanon, not far from Mt. Hermon, which means straight north from Kiryat Shmonah. There has been an increase of rhetoric on the airways by leaders of Hisballah. They deny the rockets are theirs (they probably do belong to splinter Palestinian groups), but are talking big about how Israel is in their sights, and they will defend themselves against all attacks by the Zionists. I don't think anyone wants to be dragged into a new front, but all it takes is one incident.

I was moved beyond words tonight by the actions of a grieving father. I really wanted to share this story with you, and pray that we all become a little more like this man.

Early this week three Israeli soldiers were killed and more than 20 injured in Gaza when an Israeli tank fired on a building which they thought was hiding Hamas fighters. In what was to become a tragedy, the men inside the building were actually Israeli soldiers in an elite unit. One of the three killed was a young Druze soldier. When his grandfather was asked how he felt about the dead on the Gaza side, with tears on his face and in his voice he replied, "The death of anyone rips at my soul."

The other two killed were officers of this unit, both of them in their mid-20s. One of them was married recently. It is about the father of this man that I want to write.

The death of a child is devastating, and even more so when the son is killed by "friendly" fire. I can't even imagine how the crew of the tank which fired the round feel. Many parents in this situation would scream and yell, call for investigations, and find someone to blame. This officer's father did none of these things. He is a religiously observant Jew who wears a kipa (yamakah) on his head and has a long beard. He is a very quiet man who finds solace in his personal beliefs. Yesterday as he was getting ready for the Sabbath, thinking about his son's too-short life and the way he was killed, he also began to think how the tankists who had inadvertently killed him would be feeling. The Sabbath is a day which encourages reflection, and this father felt he could not begin the Sabbath without doing something to ease the pain of these young soldiers. He sat down and wrote a letter to the crew of this tank..

In the letter he said straight out that he does not hold them responsible for the death of his son, that he bears them no ill will, that he fully forgives them, and that they should forgive themselves as well. He applauded them for what they were doing for the country and the nation his son loved so much by being willing to put their own lives aside in order to fight for the protection of their country. He wrote them that his son's spirit and memory would now live on forever through them, because they were carrying on with the work his son had given his life for. He concluded the letter by telling them that he was praying for their safety, and wishing them a peaceful Sabbath.

At the end of the interview, he said again that he could not be at peace with himself if he did not do something to help these young men find some peace as well. How many of us would have considered the burdens of others while suffering such deep sorrow ourselves?

Ann

At about the same time, there was an exchange of gunfire on the Lebanese border near the coastal city of Nahariya.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the rockets, which means that they probably weren't fired by the Hisballah. There are plenty of small Palestinian militias which operate in the area, and it was probably one of them. However, none of them operate without the complicit sanction of Hisballah, which controls the area.

What is worrying is that the rockets were fired from the area of Marjdayoun and the Hazbani in southern Lebanon, which is up on a natural bench north of the border near Banyas / Tel Dan. This is territory which is technically under the auspices and control of the multinational UN peacekeeping force which was placed there to keep the peace after the 2006 war.

Yaron's school is next to the city. His teacher just called to tell us that as soon as the siren sounded they got all the children down into the bombshelters, and they will stay there until the army tells them it is safe to come out. The bomb shelters have food, water, bathrooms, etc. She said Yaron is very calm and is giving a lecture on the history of warfare to the other students, who are all sitting around him in rapt attention. He loves an audience! He also has an encyclopedia and another book with him, so he is fine.

I'll keep you posted.

Ann

Ann, Israel

"My name is Eliana Kay Hansen, I'm 19 years old going on 20 in a couple of months and I'm already a year and a 6 months in the army.

I was born and raised in Israel but lived and learned in the U.S.. for my whole senior year. Which means, if you know how to calculate, by the time every senior student you may know, maybe even your own kids, and even any one older than me, were concentrating on how to celebrate their 18th birthday, what college they'll be going to, or whether they even want to go to college or maybe prefer to work first, or go on a semester abroad, I was concentrating on what [army] unit I want to try to get into, how much work I'll be able to get [done] in one month before I get drafted because then I have two years to try to live on less than 80 dollars a month.

