Fleeing a war zone 1: Jerusalem to Amman

From a war zone it’s easy to see

The sense in deciding to flee

Thanks, Iron Dome,

For helping me home

Through the Iranian Qassam missile spree.

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1-year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  After 3 Community Health years, I took temporary gigs in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  Since the pandemic, I worked telemedicine, a COVID-19 clinic, a VA clinic, and spots Texas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania.  Taking vacation from circuit-riding rural clinics in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, I went on vacation to Israel, and found myself in war zone.  Israel closed its airspace.  Grey Bull Rescues orchestrated our evacuation.

I’m Jewish.  I will not be writing about religion or politics.  See my post https://walkaboutdoc.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/why-i-dont-write-about-religion-politics-or-sex/

Saturday evening we went to sleep with the expectation of being called to busses at 9:00 AM but we were awakened to 4:30 AM with notice to leave the hotel at 7:00 AM 

We breakfasted at 6:00 AM and the 11 of us rolled our suitcases away from the youth hostel. 

We had clear, cloudless blue skies and perfect temperature, the streets quiet before the Jerusalem traffic wakes up, on our way down the hill.  We stopped at the ATM and the convenience store.

After a half-hour walk we came to a parking lot, the evacuation’s marshaling point, surrounded by construction and green space.

By 7:30 AM the crowd of 350 Americans fleeing Israel had gathered in the shade.  We could pick out the teenage Orthodox women in white shirts and long black skirts and teenage men in black trousers and white shirts and fringes dangling from undershirts. 

Other young people with conservative or not so conservative clothing, and a few families with very young babies.  Our Sioux City group separated out at the edge of the crowd.  

The sun ascended higher, the temperature warmed and the traffic noise picked up.  Two young New Yorkers with tsitsit approached the 4 men in our group with beer on the breaths and tefillin in their hands.  The Bible commands donning those phylacteries daily, but most Jewish men only did so when studying for their Bar Mitzva.  We agreed to do the ritual right there in the car park, one of us for the second time ever, the first the day before in the bomb shelter.  He’s a remarkable man, previously a combat medic in the Panama campaign, who has brought insight into the nature of Jewish suffering and mission.  

When they had gone, with half of us seated on the curb, still in the shade, near a cluster of Arab-driven taxis (full-sized passenger vans), the air raid warnings came to our phones.

By this time we’d all downloaded the Israeli app that divides the country into more than 1000 zones, and gives different levels of alert.  One says that you need to seek shelter in the next few minutes.

And there were 350 of us and not a shelter in sight.  So we watched off to the south, high in the sky.  The missiles leave a contrail.  At first there were only one or two, then there were 3 in parallel lines, followed by many more and all headed to Tel Aviv.  

When an Iron Dome missile hits an aggressor there’s a very bright flash, much like the flash of fireworks or the bright light of a welder or a sparkler lit in the day.  Bright despite the bright morning and the clear blue sky.  

Then came the other warning, saying Those Missiles Are Coming Right For You, Get The Hell Into A Shelter.  The sirens sounded.  That’s the warning we got.  It even includes instructions on what to do if you’re out in the open: lay face down on the ground and cover your head.

And I remembered the duck-and-cover drills from 3^rd grade.

So I went recumbent between two of the white passenger vans and looked up at the sky and watched the action till our combat veteran reproved me, gently, so I rolled over, covered my head with my hands, and looked at the pavement and listened to the explosions.  

Most of the crowd stood and stared at the sky, a brief, multi-million dollar spectacular of contrails and flashes, followed by chest-thumping booms.

The section of asphalt that I watched bored me, but I studied it until one of our party said, “It must be all clear.  The construction workers are going to work.”

Afterwards we stood or sat on the curb, and we chatted while the day warmed, the sun strengthened and the traffic picked up.  We moved with the shade, to the other side of the parking lot, until about 9:00 AM when the 6 nice new busses with AC pulled up.

