Try to imagine this: You’re at home in your airy apartment in Vancouver, Houston, Brisbane or Milan, watching the game on TV, reading the newspaper, rustling up dinner or perhaps helping you kids with their math (ugh!) homework. Suddenly the shrill scream of air raid sirens shatters the peace. A mistake, you think – some idiot pressed the wrong button – until the TV announcer says: “We interrupt thisbroadcast to announce that …”.

The sirens are real. Don’t even try to imagine it.

For the first time in your life you understand the true meaning of “paralyzed with fear”. Thoughts rush by. “This can’t be happening. Where did we put the gas masks dammit? What are we supposed to do now?” And even: “I don’t want to die”.

It happened to me in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening. Tel Aviv! Not Kandahar, not Baghdad, not even Hanoi. All day I’d heard the news broadcasts about the terrorist rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel, but the Israel that is 50, 60 and 70 kilometers away from Tel Aviv. Civilians killed and injured, terrible property damage, daily life completely disrupted. Somehow – somehow – that was in another world, on...More >>