So I just want to get some points right - our Israeli army is built from 18-22 year olds, every Israeli by the time they are 16 get a letter by mail saying:

"congratulations, in two years exactly you will be drafted to the Israeli army", at that same moment that same/teen,child or what ever you want to call them starts thinking of what unit they want to get in, start training every single day-not so they can become the best basketball player or to get into a sports team that they like but so they can get into the best combat unit, become the strongest soldier so when that same suicide bomber that's trying to get into Israel so he can kill/slaughter/hurt/torture any and as many Israelis as he can, maybe being that same soldier's parent, sister, brother, nephew, aunt, uncle, niece, friend and many other people he knows and cares [about].

And these are not speculations or exaggerations-these are true stories that I have personally grown up with, supporting; wiping away tears and holding my friends and neighbors when they were falling apart because their loved ones were hurt or killed in terrorist attacks, wars and military operations- you name it I have lived it!

So dear readers, I want you to think about the last time you went to a restaurant, or taken your kids to a movie, sending them to school on a bus, has the thought of you and the people around you being blown up at that same moment ever popped into your head?

Let me tell you a nice, personal story:

About 7 years ago, maybe even more, I was at least 13 and my brother 8. We were very poor and couldn't afford to buy tickets to a movie for years, and I had just won 2 free tickets to the movie "Ice Age" who had just been released to theaters. My mom agreed to take me and my brother to Haifa where the closest theater was--during the same week we would both be on Passover vacation. Needless to say we were very excited, I was looking forward to go for that whole week.

One day before, Mom came to me and said, "Eliana, we are not going to the movie." I, of course, was outraged, asking why and how come and the only thing my mom told me was, "I just don't feel good about it."

I was furious and upset not being able to understand her and how she could do that to us since that was the only day we could watch the movie.

The very morning after, around noon that same day the restaurant and all the road and street outside the theater was bombed, one of the most horrible and memorable bomb attacks in the whole history of Israel. In fact, most of the pictures from the videos from "you-tube", the ones with all the body parts all over, is from that attack, "the Maxime Restaurant" attack.

This to me is a nice story. This is what I always compare happy endings to; my Mom possibly saving our lives because she listens to the Spirit.

So you see, the Israeli-Palestinian argument really isn't that complicated at heart like you want to believe it is! In fact I will simplify it for you. The Hamas are one of the biggest anti-Israel groups. They are anti Israel not because me, my family, one of my friends or their families or any other person living in Israel today has done anything to hurt them, but because of some twisted, evil thinking that started even before Israel was established.

So because of that they try to kill us, hurt us as much as they can by sending missiles, suicide bombing attackers, kidnappers and anything they can think about.

Israel in return sends also missiles, attacks homes, hospitals, schools, and misgads (prayer homes or mosques).

Why?

That same prayer house and school, and hospitals and homes are used by the Hamas to launch missiles, use to be bomb making factories and used as refuge for some Hamas leaders.

Now why do you think they do that?

Because they know for fact that despite them we are human, we know to make the difference between those who are innocent and those who aren't.

They don't.

They use their own, not only elderly and adult, but children, to get what they want or to try to protect themselves.

When Israeli soldiers went into Gaza bombing secret tunnels and buildings (only because they're where the launching points of the missiles that were being launched into Israel) they came across lots of Palestinians, Gaza residents who where hurt, and they received health care by the Israeli medics. We cared for them and about them more than their own leaders and "soldiers".

Let me ask you something, if your neighbor started shooting at your home, endangering your family because he hates the fact that he couldn't get the land your house is on, would you justify him or try to understand him while he is doing anything he possibly can to hurt, torture and endanger your family and you? Would you feel that you have to buy and send humanitarian things to him because he is out; while still trying to hurt you?

Now you're right, these words are not out of an educated degree holder, not even by a college graduate, they are by me- a 19 year old girl who serves as a commander in the Israeli air force, who trains the soldiers, who instead of being able to watch a movie or TV with my 19-20 something year old friends I see them on TV, camouflaging their faces at 2 in the morning, carrying guns and equipment heavier than their own body weight, burying their own officer, team friend or even burying their own brothers.

You probably got to know the parents of the guy you where dating by dinners you were invited to. I get to know the parents of the boy I am dating by phone calls I get from his mother crying her soul out, seconds from becoming crazy because she knows he is in there, just wanting to know if he called, SMSed or anything.