We left Jerusalem in heavy, big-city traffic, passing through Arab East Jerusalem.  Crossing the city limits came as an emotional relief.  While Iranian missiles are notoriously inaccurate, the chance of getting hit went way down outside of a target city. 

Slices of Israeli life

In Be’er Sheva we went for a walk

I saw a grampa toting a Glock

Beyond urban creep

Are small flocks of sheep

But I don’t hear beef feed lot talk.

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1 year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out0of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  I followed 3 years Community Health Center work with more travel and adventures in temporary positions in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  2019 included hospitalist work in my home town and rural medicine in northern British Columbia.  Since the pandemic started, I did 10 months of telemedicine in my basement, staffed a COVID-19 clinic in southeast Iowa, visited family, attended funerals, and worked as a contractor for the Veterans Administration in South Dakota.  We recently traveled to Israel.

Because of travel and internet access problems, some posts are out of order.

We were walking in Be’er Sheva when we passed an apparent grandfather with an apparent grandson.  A few steps on I asked Bethany, “Was that a Glock 17?”

She shrugged.  “Maybe.  9mm anyway.”

Some of Be’er Sheva’s residents responded to the March 22 terror attack. In 8 minutes, a school teacher killed 3 people with a knife and 1 with a car.  The police arrived 4 minutes after an armed bus driver fatally stopped the slaughter.

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Most American cities have problems with homeless people struggling with substance abuse and mental illness.  Recent trips to Denver and San Francisco showed an alarming number of people who, if given the opportunity to press a button and come to contact with reality, would do so.

Schizophrenia should not be a death sentence, but in the US the severely mentally ill live 20 years less than the sane.   

We found alms seekers in Jerusalem, but not elsewhere.  They did not appear to be mentally ill. 

Israel has a very good medical care system, and as a society has done well taking care of the insane.

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Israeli cities have burgeoning populations of feral cats.  Citizens feed them, and they thrive on garbage where they can reach it.  There are no mice. 

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Between the cities I looked at crop land with an eye honed by decades of living in Iowa farm country.  I didn’t see the Iowa staples, corn and soybeans, probably because most of those harvests go into stock feed.  I saw hay in square bales, not the 1700 lb. (750 kg.) round bales we’re used to seeing at home.  We saw lots of well-tended vineyards and citrus groves. 

Israel now has around 60 producers that grow the vast majority of pineapples consumed in the country, on a total of a little more than a square mile, according to online research. 

We saw several herds of grazing sheep, generally less than 100 at a time, tended by a person with a dog.  Chicken and turkey remain mainstays of meat consumption.

A visit to the beach in Israel

In Hebrew I have limited speech

In Netanya when down at the beach

I saw a man with a pole

And I missed out on my goal:

For fishing he had something to teach.  

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1 year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out0of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  I followed 3 years Community Health Center work with more travel and adventures in temporary positions in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  2019 included hospitalist work in my home town and rural medicine in northern British Columbia.  Since the pandemic started, I did 10 months of telemedicine in my basement, staffed a COVID-19 clinic in southeast Iowa, visited family, attended funerals, and worked as a contractor for the Veterans Administration in South Dakota.  We recently traveled to Israel.

Because of travel and internet access problems, some posts are out of order.

We traveled to Jerusalem the Sunday after Passover.

Israel has very good public transportation.  We took the bus from Be’er Sheva; the train would route us through Tel Aviv.  We hadn’t counted on the heavy traffic of Easter Sunday.  Nor on the heavy pedestrian traffic in the Old City.

From the bus station we took the light rail to the edge of the Old City.  We joined the throngs and walked narrow streets polished by uncountable number of shoes.  I worry that people will slip and fall during the rare rains.  Not a problem during our stay. 

Our visit to the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, evoked a depth of emotion I hadn’t expected, and which I cannot explain. 

Afterwards, at the opposite side of the plaza, I chatted in Spanish with a Jewish family from Mexico City.  When asked, I told them I come from Sioux City, Iowa, but I didn’t stick around to explain why I speak Spanish.   

