Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2023-12-05
Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. Here we go...
A deep, distant rumbling shakes the sky outside the office. We're not sure if we're hearing rocket booms or thunder. It's supposed to rain today. It hasn't yet.
At the House of a Hundred Grandmothers, my family hears the sound as booms. They're ordering something over the phone from a company in the next city south. They hear the sirens howling there. They complete the transaction in record time. The agent hangs up and runs for shelter.
A tweet shows where a large piece of shrapnel fell.1. I zoom in on the photo and search online for the phone number on an awning near where it landed. Google Maps confirms that it's a few meters from the bus stop for my favorite record store.
Another tweet, posted later, shows a security camera's video of that same fragment landing. It barely misses two people walking by.2 To quote the person who posted it: "And this is why the Home Front Command instructions say to remain in shelter for 10 minutes after sirens sound."
It looks like our local elections will be slid back to January 30th. They were originally supposed to be on Halloween, then got pushed to January, then later. I think the powers that be, seeing that this war probably isn't going to end quickly, decided that we should just get on with it. It's only in places that haven't been evacuated, though. Those places that have been will schedule elections for five months after their residents return.3
It's going to take a lot of work to make some of those places livable again. And, as with rubberneckers at car crash sites, the people there are getting annoyed with destruction tourism.4 Even Elon Musk dropped by some time back, apparently trying to look like he can care about other humans.5
Doctors treating the child hostages who were released during the truce say that the children were in far worse shape than it initially appeared.6 While they appeared calm and happy during the release process, the Health Ministry says that that's because the terrorists dosed them with Clonazepam before letting them out.7
This girl and her classmates, though, look honestly happy on her first day back to kindergarten after her release.8
As I head home from work, I hear the roar of a fighter jet above the clouds. It gradually dissolves into the sound of a jackhammer, more rhythmic but in the same pitch range, at a construction site nearby.
When I turn a corner, I hear a clear boom. Unlike the brief booms from rockets, this one rolls on, shifting and changing. In a range of noise above it, small staccato splats turn into their own waves of sound as they hit the trees and pavement.
I pull up the hood of my sweatshirt. It has finally started to rain.
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Here’s an archive of past newsletters.
You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
The newsletter’s official mailing address is 304 S. Jones Blvd #3567, Las Vegas NV 89107. (I’m in Israel, but if physical mail comes to me there, it’ll get scanned and emailed. I don’t expect that to happen much. If you want to send me physical mail, ask me for a real address.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
L'hitraot.
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החדשות - N12 on X: "המטח לגוש דן: רסיס רקטה בתל אביב https://t.co/iH28WLtDfx" / X ↩
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Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian on X: "And this is why the Home Front Command instructions say to remain in shelter for 10 minutes after sirens sound... an intercepted rocket crashes down in Tel Aviv. https://t.co/AFJoU9TuWt" / X ↩
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The elections for the local authorities will be held on January 30 - the Devar news site ↩
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Resurrecting Gaza border communities will take a lot more than sowing winter wheat | The Times of Israel ↩
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Pediatrician treating freed hostages: Reports of their good condition are misleading | The Times of Israel ↩
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Hamas drugged freed Gaza hostages to make them seem calm and happy -- Health Ministry | The Times of Israel ↩
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Emilia Aloni Returning to Kindergarten After Hamas Captivity - YouTube ↩