False Alarm

We were all sitting in the board room of our office happily enjoying lunch. There were all these visiting professors and heads of U.S. foundations at the table with the regulars. And then I heard that awfully scary drone of the siren. In Jerusalem - not from Sderot, Beersheva, Ashkelon - but in Jerusalem.

"Oh fuck!" I screamed out, not really caring what our illustrious guests thought of profanity at this point. "That's the war siren. We'd better head for the shelter." I left my soup and lasagna and salads on the table and headed for our basement shelter. I tried calling my kids to see how they were handling this. And I wondered aloud.

Did Iran try to get at us?
Did Hezbollah's rockets reach as far as Jerusalem?
Did the Gazan Kassams reach as far as Jerusalem?
Was it Al Qaida?

But 10 minutes later the people who knew how to get internet from their phones discovered that the siren was either a false alarm or a test. But now I know how the people down south feel every day. It can be quite disruptive and nervewracking.

Meanwhile, the emails and messages I received were dismal.

The director of our interfaith group said the retreat with Hebron Palestinians was off because the person giving the Moslem perspective wasn't able to get his permit.

One Palestinian wrote me that he is not going to come to my next meeting because until he hears condemnation of the violence in Gaza, he refuses to have any kind of normalization with Israelis. I was gonna write him back - a) he doesn't have to worry about having anything normal with me - because I'm certified crazy, and b)WTF? If I stand in the middle of the street and say I condemn the violence - how will that change things? Will the army stop what it's doing because a crazy woman is yelling and screaming in the middle of the street for the killings to stop? And what about the rockets coming in from Hamas?? Who will have the balls to stop? Will this war run by men with an overload of testosterone come to an end soon? I thought about it and thought this region must be run by women. The worst we can do is get into a catfight and pull each other's hair out.

And speaking about male ego, my daughter had told me that the reason there was so much traffic from Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem the past week or so was because the mayor had gone to the soldiers manning the checkpoint,telling them to hurry the cars through so the traffic tie ups would be less. Their officer got offended the mayor didn't come to him first and then ordered his soldiers to very s-l-o-w-l-y check each and every car, taking up a tremendous amount of time and causing everyone's travel time into Jerusalem to be a two-hour ride instead of a mere 40 minute trip. If this is true, it's total male ego madness, and if this is what's running the country, we're in trouble.