"And bombs bursting in air:" a weekend of unusual mortal danger for my family. UPDATED.

[DFW]

43. First talk with our daughter this morning. Sounded like an action movie screenplay.

Some intense juggling went back and forth, but they finally allowed a couple of Lufthansa planes to land from Germany, and that‘s how they got home. If the Palestinians had any surface-to-air missiles, they were smart enough to not use them on passenger planes of European airlines.

The sister of our daughter‘s S.O. is still stuck there, as her flight was later. Apparently Hezbollah launched some attacks this morning from Lebanon, so this was obviously more coordinated than previously thought.

One of their Israeli friends was at some big celebration near the Gaza border. There were something like 4000 people there, and this where the killing and abduction of many Israelis took place. He got to his car, but two armed Hamas guys blocked his way. Rather than risk whatever it was they were planning to do with him, he ran them over. His car was a mess, but at least he escaped and made it home alive. He said he was pretty sure they did not.

I‘ve never been to Israel, but I have been told Tel Aviv is a modern, European-style city. It is hard to imagine that this kind of thing happens less than a two hour drive away, or that they have to be prepared for missiles to fall on them at any moment. My Ukraine-based nephew is in the same situation to some degree, minus the abductions and hostage-taking.

Having escaped the Vietnam War, the closest I have come to anything like this was missing some terror bombings of European airports (Frankfurt, Brussels), but I was never in the thick of it. When I have grandchildren ages 3 and 5 having to go through this, I remember the expression, „it‘s the nature of the beast,“ and have to reflect upon just how little, for all our technological sophistication, we have evolved from being beasts, all the more dangerous for their sophistication. Someone has to do the planning, recruit the attackers, train them, finance their weapons, do the indoctrination, legitimize the cruelty. What blows me away is that so many people find this preferable to going up to the border fence and telling the people on the other side, „hey, let‘s not do this.“