Eilon, Friday, July 28, 2006
Hello friends
Today has been an unusually quiet day. It has been a day of subsidence. Except for the solitary "lazy summer fly" that violates this silence there has been no shooting. The gunners, after nearly two consecutive weeks of serial shooting, are deserving of a break, and collapse in a somnolent heap near their ammunition stores. Only the plangent sea breeze can awake them from their exhaustion.
The same etheric effect may have grasped those illusive Hezbollah rocket launchers, though a report has indicated that it is the air force that has been crucial in tamping down their hurler's revelries.
It is another overcast morning, with clods of formless graying clouds withering in the sunless heat. I was alone today, as David visited the bottom land orchard while Zohar traveled south to his folks. The wildlife activity, peaking yesterday, was conspicuously absent today. I completed my work early and wrangled with Mahmoud, who has begun to make the twenty-minute trip to work from his village.
We quibbled about the causes behind this war and its ravages. It is the despoiling of the Lebanese hinterland that has raised his ire. If it appears necessary to some, these bombings are useless depredations to others. According to Mahmoud, this troublesome indiscriminate warring with Hezbollah and the devastation incurred throughout most of Lebanon has greatly upset the local Arab community. It should negatively impact the greater Arab and Moslem world against both Israel and the United States. A ponderous American foreign policy in the region, and her unfair or intrusive influence at the United Nations and in Europe, has neither prevented a ceasefire, restrained Israel or thwarted the destruction of an entire nation. The ease in which these things are being done might eventually even be turned against the local Arab community.
Despite our differences, especially regarding what some describe as the "root causes" of the conflict, we always achieve a peaceful resolution. This time it was done under the most watchful eyes of a jackal pup, who was almost eager to approach us, and then curiously sat on his haunches, clutching a twig in his mouth. Mahmoud noticed him first, as he stepped from the adjacent bushes, cagey at first, attentive to the tones of judicious bickering and our natural desire for world peace. This extraordinary scene repeated itself on three separate occasions lasting for several minutes, each time diverting us from our most fervent political cause while assuaging our pain.
A fanciful myth has taken root in the hilly terra rosa soil of Adamit. Our friend Avner was interviewed there by CNN's John Vause. The story was about the uncanny ability of Adamit to escape rocket attacks. I think the notion that Adamit evades attacks because of a unique geographic location is a bit of wishful and specious thinking.
I hope that there were no Hezbollah gunners watching this report. I can see them now racing to locate the village on their crinkly yellowing maps and chartreuse charts.
Love-Barry