Oh, just so you know, that same mother was almost killed in a bomb attack about 6 years ago. She was on her way back home in a cab where they stopped on the way to give a ride to some Arab who looked desperate, waiting for hours for a ride. They offered [invited] him to join them. He got in, sat next to her and a few seconds after he got in, he bombed himself [blew himself up]. The cab driver- an Arab as well - was killed as was her friend. No one knows how by miracle she had survived. She was hospitalized for almost a year with 3rd degree burns.

And that is the same reason her son got drafted to the army and became an officer in the tank unit, to do all that he personally can to stop terror and protect the country and the citizens.

They [Israeli soldiers] do not gloat after an innocent child or family has been killed, whereas Palestinians go out in the streets burning our flag, singing and dancing after ours have been killed. Furthermore, my friends and my brother would wake up in the middle of the night because of nightmares. It took my brother almost two years to settle down after getting released from the army because of almost becoming crazy after all he has seen.

SO ONE LAST QUESTION TO YOU: HOW DARE YOU SAY I NEED A DEGREE TO BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT THE REALITY I WAS BORN TO LIVE AND BREATHE?!

May you think about how the purity and innocence of childhood and family should be, and the next time you write an email may it be with nothing but sympathetic words to the mothers who have just lost their sons and those who might still lose them, or ways to donate to those same soldiers who have not eaten in days, freezing from cold or to those same children and families in Israel who have nowhere to live since they had to leave their homes because their towns have been bombed non stop. and the minute they found refuge in the north, that same town was bombed as well.

So may you have a great week, and if you would ever want to serve instead of me I would love to get my degree so I can prove my point even more."

Eliana Kay Hansen

Once back in the correct shelter with his class, he settled down and started talking about all kinds of war history, which the kids were apparently intersted in. (He doesn't always catch on that his interests are not necessarily shared by others, but in this case his teacher said the other kids were genuinely interested.) This was fine for the first little while, but then things got more exciting.

After about twenty minutes, one of his close friends lost it and flipped out. He got hysterical and kept trying to leave, saying he wanted to go home to his parents. An hysterical child (or adult) is never fun, especially in a closed situation where you can't leave. But in this case they had an even more serious problem. This child is already over 6'6" tall, has a stocky build, and is only 14 with an emotional intelligence much younger. So basically for the rest of the time they were in the shelter, Yaron took it upon himself to calm his friend down and then keep him that way.

All told, they were in the shelter for about two hours. Yaron, who used to panic very easily, was very proud of himself for keeping his cool the entire time. He's matured a lot the past two years. And maybe spending 6 weeks in our home bomb shelter helped a bit too? His 14^th birthday is on Sunday.

When the rockets hit, the army shot artillery rounds into the area they were fired from in Lebanon, and fighter jets and attack helicopters were scrambled. We still had a lot of air activity today. Israel also filed a formal complaint with the UN. Also, soldiers from the UN and the Lebanese army also patrolled the area, which is under their control. So far this looks like an isolated incident, just like the one near Nahariya last week.

Ann

And to give you an indication of his "leadership" style, late this afternoon he sat with "the cabinet" to discuss possible cease fire agreements. Because we are at war, the chief rabbis had given special permission for government and military officials to meet on the sabbath. After this meeting he made a very public announcement to Egypt's President Mubarak that Israel was going to institute a unilateral cease fire, and then called a press conference for 10 pm Israel time. The press conference didn't begin until nearly an hour later. Why? To start with, he hadn't actually discussed his cease fire plans with the full cabinet yet.. The earlier "cabinet" meeting had in reality been attended only by the defense and foreign ministers, both of whom are running for Prime Minister in the elections here next month and have their own personal agendas. Ehud Barak has already held the position of Prime Minister once. He went in with one of the highest-ever approval ratings, but bungled things so badly that he didn't even last a year in office. I think he is probably the record holder for the Israeli Prime Minister with the shortest time in office. Even so, he managed to do a lot of damage. Tsippi Livnim took over the party leadership from Olmert last fall, but couldn't form a coalition and therefore did not become Prime Minister. She has a history of putting career ahead of principle.

In order for the agreement to go into effect, it has to be approved by the full cabinet. The press conference started late because Olmert was meeting with the cabinet. Obviously not everyone was ready to go along with him. In the end he got a majority, with two against and one abstention.

The terms of the unilateral cease fire:

1. At 2 am Sunday morning Israeli time, Israel will stop firing, fighting, etc. They will stay in their positions in Gaza, but won't attack unless Hamas fires rockets..

