Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2025-06-19
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. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...
Thursday's first alert is right after midnight. I normally take the stairs down, but an elevator is waiting as I walk past it. I squeeze in around a wheelchair. I'm large, but I'm flexible.
The nearer shelter on the ground floor at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers is busy, but not too crowded. (We have two, one in each wing.) I sit along a wall.
A couple from the neighborhood with a large and friendly dog sits next to me. The dog sniffs my hands. I signal to its owners that I don't mind. They loosen their grip on the leash a bit, and the dog sniffs me more and licks my arms. They pull her back a bit when she tries to jump on my lap.
Several people in the shelter listen to the same radio news station on their phones. Due to issues of how signals get around and other technical whizbangery, the reports are out of sync. It's sounds like an impromptu version of Steve Reich's "Come Out."
The skies are quiet. Some people leave after ten minutes, even though we're not supposed to. We hear distant booms after they leave, but no one returns. We don't hear of any injuries.
The second alert comes at about 7 AM. I head down again. There are a lot of booms.
Rumors start to come in, repeated with varying accuracy by the people there. Hundreds of people around the country are reported injured.
The core reports are true: Iranian missiles have struck a major hospital and hit very near another one. I have walked past that second one, a couple of miles from where my ensemble rehearses. Other missiles hit a kindergarten in another town (closed for now, by order of Home Front Command) and near the stock exchange, which is also near Tel Aviv's main train station.
The news sites report that the hit on the large hospital impacted a few wings that hadn't been properly fortified yet. The staff had moved the patients from there a few hours before.
The apartment house that was hit near my rehearsal spot had been slated for demolition, in preparation for a new, larger tower on the spot. Plans already in place to relocate the residents will continue -- but a lot more quickly. The school in front of it was also, by government order, closed.
Home Front Command says that the latest missiles that hit us have a new feature: once back into the atmosphere, they break into clusters of smaller missiles, each with its own warhead. Even if the enemy claims to be aiming at specific (often fictitious) targets, they can't control them. Once the individual missiles spread apart, they can't be controlled, and can spread out randomly over a radius of several miles.
They show pictures of one on the ground, and remind us even more strongly not to touch them. The missiles and fragments may still house explosives, and a touch might trigger them.
I go back upstairs and try to follow the news, but I can't quite tell what's going on. When captions on the English-language channel say "Iranian strikes," they sometimes mean strikes in Iran and sometimes strikes by Iran. The automatic translation for the news sites and TV commentary can't keep up. In a single news article, Google Translate turns one term for a shelter, "mamad," into "police station," "fire alarm," and "central heating system."
Also, the official name for the operation, "kalavi, כַּלָּבִיא" "like a lion," is very close to the word "kalbi כַּלבִּי," "canine." And Google Translate thinks that the original word also means "doghouse." In automatic translation, wackiness ensues.
The claims and statements that I hear blur. Countries blame each other for war crimes. Each warns the rest against rash action that will result in severe consequences. Each says that it controls the airspace above the other. Each says that it is going to destroy the other's nuclear capability, while insisting that it doesn't have any of its own. Each says that the people of the other are on the verge of rising up and changing their regime.
And, of course, the so-called Leader of the Free World seems to contradict himself several times within each single sentence (on the rare occasions that something he says actually resembles a full grammatical sentence). As I edit this, simultaneous headlines tell me that we're expecting him to make a decision within a day or two, while he's saying he'll make a decision within two weeks.
I go back downstairs after lunch to swap out my daily medications, get a Coke Zero from the machine, and visit Continual Care. My family there shows me an innovation: on the orders of some entity higher up, they now wear printed bracelets showing their name, National ID number, date of birth, health plan, location, and the facility's phone and fax numbers. Just in case.
The head of a major local sleep clinic reminds us of the long-term downsides of the sleep deprivation we're all experiencing. Right. I think if it weren't for the rhythm of the timing of meals, the muted camaraderie in the shelters, and my compulsive writing, I might be a total blob by now.
A local news site says that thousands of Israelis are expected to return via our local marina this weekend. It's next door to the ritzy hotel in which I once worked. I suspect there will be lots of rooms available, if needed. Tourism, reportedly, hasn't been great.
There are reports that hackers have shut down Iran's ATMs, credit card systems, and other networks, and wiped out their largest crypto system. They also took over Iranian TV to show footage of their own. It seems that we have somehow recruited Max Headroom.
As I head into my bathroom before supper, I see what look like orange flames emerging from the medicine cabinet. I stop, then gingerly approach. The mirrors show what's going on. The sun is setting outside my western windows on the opposite wall. The mirror's edges, cut at an angle, reflect its flare in a line between them. Nothing, except the sun, is burning. There's no new crisis here, for now.
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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.
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L'hitraot.