A Sea of Red

Every weekend on the Kibbutz, my Garin gets together with our coordinator for what we call “מעגל שבת” where we sit around as a group and catch up with one another. Last weekend, our coordinator brings a red table cloth, and a bunch of small red objects and tells us to pick one and explain why we connect to it. Why you might ask? Let’s just say this was a weekend characterized by the color red.

With all the sirens going off, which in this area of the country is the words “צבא אדום” constantly repeated one after the other, our coordinator wanted to reclaim the color red. Therefore, she had us talk about all the positive things that this color symbolized, during a weekend when this color primarily indicated an incoming rocket.

For me, this was the first time since arriving to my Kibbutz so close to the Gaza border one year ago, where I really felt what it was like to live during an operation where hundreds of rockets were fired into Israel each day. I’ve seen the times Gaza fired 2-3 rockets to Sderot, or the times we weren’t allowed to walk in the Kibbutz fields for security reasons, but this was a first where I’ve been on my Kibbutz while a barrage of rockets were coming in.

The first rocket, shocked us all. The first one was unusually loud, unexpected, and caused me to run straight into the shelter. However, after that, myself and the others in our Garin weren’t phased by them, and simply lived a regular weekend despite the situation.

One thing to keep in mind is that due to the advanced technology, the alarm only would go off in our Kibbutz if there was a rocket directly coming our way. If a rocket was coming towards Sderot, Ashkelon, or a neighboring Kibbutz, we would one hundred percent hear the boom, but there would be no alarm, and therefore no reason to move to a shelter.

At one point during our מעגל שבת with our coordinator, she was talking as rockets were being sent to Tel Aviv and the surrounding cities. These larger rockets caused booms that were much louder than the small rockets being sent to the Kibbutzim near me, and despite the noise, our coordinator just continued to talk without any pause or hesitation. In some ways, this was a way of saying that these rockets aren’t going to interfere with the way I live my life. Obviously if there’s a rocket coming towards the Kibbutz, we will be smart and safe by running to a shelter, but asides from that, the booms will continue and our lives will continue.

All in all, last weekend was an experience I’ll never forget. It was a weekend where I was able to understand the struggle Israelis in this region have to deal with from time to time, as opposed to the 95% of the time where their lives are quiet and peaceful.

*Puffs of smoke seen from outside my room of the iron dome intercepting a barrage of rockets towards Sderot