08-Jun-15: The banality of defending our lives from the terrorists

Street scene in Be'er Sheva. (Yes, Be'er Sheva) [Image Source]

This is a note about the unappreciated challenges of making your home in a small country, one that's roughly the size of Hawaii.

Unlike Hawaii, Israel is surrounded not by the blue Pacific Ocean but by entrenched, armed-to-the-teeth, religious fanatics: Hamas and PIJ in the south; Hezbollah in the north; the highly mobile and phenomenally aggressive ISIS just beyond the river that is our eastern border, and talking about rolling westwards.

Very few people outside the circle of Israelis and friends of Israel really care to know

1. how small this little country of ours is
2. how astronomically well-armed the fanatics of Hamas and Hezbollah are, especially with rockets
3. how difficult it can be to conduct ordinary life while tuning in to hourly news bulletins and to incoming-missiles sirens.

In which airport was this endless line of people waiting to go
through security? It hardly matters - could be anywhere [Image Source]

No sane person wants to obsess over life-threatening dangers. So most of us find ways to deal with the tensions. It's easier, in some ways, when everyone around you is in the same pot with you.

With that in mind, here's the full text of a news report that went up on the Ynet site a few minutes after 8 this evening (Monday):

An Iron Dome missile battery was deployed near the southern city of Be'er Sheva Monday as a precaution after three recent rocket attacks by ISIS supporters in Gaza.

That's the whole piece. The most worrying thing? That news of the overnight placement of millions of dollars worth of advanced anti-missile technology, along with the soldiers who man it 24/7, on the outskirts of Israel's seventh largest city gets one-line, at most.

Very few news outlets beyond this country's borders will even note it.

And in Europe, North America, Australia, and those other places where anti-terrorism security at airports, train-stations and parliaments has become a sink-hole for untold millions of whatever currency, they mostly don't even realize that we are all in this together.