Update from Nazareth-Illit

Feature | greta, July 20th, 2006

We got an update from Beny Shlevich this morning. He’s a student at Technion university in Haifa. After we found him on Flickr, on Tuesday he wrote that he planned to stay home in Nazareth Illit until it was safe to return to school. Now it’s looking like even there he isn’t far enough out of the fray.

If you’re in Lebanon or Israel, send in your own reports to greta radioopensource org.

When I wrote you my last email, things were pretty calm, shops were open, etc. The sirens warning of possible incoming missiles were going off a few times a day, but they were all false alarms but one. Otherwise, things were quite close to normal.

However, this changed somewhat today. As the siren went off once again in the afternoon, it did so simultaneously with a few loud explosion sounds that sounded very close (the first I’ve heard myself). This was quite alarming, though me and my mother still don’t bother to go into the bombshelter. Within minutes, we found out that the rockets fell very close to the town, in the neighbouring Nazareth (which, just for background, is the largest Arabic-Israeli city), and killed two children, aged 3 and 7. The sirens failed to give them a heads up, and they were killed while playing in the yard.

Shortly after I went out for a walk through the town. This time, the atmosphere was much more tense. There were few people on the streets (although notably, they weren’t empty). The town’s mall and many shops were closed, perhaps because the rockets fell very close to it. Some of my friends are planning on leaving the town for a while. Oh, by the way, I’m afraid I didn’t make myself clear previously – I myself am not planning on leaving this town, unless something drastic should happen. In large, I try not to let the war intervene with my life too much. I’ll go visits some friends in Tel Aviv over the weekend, and then I’ll return here unless it’ll really be too dangerous.

Beny Shlevich, in an email to Open Source