Bugs in Israel

There's a war going on, if you haven't noticed, and my job is the job of the average Israeli, to listen to the orders of the Home Front Command when the phone goes off to warn that a missile is heading toward Israel. Get into a miklat or a mamad, get to one of these two bomb shelters. 

A miklat is a large shelter in the basement or lobby of a multi-unit building. FD and I share ours with thirty others, cheerful Israelis, many of them from France originally. When the alarm on our phones go off, or when we hear a siren we meet down there. 

A mamad is in one’s apartment or home, a sealed off room—iron clad, steel-locked. Bomb proof.

But wait. We are talking about a different war, one more personal to me, the war against a particular bug.

No, I am not talking about a recording device that a spy might plant inside a telephone, a pager, or a flower pot. I'm talking about . . . the cockroach. I didn't want to shout it to the world, that could be an invitation of sorts. Irrational? Yes, of course. But best not to give them power by naming them.

We may have discussed these creatures in a previous post, or was that spiders? Whatever, the post was about phobias, pretty sure. Not that I have a phobia. Let's just say that beneath this calm Zen exterior is a terrific dislike for bugs. I just don't want to share my space with them. Is this selfish? I guess so. 

Seeing the creature, and it is large, okay, after my obligatory eek FD says to me, 'It's just a bug.' 

'Come on,' I cry. 'The thing is up there, almost at the ceiling. It's creepy!'

My hero gets a bucket and a broom, sweeps away the feared SOB and lets it go outside. 

'Really? You didn't kill it?! He knows where we live!'

'You can't just kill things.'

Oh but I can.

When we first moved into our apartment in Israel I happened to mentioned to my daughter that I had seen one in my bedroom, a dead one. She remarked. 'Get used to it. They are a part of living here. Didn't want to mention it, sorry.' 

Sheez. Just looking at that guy in that picture makes me want to murder him even more. And the opportunity is lost. 

But I guess FD is correct. Killing a bug is murder, premeditated, too.  It is snuffing out a life. I have murderous instincts, not exactly a surprise, but a scary thought.

These are the moments one asks oneself: What would my mom have done? 

I'm pretty sure she would have used a shoe. 

I've often asked myself, too, what she would think of this war, that we are here in the middle of the conflict,  as is her granddaughter and her family, as is her grandson and his, and another on the way, all of us running into bomb shelters when the missiles fly in our direction. Would she be proud? Or angry?

My parents were Zionists. They knew all there is to know about antisemitism, how the world really needs someone to kick, to blame, and that somebody is always the Jews. They were firm Zionists but never considered moving here. They felt safe in the USA. Would they still feel safe today? Probably. 

They would also probably have said, 'Come home.'

And I would have said no. I am home. 

I wouldn't have mentioned the cockroach thing.

To a speedy, peaceful ending to the conflict.  

Shabbat shalom,

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