Archives for May 2021

Mary Grossman in Tel Aviv While Under Attack

Written by my friend, Mary Grossman, below is the content of a stream of conscious text, reprinted with her permission, sent to me by her yesterday. Check out what it was like when Mary realized while swimming in the ocean that missiles were incoming and her video of missiles over Tel Aviv at night.

Terrifying.

by Mary Grossman

Yes, I’m a target, too.

I’m here in the middle of it, in Tel Aviv, Israel. It’s a lovely afternoon and air raid sirens are wailing and huge booms can be heard just south of here. A rocket just landed in the next neighborhood over and killed a guy.

I took this video from my patio Wednesday night at 3:02 a.m. after a night or more of this.

 

This is what it’s like when the Iron Dome intercepts rockets over your head. Hamas rockets are not hillbilly, homemade, pipe bombs landing in random farm fields. This video is from my patio, here in the densely populated and intensely mixed neighborhood of Kerem HaTeimanim, or the Yemenite Quarter in central Tel Aviv, near the beach and the huge open Carmel Market. This crumbling old neighborhood is home to Jews, Muslims, Eritreans, Russians, Ethiopians, Somalis, and a large LGBQT community and tons of visitors when it’s not COVID. Everyone hangs out, walks their dogs, smokes cigs, drinks cafe shachor (black coffee), argues about politics and Bibi. No, it’s not Gaza which is very horrible and needs to stop NOW; and I’m grateful. But as you can hear, I’m terrified.

So for those of you who are demanding a balance sheet of death, have peace of mind that if not for the genius of the Iron Dome, there’s a very good chance I could be dead and certainly hundreds, maybe thousands, of Israelis would be dead as well.

Shabbat Shalom.