At war's doorstep

Air raid sirens screeched in the background late Sunday at nearly 11:25 p.m. Israel local time, as IU graduate student Shayna Rudolph sat alone in her reinforced room in the small town of Afula, Israel -- located in the northern third of the country. As the sirens faded off, replaced by the faint sounds of ambulance horns, she did not know if her once safe town was about to be the target of the barrage of rocket fire Hezbollah forces in Lebanon have launched into Israel during the past few days. \n"The sirens are scary," Rudolph said just moments after the siren and ambulance horns became silent. "I don't know where or if something has happened. I guess now I'm officially in a warzone."\nAt about 5:30 p.m. Sunday Eastern Standard time -- a half-hour after the sirens went off and Rudolph hung up the phone after being interviewed for this story -- CNN and other news agencies reported that Rudolph's hometown of Afula was in fact hit by Hezbollah's rockets, marking what the Israeli military is now saying is the farthest south the rockets have reached during the renewed fighting during the past week. \nCurrently living in Israel for part of the summer and working an internship as part of an Israeli college's library science program, she said immediately following the sirens that it was the first and only time they have gone off in her town, as it has been thought previously by many to be out of the range of most of Hezbollah's rockets. But she said this is what many other cities had wrongly assumed throughout the weekend as missile fire had been launched the deepest into the country in decades. \nTalking over the phone before the sirens went off, Rudolph said her fears had gradually gone down since the escalation of the fighting began on Wednesday, but that is something that may have changed now. \nWhile Rudoph's experience is typical of thousands of Israelis who face the threat of attack throughout the northern region of the country, elsewhere IU students currently in Israel who are slightly more removed from the fighting are attempting to deal with the attacks. And for many of them, it is just another lesson in adapting to the Israeli lifestyle. \n"While things in the North are stressed, it is life as normal here in Jerusalem," junior Sara Rips, who is currently staying in Jerusalem for an intensive Hebrew language program for part of the summer, said in an e-mail. "Unfortunately, this is life here in Israel." \nThis 'normalcy', however, is used in a relative term for residents of a country who must live under the constant and real threat of attack, and who have seen a painfully long history of bloodshed and violence. \n"In Israel life goes on," sophomore Hannah Osofsky, who is volunteering with Israel's Red Cross, said in an e-mail. "Even when there is a terrorist attack at a restaurant, café or club people don't stop living." \nWorking in Israel for the summer as a counselor for a program associated with the Union for Reform Judaism and directly responsible for supervising 39 kids visiting with the program, senior Rachel Schonwald in addition to Osofsky and Rips said she has not felt she has been in any real danger while being outside of the northern cities currently under attack. She said Israelis deal with the crisis by not letting it disrupt their lives, and thus not letting the terrorists achieve their goals. \nWhile most of the IU students said their daily lifestyles have not been disrupted for the most part, the repercussions of the conflict will still affect them in different ways. \nSchonwald said they decided her group of kids will remain in Israel, but said she had been just informed that because of rocket attacks in the northeastern town of Tiberias, they will no longer be able to go north beyond Zikron Ya'akov and Afula. \n"This mean the kids won't see the Galilee or Golan," she said. "But safety comes first." \nWhile Rips said once the fighting broke out she contemplated leaving early, she said has always felt safe being so far away from the fighting. But she added she still worries about her friends in the North and has been in contact with them to make sure they are safe. Osofsky said she knows of friends who have departed early because of the conflict and many of her fellow Red Cross volunteers are being moved to safer cities or even leaving the country altogether. \nOsofsky had planned to attend a sand castle competition Monday in the northern Israel city of Haifa, located just 30 miles from the Lebanon border, but changed her mind after receiving word of rocket attacks in the city early Sunday, which killed at least eight and injured scores more.\n"These numbers are a little scary," she said. "And although I'm not scared of the situation in Israel and in Haifa, that doesn't mean that I have to go looking for danger." \nCiting the reason she was so confident in her own safety, Osofsky said the high amount of security precautions by the government and military makes it hard for most attacks to succeed. In addition, she said every building in the country is required to have a bomb shelter and every citizen and tourist has a gas mask in case of chemical or biological attacks. \n"The difficulty is, however, that the threat (now) is coming from the air, so it is hard to stop," Osofsky said. "The people living in those cities that were bombed have been advised to go into the bomb shelters during certain times, and they are warned by loud sirens." She added she is not afraid of the bombs because the missile warning systems work very well and the bomb shelters are very well constructed.\nWhile international reactions to whether Israel's attacks can be justified are mixed, each of the three IU students lobbied on the side that the actions of Hezbollah and Hamas that provoked Israel are to blame, but also said they hope civilian lives on both ends will be spared. \n"Israel had every right to retaliate against those terrorists that kidnapped the Israeli soldiers and bombed the tank," Osofsky said. "That act in itself is an act of war, that cannot be ignored. I do not want unnecessary bloodshed, and I hope the bombings (in Lebanon) stop soon, but not before Israel gets their soldiers back." \nRips extended the blame for the attacks on Israel to other nations, which have been rumored in the press and international community to be at least partly involved in the violence. \n"I believe that the Hezbollah and Hamas attacks on Israel are unacceptable," Rips said. "I believe that both organizations were probably provoked by Syria and Iran, and that they would have never done this without the backing of those two countries." \nIf the war continues to rage further and the violence spreads, causing the participants of her program to be sent home, Schonwald said she intends to stay in the country and volunteer either for the Israeli army or another organization to help the effort. \n"I feel that this is my time to step up and help Israel any way that I can," she said.