Tag Archives: war

THE WAR

24 Jul

One of our baseball players was killed in Gaza.  His name was Shon Mondshine.  He was 19 years old.  I did not know him. He played for the Tel Aviv Juniors in 2011.  This blog post is for Shon and his family.

It started like any good story starts, I did not realize it was starting, there was no announcement, no one said, “Please take your seats, and cover your heads, the war is going to begin now,” it just began.

3 Jewish boys got kidnapped and killed in the West Bank, in “the Gush”.  We have teams there, I am there often, but it didn’t feel close.  We have a proximity meter with tragedy.  When is it real?  How close do we have to be? 7,000 miles away?  Someone from the same religion?  Same country?  A family member?  A stranger?  An enemy?  Then an Arab boy got killed in Jerusalem.  Narratives form.  Things escalate.  A couple of sirens in southern Israel, and Tel Aviv, no big deal, still not close enough, it’s Israel, it happens, the Iron Dome, the rockets don’t get through, life goes on.  More rockets.  Every day.  A lot of them.  Sirens 2 or 3 times a day some places.  Taking shelter on the side of the road, at the field, in random apartment buildings, with the kids at camp.  It’s getting tiresome.  Things escalate again.  Air strikes in Gaza.  Then Israel goes into Gaza.  13 Israeli soldiers killed in one day, and 7 more the next, a total of 28 so far, and far more Gazans.  And then Shon.  My meter goes off.  A baseball player.  A kid.  In the same uniform I see the kids in every week.

Through all of this, we are trying to get ready to play.  We go out to practice, forget about it, maybe hear some booms in the distance, then, after, check our phones for updates, Red Alerts, rockets in Ashdod, on the ride home, “Yuli, What’s he saying on the radio?” 3 more soldiers killed, and everyone is quiet for a moment.  It’s not like in the States.  Everyone knows each other here, or knows someone who knew them.  It’s like everyone went to the same high school.  If you couldn’t tell from the tone of this post, there is a seriousness to things right now.  You can feel it.  This has made me more Israeli than a passport.  Stores are being burned in France.  Maccabi Haifa’s soccer team was attacked on the field during a game in Vienna yesterday.  What is happening?

For the Americans, the only thing I can compare it to is 9/11.  People don’t leave their houses, they just sit and watch news.  People are sad.  People are mad.  People are jumpy.  When a motorcycle starts, or a dumpster lid slams closed too fast, or a song with a siren in the background comes on the radio, everyone perks up. Liberals become conservatives.  Flags come out.  There are demonstrations in the street.

We leave in 3 days for Slovenia.  And the airport is closed, sort of, some flights are getting out, some are cancelled, I can’t keep up.  It feels like Michael Corleone trying to get the last flight out of Cuba on New Years Eve.

We will be fine.  Mostly, we’ll just be playing ball, like we always do.  But, every once in a while, maybe at the hotel, privately, maybe in the 3rd inning of a close game, we will think about what is going on, about the people who are fighting, and the people who are dying, and about Shon.

Shon Mondshine. 2011 Tel Aviv Comrades. 4th from the right, top row, with long hair. RIP.

Shon Mondshine. 2011 Tel Aviv Comrades. 4th from the right, top row, with long hair. RIP.

 

 

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BOOM

14 Jul

Lots of messages this week…

“What’s going on in Israel” “Are you OK?”  “Are you safe?”  “Can you still turn sticks into serpents?  I have a certain situation and could use some help with that.”

The Kingdom of Jewish Baseball is under fire!  So I now must do what All Men of Destiny and Honor do when it’s time for war — tweet, post on Facebook, and write a blog!

A rocket flies over my head.

A rocket flies over my head.

1) Tuesday, July 8, 7:00pm

Picking Amit up for Eliora’s wedding.  Sirens. We go into the stairwell with his sister and mother and neighbors.   Amit is casual about it. ROCKETS DON’T HURT US.  So, so am I.  We leave for the wedding 10 minutes later.

First phone call from my Mom.

 2)Tuesday, July 8, 10:00pm

At the wedding.  The sirens earlier did not stop people from coming.  Everyone is here.  Alon.  Lee.  The King of Jewish Ice cream.  Jewish Jackie Robinson.  After the ceremony, in the dining room, more sirens.  Everyone is told to go to the bathrooms.  People crowd in.  There is not enough room.  Some people go outside to look at the sky.  We don’t see anything.

Facetime with Dasi to tell her I am okay.

3) Wednesday, July 9, 8:30am

3rd day of Baseball Camp.  We hear rockets being intercepted in the distance during our group meeting with the kids.

4) Thursday, July 10, 8:00am

Sirens on our way to camp.  We pull of the highway.  Me, Richard, Yuli, and Apple Juice jump the guard rail and lay down.  I don’t get the logic of laying down.  But, when the sirens go off, pick the most Israeli person in the group, and do whatever they’re doing.  THEY’RE ISRAELI.  THEY’RE TRAINED FOR THIS.  We get back in the car and proceeded to camp mostly in silence.

Mom calls, worried.  She has the Red Alert App that notifies her when there are rocket attacks. Dasi tells me the US Embassy is closing and I am living in a war zone.  They are both better informed than I am. It still feels like we’re just running a baseball camp.

 

The King of Jewish Baseball and his Army of Interns are forced to retreat and hide in the bushes by the road.

The King of Jewish Baseball and his Army of Interns are forced to retreat and hide in the bushes by the road.

5) Friday, July 11, 10:45am

3rd inning of a scrimmage game between the Junior National Team and the Senior National team.  Sirens.  We all run in our metal cleats into a house behind the third base dugout and crowd into two safety rooms.  We hear the booms of the rockets being intercepted by the iron dome.  We resume the game 15 minutes later.

6) Friday, July 11, 6pm

Sitting at a restaurant in Jaffa.  No sirens, but see a cloud of smoke in the sky and a rocket explode in mid air.  People gather around to look.

Mom calls.  I assure her I am fine.  Things are totally normal.

7) Saturday, July 12, 9pm

Get home, open the car door, sirens.  Louder than before.   My neighbors come outside.  I ask if they want to come in.  They say it’s safer outside.  Again, I do not understand, but follow the Israelis, wavering half-in my door, half-out, while they calm their dogs down.  I go inside and sit in the shower and take a picture of myself.  Then we hear the rockets blowing up in the sky, close and loud.  Partly because I am home, and party because I amalone, I feel scared for the first time.

I call my mom.  She is calm now, losing interest.

8) Sunday July 13, 4:45pm

Drop Richard off at his hotel.  Sirens.  I put the car in park, leave it in the street, Richard, Yuli, and I run into the hotel.  Everyone goes to the basement.  The siren is loud again.  And the explosions are pretty loud.

No phone calls are made.

9) Sunday, July 13th, 8pm

Sundown at the beach. I sit on the rocks with Nam Nam and Efrat and watch rockets get shot down out of the sky.

I miss a call from my parents.  I call back.  Things have changed.  They’re cool.  No big deal. They’ve adapted. They’ve become Israeli about it.  We get used to danger quickly.

Today is Monday, July 14th, 2014. It’s been almost a week since the first sirens.  I’m sitting in the storage shed at Baptist Village– my office, sweating, typing, watching the kids practice on the field. All of the rockets have been intercepted by the Iron Dome so far.  It’s like there aren’t rockets coming at all, like a deadly asteroid flying through space you know will never hit Earth, but that may hit Earth. There is nothing to do but continue at baseball camp, and use the closest Israeli as a human barometer for how to act and feel.  More sirens could come anytime.

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