2. When a permanent agreement is reached, Israel will withdraw its troops completely.

3. One of the lesser government ministers (who has the whiniest voice I have ever heard from a human being and a mind to match) will draw up plans to rehabilitate Gaza and provide help for its citizens.

1. Hamas has rejected any sort of cease fire. By leaving our soldiers in Gaza but not allowing them to do anything, they are nothing more than sitting-duck targets. Within minutes of the official announcement, two rockets hit Israeli cities, one landing directly on someone's home.

2. Hamas has said that they will continue their fight until all crossing points into Gaza are open with no supervision of who and what goes in and out. Since badly-supervised entry points on the Egyptian side are what enabled Hamas to come into possession of hundreds of Grad rockets in the first place - and Hamas is armed and funded by Iran - this condition is not acceptable to Israel. Remember that Hamas proudly boasts that their number one goal is the complete and total annihilation of Israel.

   The United States (Condaleeza Rice at any rate) has said it would be willing to help supervise the border points, especially by using "technology". One of the suggestions is that a subterranean wall be built to prevent the construction of tunnels, and a better border wall be built above ground. The wall Israel is building has caused international outrage, even from the United States. Somehow their wall will be more acceptable? Not only will this be unacceptable to Hamas, but also to all the gangs who make their money smuggling. I can just imagine everyone in Gaza sitting quietly by while this wall is being built.

3. During his announcement Olmert apologized to the people of Gaza for the unintentional suffering which the incursion had caused them. He then reminded them that Israel was not their enemy but Hamas was. If I were sitting in Gaza tonight and heard his patronizing words and too-facile apology, I think I would have spat in his face. He may or may not have been sincere in his apology (it's hard to tell with him), but the way in which it was offered was insulting, condescending and lacked feeling. I was offended by it, and I wasn't even the one to whom it was directed!

   No matter how much material aid Israel may provide to help rebuild Gaza, they will never forgive us, they will never be our "friends". They especially will never forgive Olmert, the man who okayed the attack. And who is going to pay for all of this? It sounds good on paper, though.

4. No mention was made about the return of our kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.

Ann

The army has been given orders that they can fire on the enemy if the enemy fires first, but we are not to initiate any actions. Our blowhard Prime Minister also said last night that if rockets were fired into Israel we would react harshly. Since there have been at least 8 rockets since then, I guess my definition of "harsh" is different than his. The air force did fire at the areas where the rockets were fired from, but nothing more than that.

Two hundred trucks of food and medical supplies are on their way to the northern crossing point into Gaza. Israel is also setting up a field hospital/clinic in Gaza to provide medical care for the citizens of Gaza. It will be supplied and staffed by Israel, many of them volunteers.

Ann

Hi Everyone!

I'm now home again, but have to go off for a couple of hours for my last class of the semester at the college. Luckily it is a short evening rather than the normal 4 hour class! I'm planning on taking the rest of the week off from high school.

As far as my health, operation, etc. The good news is that the surgery went well, but I was a lot more nauseous for a lot longer than last time. My blood pressure was also quite high for several days. Eliana was with me most of the week (no connection to the high BP!). The bad news is that the growth was in the entrance to the bladder, which could mean that it is spreading and is of a more serious type than we previously thought. However, we won't know anything for sure until the biopsy results come back in two weeks. And as my surgeon told me with his twinkling smile, with this kind of cancer my relationship with the hospital is going to be "like a Catholic marriage" - in other words, a long relationship til death do us part many, many years down the road.

I am a bit anxious, of course, but there isn't a lot I can do until I know what kind of growth this new one is. Whatever happens, we'll deal with it.

Thanks for your prayers!
Ann

First of all, to show how disgusted most of the country is about our lack of leadership, this election had the second-lowest voter turnout in history - about 60%. Israel usually has about 85% turnout. I know this is high in comparison to the average US voter turnout, but for us it is very low.

The Israeli political system was loosely based on the British system. We have an elected parliament (the Knesset) comprised of one house, not two like in England or the US. The Knesset is comprised of 120 members. The number represents the 12 tribes, and the age that Moses was when he went to heaven. In Hebrew, the traditional birthday greeting is "until 120", meaning a blessing of a long and healthy life. We have a multi-party system.

