Cherries & bombs

  Sunrise from the top of an IDF outpost.

Israel surprised me. Six weeks after flying into Tel Aviv, my expectations lay in shattered pieces on the ground. This place is beautiful, stressful, peaceful and intimidating all in the same breath. 

The Golan Heights, the beautiful northern region bordering Lebanon and Syria, was my initial destination. Moshav Odem, where I lived for four weeks, is described by the owner of the local hostel as, “an island of peace in an ocean of chaos.”

The tiny, fenced community is alive with families and visitors. Cherry orchards, a crop shared by Druze and settlers both, and the Odem Nature Preserve surround the Moshav, resting at the base of Mt. Odem and an unoccupied Israeli Defense Force base. High elevations ensure mild weather, warm during the day and cool at night. Cherry crops ripen in early summer, drawing crowds from across Israel traveling to harvest the fruit and stop at the winery. The wine, oh the wine! I can never buy seven dollar bottles from the gas station again, I’m ruined for it. The place is truly a patch of heaven.

This reality is cracked by a massive explosion waking you up at 5 a.m., and you remember you’re on an island. The ocean of chaos surrounding the Moshav seeps in through the gates as IDF training awakens residents with shelling and explosions, and sometimes the sound of bombing in Syria makes its way in as well. Every IDF soldier I have spoken with has spent time training in the Golan, and these exercises are not uncommon. I hear of concerns the war in Syria might spill over, but the locals do not live in the shadow of this threat.  They live peacefully, and without a sense of urgency. 

One clear night I went to the border to watch fighting between forces within Syria. We stood on the edge of an unoccupied IDF base set at a high elevation on a hill looking down into the valley. A soft wind hummed through the towering skeleton of quiet communications infrastructure weighted down in the heavy concrete base.

The silhouette of a cityscape glowed far in the background, buildings leaning over quiet streets. Flashes of light sporadically crisscrossed in the darkness across the valley, the sign of tracers marking the direction shots are fired. Something sparked a grassfire below us, slowly spreading before coming to a pause. From a distance, it all moves slowly, with intermittent periods of calm. I thought of the fighters that might be sleeping in camps, maybe lying awake. I thought of the civilians caught in the crossfire, wondering how many remained in the city.

Another car parked next to ours. My eyes absorbed the layers of light creating depth back into the valley, wondering why it was so important to see this, certainly not for the entertainment value. Bearing witness is grueling. Standing there twisted my mind into an uncomfortable position. 

Standing there, unable to respond to my own humanity was just…weird. There was nothing I could do, people dying within sight and I could do nothing. The subtly of the violence when observing from a distance obstructed my grasp of what I knew was occurring.