The Day the Missles Began to Fall

Michael R. Kelsen '90 is currently studying in Israel and wrote this report for The Crimson. It was subject to Israeli military censorship.

Friday, January 18 2:15 a.m., Jerusalem

I am jolted out of bed by a deafening air raid siren. I flip on army radio to get a report and then run to the living room to peek out the window, which overlooks the western suburb of Ramot. I suddenly feel the "swoosh" of supersonic jet-wash that has become familiar to all Israelis.

The Civil Defense authorities break into the radio broadcast to announce that an attack is underway and that all citizens should don their masks and move to the "Heder Ha'atum" (the one room in the house that citizens had previously, at the start of the Gulf War, been instructed to seal against chemical attack with foam and nylon sheeting). There we are to await further instructions from the army. "This is not," barks the Haga (Civil Defense authority) spokesperson, "a drill or an exercise." I put on my mask and place my anti-nerve gas injector and my mustard gas powder next to me on the bed. The civil defense announcements are now coming over in English, Russian, French, Spanish and Amharics (Ethiopian language). It has been less than two minutes since the siren first sounded.

4:20 a.m.

The all-clear siren just sounded. We take off our masks as army radio announces that multiple conventional Scuds had indeed struck at the "center" and the "north" of the country, a euphamism that every Isreali knew to mean Tel Aviv and Haifa repectively. No report on casualties yet. I am in a state of shock. It doesn't seem real that I could be abruptly awakened in the middle of the night and forced to hide in a sealed room wearing a suffocating gas mask. The Gulf War has come to Israel.

4:30 p.m.

I just got off the phone with Vernon Loeb, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Jerusalem correspondent. During out five minute conversation he asked, "Do you speak Hebrew?"

"Pretty well," I said.

"Good. Be at the Jerusalem Hotel in half an hour," Loeb said. "Bring clothes for a week and your gas mask. we're going to Tel Aviv."

At least, I think to myself, I am no longer unemployed.

5:05 p.m.

I am driving west with Vernon and two photographers--Ze'ev, a freelancer, and Mike Rondow, from the Knight-Ridder chain--on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. the busiest artery in Israel is deserted save for a few military jeeps whose drivers and passengers are dressed in combat-chemical suits. Vernon asks me what to do in case we are attacked on the highway. As if I know. But as a true Harvard son I give him an answer anyway. He then begins to talk about story ideas. I tune him out as my stomach begins to turn him out as my stomach begins to turn over. I begin to have second thoughts about having come.

6:30 p.m.

We check into the Tel Aviv Hilton, a five star hotel on the beach that houses the foreign press corps in the city. The lobby is bustling with reporters wearing gas masks around their necks.

9:30 p.m.

The siren sounds and we all dash to the sixth floor of the hotel, which has been designated the shelter for the duration of the attack. The hallways are jammed with guests from the other 20 floors. The air is thick with perspiration, and children cry as parents try to force masks onto the petrified youngsters. Many people are shaking. Some pray. Most just wait and stare at the ceiling. I have my Walkman tuned to army radio and wait impatuently for an update. The all clear siren sounds 45 minutes later. It was a false alarm.

1:45 a.m.

I have three beers with Vernon to calm the nerves and go to sleep.

Saturday January 19, Tel Aviv 7:15 a.m.

The air raid siren sounds even louder, it seems, than it had yesterday morning. People are shouting "Tilim, tilim (missiles, missiles)!!" in the hallways. Army radio is on instantly. The routine is the same. Masks and down to the sealed room. I am about out the door headed down to 6, when Ze'ev and Mike (the two cameramen) rush into our room. 1424. They head straight for the balcony. I can't believe it. These guys want to take pictures of a missile attack from the open-air balcony! "You guys are fucking crazy," I said. "We've got to get out of here." They aren't interested. "Mike," calls Vern, "see what you can get on the radio." I figure I'll give him a quick update and then run downstairs. I walk out on the balcony to tell him there is still no hard information. Before me is the vast expanse of greater Tel Aviv, known as the Gush Dan region. Not a thing in sight is moving. "Come on baby, come on baby," the photographers mumble, their cameras cocked and focused, fingers on the shutter release. Just then the first SCUD comes in in. The explosion rocks the hotel. The glass shakes, the balcony shudders. A plume of smoke and debris shoots up 400 feet at a site about one and a half miles west by southwest of the hotel. "Boom," another explosion, from the north. "Holy shit, holy shit," screams the photographers as autowinder race furiously. "I've got three confirmed hits," Vernon says over the phone to the Inquirer in Philadelphia. As a chopper hovers over the site, Army radio announces that the attack was conventional. I pull of my mask and discover that I had been sweating like a marathoner. I have just witnessed a missile attack on Tel Aviv.