This election, for example, had about 35 parties running. Each party makes up a list of its candidates. Your place on the list is determined by your power within the party. The closer you are to the top, the better chance you have of being elected. And since the candidates can come from anywhere in the country, they aren't responsible or answerable to any specific constituency - i.e., they can do what they want with no checks.

When all the ballots are counted, in order to receive one of the 120 places (mandates) in the Knesset, you must have received at least 1.2% of the total number of votes cast. If you don't make that number, you aren't elected. So each party gets one mandate for each 1.2% of the total votes it got. The mandates are given to the candidates starting at the top of the list and going down. So let's say that one of the major parties has a list of 60 people and they get 40 mandates, the last 10 people on the list are not elected. Ideally the winning party would receive a majority of 61 mandates. This has never happened.

Because we have so many parties running, no one has ever gotten close to getting the 61 mandate majority needed to become prime minister. This makes it necessary to sell your soul (and your own party people lower on the list) in order to create a coalition by buying the mandates of other parties. The price: government ministries, cabinet positions, money. This also means that the smaller parties have disproportionate power in the negotiations. You may have only won 10 mandates, but those votes could be the difference between another party being in the government or sitting in the opposition.

In this election is there were 3 people running for Prime Minister. They don't actually run on a separate ticket, but are the first names on their own party lists. Two of the three (Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu) have been PM before. The third, Zipi Livni, used to be in Bibi's party but joined the "turncoat" party Kadima, which was formed by Ariel Sharon and consists of members from both the main parties who didn't get what they wanted in their own parties. Kadima is a party with no specific direction or government policy, and which is made up of people who are political enemies. Their only common goal is to stay in power. Barak is our defense minister in the same coalition government where Livni is the Foreign minister.

Livni's party -Kadima, which is a center/left party, won 28 seats, so her party will be the largest party in the Knesset. But since she needs 61 seats to be prime minister, she won't necessarily be the prime minister. Bibi's party - the Likud, which is a right-wing party, won 27 seats. Barak - a Labor party - only got 13, the lowest in his party's history. (This is the party led by Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Shimon Peres, Itzhak Rabin, etc.) The third largest party - Israel Beteinu (very right-wing and a break-off of the Likud) - got 15. And nearly all the other parties who got seats, including the religious parties, are right-wing, which means they are traditionally more interested in a coalition with the right. The right-wing parties make up 65 seats.

While the PM is elected, the president is chosen by a vote of the Knesset. The PM leads the country (like the US president), but the president has a more ceremonial role (like the British monarch). Our current president is Shimon Peres, who used to be a prime minister when in the Labor party. He has one week from the date of the election to meet with the heads of all the parties. He then must decide who has the best chance to form a coalition. That person then has 45 (extendable) days to form a coalition. In this case, Bibi has a better chance than Zipi to form a coalition, so while she has the biggest party she doesn't have the most possible coalition partners. Of course, loyalty to party ideals is usually dependent upon what price the coalition is willing to pay.

This close vote pretty well reflects the feelings of the country. In Jerusalem and all the border areas, north and south, right-wing parties won by a 3 to 1 (and some places even 5 to 1) margin. The more left parties were strong only in the Tel Aviv and Haifa areas. I find it interesting that all three of the Druze towns on the Golan Heights voted almost unanimously for Israel Betenu, which is extremely right-wing. I think it is because they are very concerned about being returned to Syria in the event of a left-wing treaty with Syria. Both of the main parties were hopeful that the counting of the absentee ballots yesterday (soldiers, overseas diplomats, etc. plus prisoners) would change things. It didn't. What was news-worthy was that nearly all of the soldiers in the field cast a blank vote and had hand-written the name of Gilad Shalit, our soldier who was kidnapped from Israeli territory nearly 3 years ago. In other words, no faith in the leadership.

So next Thursday President Peres will make his choice, and the bargaining will get ever more fierce. In the meantime Prime Minister Olmert, who resigned months ago and is in the middle of a huge criminal corruption case, will continue to "lead" us for at least another couple of months.

Ann

As for Allen's wedding plans - good question! For various reasons Katia and Allen had to cancel the September date, and the current date looks to be sometime in December, they hope. If it were up to them they would be married already. The complications come from having to arrange the marriage around the dates of district temple trips. They have checked out the possibility of going on their own, but it isn't possible due to the substantially higher costs and the problem