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Two days later, Adam, our son-in-law, took us to the beach in Netanya.  I found the water cold (not as thrillingly cold as my swim in Barrow: https://walkaboutdoc.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/the-tourists-tundra-tour-a-visit-to-browers-cafe-and-a-polar-bear-plunge/) and the shells in the sand unfriendly.  I didn’t go in further than my navel.  On ramp up from the beach, we chatted with a man carrying a fishing pole. 

I don’t have enough Hebrew to do the fisherman’s banter that starts with “You doin’ any good?” I could do no better than “You pull out fish?”  That casual sportsman’s conversation thinly masks the desire to get better at angling.  I couldn’t learn anything about how to fish the Mediterranean.

We ate at a restaurant owned by a Jewish French-Israeli family.  For French, Adam has fluent, I have very rough, and Bethany understands pretty well. 

Different immigrants tend to different places in Israel, and judging from signage and the language heard in the street, France sent a lot of people to Netanya. 

A lot of Israelis take time off during the 8-day Passover holiday and travel inside and outside the country.  Netanya’s crowds reminded me of Estes Park, Colorado, in the summer: shoulder-to-shoulder pedestrians, but in Israel without the elk, and 5 critical blocks of heaviest traffic had no cars. 

I’m Jewish and I visited Israel. I don’t write about politics, religion, or sex. See https://walkaboutdoc.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/why-i-dont-write-about-religion-politics-or-sex/

Passover in Israel

Was the Exodus orchestrated by Heaven?

To remember, we avoid any leaven.

Spelt, barley and oats

Wheat and rye’s gluten coats

We don’t eat for days one plus seven.

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa. In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and honoring a 1 year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand. I followed 3 years Community Health Center work with further travel and adventures in temporary positions in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  2019 included hospitalist work in my home town and rural medicine in northern British Columbia.   Since the pandemic started, I did 10 months of telemedicine in my basement, staffed a COVID-19 clinic in southeast Iowa, more telemedicine, visited family, attended 4 funerals, worked 12 weeks as a contractor for the Veterans Administration in South Dakota, and traveled to Israel.

I’m Jewish, and I traveled to Israel during Passover.

To find out why I don’t write about politics, religion, or sex, please read https://walkaboutdoc.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/why-i-dont-write-about-religion-politics-or-sex/.

Bethany and I haven’t visited Israel for 2 years, but the Jewish urge to be in the Holy Land during Passover goes back more than 3000 years.  Neither us has celebrated the holiday there until now.  But for all of our lives, every years we say, Next Year in Jerusalem. 

Our daughter lives in Be’er Sheva, not in Jerusalem.  Jerusalem proper goes to chaos for the Jewish holiday and for the Christian Easter that immediately follows. 

(Not all Christians celebrate Easter at the same time, which, sometimes leads to problems.)

We had a lovely seder in Be’er Sheva.  Our daughter honored me by asking me to lead, even though her Hebrew is much better than mine, and Bethany’s Jewish learning exceeded mine until recently. 

I love the Passover story because of its universal relevance.

Sooner or later each person will find themselves re-enacting the Exodus as an individual. Things change: maybe a partner crosses the line from binge drinking to alcoholic, may the good boss gets replaced by the jerk.  The circumstances (geographic, emotional, financial, personal, work, home) become constricted; the Hebrew word for Egypt: Mitzrayim, meaning narrowings.  Successful redemption demands personal action, and frequently requires leadership and help (sometimes, Help).  Redemption never comes easily, and not everyone accepts the opportunity.  The urge to return will tempt the wandering redeemed, who will also face the tension between moral turpitude and moral compass. 

If all works well, we learn, grow, and strengthen.  We come to a set of conclusions having to do with personal integrity.  If we follow those, we come to the land of milk and honey.

On the second day of the 8-day holiday we visited Jerusalem.

Due to travel and internet access, some posts will appear out of order.