A triathlete friend once told me, confidentially, that he straps on his heart rate monitor while in bed with his partner, to measure his pulse during sex. He updated me this week that he's found a new use for the toy, now that his work-out routine has been disrupted: he still wears it to bed, but now monitors his heart rate running to take shelter when the rocket siren sounds in Tel Aviv. In his mid-40s, he's managed to get it up to an impressive 180, and can sprint to the stairwell in just 23 seconds (including transition time of putting on pants and glasses). It turns out nothing improves interval speed quite like dodging rockets.
On the surface, Tel Aviv seems normal. The cafes are packed with hipsters and their dogs, top Israeli musicians grace the stages of the city's concert halls, and pedestrians still mill the streets as usual, on their way to work or to shop or to get a coffee.
Like the tide on our Mediterranean shores, however, the calm can be deceiving. Traffic has been noticeably lighter these last few weeks, cyclists have chosen to cancel their weekend rides on the empty roads for lack of shelter if a rocket strikes, and the beach that usually hums and booms mid-July is practically empty. Neil Young canceled his much-accoladed show this week, not as a boycott, but rather at the request of producers and the Home Front Command, fearing that rockets might be fired during his open air venue endangering the 20,000 or spectators who planned to attend the event.
"How much money have you saved on concerts this month now that nobody will appear in Tel Aviv?" a friend recently asked me. The answer is, a lot. When war rages, mostly outside of our borders, normal life is disrupted.
It's not Neil Young that I seek, though the idea of seeing this musician who sound-tracked my life as a teenager excited me; it's the freedom to live as I usually do in between wars – light, easy, sun-kissed. War rages in Gaza, nearly 300 dead so far, and my personal experience in the bubble of Tel Aviv is not immediate death, but rather fear and trepidation of what may come, a rocket or two a day, none fatal. As another triathlete friend recently said: 'Worst case scenario, you'll be injured and unable to run'. Indeed, this is the worst case scenario in my Tel Aviv under fire. I stick to the other side of the beach road when I run, where the buildings double as shelter (and shade from the burning sun).
Many Tel Aviv residents will harrumph, and wave away concerns from their friends abroad, saying it's not going to hit here and there's nothing to worry about, but the fear and the trepidation has taken its toll on everyone.
The pressure is on, it can be felt everywhere, but most people prefer to ignore the emotions bubbling beneath their bravado. This generalization of course does not apply to everyone, not to the poor families of the city's south, which don't stand in line with the leftist majority of the city, or the migrants, that have boosted the number of residents of our neighborhoods, fleeing from one war zone to the next, but it is the overwhelming experience here of the majority - the young and the cosmopolitan, those whose roots and future are in this city.
The war is on everybody's minds. The rockets get all of our heart rates rising, no matter what the likelihood of them hitting us and no matter if we are measuring with a fancy watch. Everyone has a friend, if not 10, called up for reserves, either awaiting entry to Gaza or one of the tens of thousands already inside.
In this bubble of ours, where anti-war and anti-occupation protests are the most prominent political expressions of those who do choose to acknowledge that we are at war, Tel Aviv residents are coping with the most effective weapon we have: humor. Black humor, as war requires. This is a city of pundits and humorists: from the pot-smoking 21-year-old just back from India to the 61-year-old artist sitting at the legendary Café Tamar, everybody has something to say.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his extreme right-wing deputy defense minister, Danny Danon, for opposing a cease-fire and threatening to quit if it happened, the internet exploded with memes and jokes: 'Hamas' greatest victory', one internet analyst wrote, 'is getting rid of Danon'. 'I wonder if the army will bulldoze his home,' wrote another. When an unnamed Israeli official told the BBC on Thursday that a cease-fire had been consolidated and was imminent, the blogosphere was quick to chime in: 'That official is Danon. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet'.
Chaim Levinson, a colleague of mine at Haaretz and master of one-liners, has shot off some of the best zingers so far this war: From harping on the worried mother calling for animal-rights activists to intervene in the brutal death of a bird shot down amid an Iron Dome interception to comments on supermarket behavior – 'people are packing it in now, like there's a war, I keep trying to explain, it's just a clearance sale (Hebrew cognate for military operation)' - the expression of distance from the reality experienced by our southern neighbors is clear.
A ground operation is underway in Gaza, more than 160 sites have been hit with a target on the tunnels that run from north to south, hiding Hamas' infrastructure, its headquarters and its depots. More than a thousand rocket have been fired at Israel, raining on its south at more frequency than any winter storm. The death toll has reached nearly 300 in Gaza and two in Israel, a soldier and a civilian.
The bubble of Tel Aviv is aware of these developments, fears them, and is trying as hard as it can to remain detached. This war can last another two weeks, if not more; our friends are on the front, and our summer is lost. At least there is humor, to keep our heads above the frothy waters, as Gaza burns, our south fears for its life, and we run to shelter every day. Here in Tel Aviv, life is at best normal, just interrupted. Maybe we will even be able to swim beyond the local currents soon and return to life as we know it. Until then, we can only hope for cease-fire.
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