7:20 a.m.

Just as the all-clear sounded, Vernon grabs me and we race downstairs to our car. "We're gonna be the first ones at that missle site," he proclaims. We jump into the little green rented Mitsubishi with the words "Foreign press" written on the doors in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. We race in the direction that we had seen the first missle land, falling in behind a fleet of ambulances and army jeeps that led us right to the spot where the SCUD had landed.

7:35 a.m.

We pull up to the sidewalk and come to a screeching halt. the street, as far as the eye could see, is littered with debris--shards of glass, plastic window shades and pieces of twisted, gray shrapnel. All the buildings are pockmarked, scratched up. Dazed residents pour out of their houses, many still in their pajamas. The police work quickly to seal off the area of impact.

7:45 a.m.

A large sedan pulls up and out jumps Tel Aviv mayor Shlomo Lahad. Pols never miss a beat. In tow, oddly enough, is Zubin Mehta, the director of Israel's Philharmonic Orchestra. Lahad's presence has a powerful effect on the residents of the area. They seem to regain their bearings as he parades confidently around an area that 20 minutes ago had been filled with deadly flying metal. He jokes with them, saying "Saddam did you a favor. Now the city will give you brand new homes." The crowd erupted in laughter.

8:00 a.m.

The press that had arrived, now numbering about 30, follows the mayor around like puppy dogs. We turn a corner, and before us are the mangled remains of a community center. At the base of the center's outer wall, there is a crater 16 feet deep and 25 feet long. The two foot thick concrete walls of the center's bomb shelter have been disenterred and cracked into an infinite number of tiny pieces. Steel rods, separated from the concrete walls they had once reinforced, are strewn all over the place. Soldiers are down in the crater, exhuming shrapnel.

8:15 a.m.

"Let's talk to some people," says Vernon. We move back out to the street. A little boy wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle T-shirt taps me on the leg. He asks me if I am a reporter. "I guess," I tell him. "Tov, zeh heleck may ha-til [This is part of the missile]," he says, as he produces a contorted burned SCUD remain, "Birtzinut? [Is it really]", I ask, "Betach! [of course]" he responds, very matter of factly.

8:22 a.m.

One old lady, Sara, 70, calls to us with tears in her eyes. Her husband Shlomo is inside and can't move. We walk into a three room flat. There is Shlomo, on the bed he bed he had been in when the missle hit. He is covered with the glass that had shattered from the window above him. His eyes are wide open as he looks around nervously. He peers at me, sees my green army pants and asked If I was from the Defense Ministry. I tell him I'm not but that I'd help him up. He begins to explain to me what the explosion had felt like in his home, which was about 50 yards from ground zero. His ears are still ringing, he says, and I have to shout so he can hear me. Vernon writes furiously. "Yihiye beseder [it will be fine]," I try to reassure the Cohens. Then the medics come in and take them away.

8:50 a.m.

It has now been only an hour and 35 minutes since we heard the first siren at the Hilton. We continue to talk to people, all of whom express outrage at having been targeted by the Iraqis. "Why are they trying to kill our children and not our soldiers?" is a common refrain. All of them are sure that the IDF and the IAF could make short work of the coward who attacks innocents in their homes. "That son of a bitch," one old woman calls him. Anger and indignation, not fear, is the dominant emotion here. In classic Mideastern fashion, people grab me by the shirt lapels as they make their points. Many compare Saddam to Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Like Eichmann, whom the Israelis captured, tried and executed in the '60s, so too would Saddam be punished for attacking innocent Jews, they vow.

9:03 a.m.

As we head toward the car, calm returns to the neighborhood. The IDF, police and civil defense units go efficiently about their business--assessing damage to property, evacuating people recently rendered homeless, treating the wounded and comforting the shaken. Army radio announces that ten were wounded in the three missile landings that morning. As we are about to get in the car to locate the other impact sites, I speak to a man wearing a large black Kippa (skull cap). "You know, one Arab state attacks another, the Americans and the Europeans declare war and we pay the price. It's all very absurd," he notes wryly. Indeed it is.