July 11

In the past few days hundreds of rockets have been shot into Israel by Hamas.  I’m not sure what the ratio is compared to what Israel has fired into Gaza, but I do know there is definitely a difference in the procedures.  Hamas points and shoots the rockets, and hopes they terrorize and kill people.  On the other hand, Israel has guidance systems for their rockets.  They identify a target (a location that has a catch of weapons) then contact the people in the building to let them know they are going to blow up the building to destroy the weapons.  The IDF then gives the people time to leave the building before destroying it.  Any casualties are purely the fault of the Arabs living in the region.  Of course you might wonder why the Arabs are so willing to commit suicide like this.  The answer is they consider this a religious war, so any deaths would be deaths of martyrdom and the only way in Islam to guarantee a spot in heaven is to die a martyrs death.  If you would like to be more aware of when there is a rocket attack in Israel there is actually an app you can download which will notify you whenever a Code Red sounds.  This would be great for praying for the areas affected. The Android version is only available in Hebrew I'm afraid, but the Apple version is also in English.

Fortunately for me, most of the rockets fired by Hamas have not come close to Jerusalem.  Since Operation Protective Edge began the Code Red has only sounded twice in Jerusalem.  Once on Tuesday evening at about 10PM and then the second time was last night at about 6PM.  It was good timing in the it happened before the little boy in the next door flat had a party.  If the alarm had gone off half an hour later the children’s party would have been interrupted.  Last night of course I was not asleep so I was more alert to grab my phone and passport before we joined all our neighbors in the stairwell.  The bomb shelter is more to be used if there is a longer ongoing attacks, but for the short ones we have, everyone just gathers in the stairwells.  The good thing about this is that we are getting to be more acquainted with our neighbors through this.  The tone of things last night was very light and joking as our one neighbor was trying to relieve any tension for the children.