Airlift

October 8th 2023

To say that things have been happening is perhaps a bit of an understatement. But let's flash back just a little bit:

Five days ago, we were in Jerusalem touring the temple mount, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and frequent flashpoint in tensions between Jews and Muslims. Just as the visiting hours for tourists were ending, we saw a group of maybe 15 orthodox Jews walking across the areal, surrounded by at least as many heavily armed Israeli police. Looking back, what we saw here most likely was one of, if not the first of the provocative tours of the mount that some ultranationalist Jews had been taking for the past week (this, of course, is only a tiny puzzle piece in the mosaic of provocation and escalation that has been going on on both sides for well over 50 years now).

Two days ago we crossed over into Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem, chatting with our Taxi driver about the conflict and how he still had hope that the wall would come down. And while he did apparently try to relate to us saying we as Germans should understand, since Hitler also had his problems with the Jews, he did end on a high note explaining that right now everybody was just getting home for the weekend, with Friday and Saturday being Muslim and Jewish holidays, respectively.
And today, well, today we wake up to news of initial rocket strikes against Jerusalem (where we were a few days ago) and Tel Aviv (where we were going today) from the Gaza strip. Our host-to-be messages us with instructions on how to get to the closest rocket shelter. We debate a few options — stay here in the north, go to Tel Aviv anyway, or evacuate. Half an hour later, as Israel prepares for a state of war, we have boarding passes for a cheap flight out to Istanbul, packed our bags, and are hitting the road towards the airport.

The radio plays Mazzy Star's fade into you, occasionally interrupted by ominous Hebrew code announcements calling some or another reservist group into action. Some of said reservists we pass waiting on bus stops all along the route, others have claimed the left lane, going well over the speed limit with their hazard lights on.
But traffic flows well and a little over an hour later we get to the airport, where everything feels almost disturbingly normal. Car drop-off is quick and they still sell us overpriced hummus, but everyone has their eyes on the news. Throughout the airport, large signs have been posted pointing into the raw concrete guts of the building towards the nearest rocket shelters.
Most flights are delayed, but we get to board eventually and by 16:30, we are out. A teen on my right spends the entire flight playing the trashiest mobile games imaginable while simultaneously watching netflix, and all attempts to placate the girl in front of me with 50€ worth of in-flight snacks continue to fail.
Just as we touch down in Istanbul, sirens are going off at Ben Gurion airport, and a CNN video shows passengers taking shelter laying down on the airfield.

When we wake up the next morning, there is news of (sparse, small scale) attacks in the Golan heights from Lebanon. A video shows a rocket hitting what looks a lot like a radar station that we saw just yesterday, one hill over from the observation point we visited. It's likely not the same one, but in either case it can't have been much more than 20km away.

Our would-be AirBnB host from Tel Aviv messages us that a member of his extended family has been abducted into Gaza the day before.

It takes a while for all this to sink in, for us to realize how close things were, and to process this insane privilege that we just get to leave like that. I still scroll the news compulsively and I still feel very weird about it all.

Until better days,
this was going somewhere, Israel.

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