My Confusion and I

Where were you when the siren went off? That's a question you get asked often at the moment if you've been in Israel recently. Where was I the first time I experienced the siren? I was talking to my parents on skype with my 1 and a half year old nephew playing beside me. I was babysitting him. My brother-in-law had prepared a bag for my nephew just in case the alarm went off. I was oblivious. The alarm wouldn't go off in the center of Israel right? I didn't realise how wrong I was. Around 16.30 I heard a noise from outside. I told my mum to hang on a second so I could open the window and listen out for the siren. I've been to Israel many times but I haven't actually experienced it before so I didn't know how loud it would be. I heard a distant siren and was relieved, I didn't have to disturb my little nephew but then it became louder. The siren wasn't avoidable anymore. It was like when your alarm clock goes off right in your ear, you want to preten...

I am a volunteer in Magen David Adom, the ambulance service in Israel. Usually this means helping old people that aren't really that ill to get to the hospital, sometimes taking care of drunk people lying in the street but mostly sitting waiting on the station to get call to something interesting. However, the situation has changed the last week. Israel has been under attack with rockets fired from Gaza. This has happened before when I have been in Israel but I have never really been affected until this time. The rockets are reaching further up North than before which means that the red alert alarm has gone off in Petach Tikva, where I live, and we've been sent down to the bomb shelter in Netanya. It has even got to the point where the dispatcher in Netanya has moved down to the bomb shelter. So how has this affected me? This meant me making a choice, do I stay in my flat to keep safe or do I continue the shifts as if nothing happened? To me the choice was obvious, as soon as ...

For the people that have followed my blog for a while now has probably seen my pattern; I find something I can have  rant about and then rant about it for a few hundred words or so. This time it is the World Cup. If you just fell on to the earth you might have missed that the World Cup in football is currently going on but even if that was the case you probably would catch up on it before you even realise you are on earth. Everything is influenced by this tournament that is suppose to determine which country plays football the best. A whole world is watching 22 men running around on grass chasing a ball. Don't get me wrong, I love football but we tend to forget that there are other things in the world. This is a common occurrence when there is some kind of competition between countries. The focus is on being the best. It makes me wonder if the problem in this world isn't the violence, it's the need we have to always win. It seems like there is a constant competition and w...