We’re meeting the jeep operators in Kiryat Shmona. I’ve joined a Hadassah Medical Center solidarity mission of women and men from the United States, and today I feel like a tourist myself in my own country.
I haven’t toured our North since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023.
Not even Haifa.
Returning to Israel's North
A warm feeling of recognition, admiration, and relief comes over me as I enter Israel’s third-largest city. I’m using public transportation, but I turn on Waze and am relieved that it’s working. I’d heard that Waze was suspended during the war for security reasons, when hundreds of rockets fell on Haifa.
The funicular underground Carmelit (opened in 1959) is running, as are the Rakvalit cable cars (opened in 2021). There are internal neighborhood minibuses and even ferries in Israel’s largest port.
I take the Metrolit, a large bus that is part of the rapid transportation system (opened in 2012). I admire the name, chosen from among 500 suggestions in a public competition. It combines the Hebrew word matronit (“a respectable woman”) with “metropolitan.” As a Jerusalemite, I feel a stab of envy for the efficiency of the transportation here.
Looking around, I don’t see a single wild boar, which have been a bane to Haifa’s growing population of 1.2 million.
I join the group, who are enjoying an Israeli breakfast despite jet lag; several have come from the distant time zones of California, Illinois, and Indiana.
First stop is the parking lot of the BIG shopping mall in Kiryat Shmona. The lot is full – a welcome sight – but only a few restaurants have reopened. Here is the lauded branch of the Shufersal Group that has remained open through thick and thin since Oct. 7, 2023, despite the shelling and evacuation of most city residents.
The Pizza Hut owner is working alone, struggling to fill the many orders, chopping tomatoes for Greek salad, and baking traditional and gluten-free pizza in the oven.
“I can’t get any workers,” he says, apologizing for the delays. Most of the potential employees in the area have not yet returned. The largest café in the mall is shuttered. The owner reportedly has moved to Tel Aviv, where he opened a more profitable café.
A fleet of jeeps is waiting. The driver/guide, 60-year-old Ilan Hadar, helps me into the closed jeep, which I share with five American tourists. Hadar studied graphic design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and is a part-time musician. After living in Mitzpe Ramon in the South, he moved north to Merom Golan, a kibbutz closer to the Syrian border than the Lebanese one, he notes. The sounds of explosions and airplanes above have become common. The kibbutz has been targeted several times.
Just as this tour is a mix of personal stories and geopolitics, it’s also a mix of viewing destruction and beauty. Many houses in Kiryat Shmona and nearby Metula are being renovated, and the forests we drive through are blackened.
“The firefighters couldn’t put out the fires quickly because the Hezbollah missiles were still falling,” Hadar says. He points to recently pruned fruit trees that survived despite the war: apples, kiwis, and cherries.
Nearby, across the Lebanese border, is the newly created security zone: rows of decimated private Lebanese homes that served as massive weapons depots, stocked for an Oct. 7-like attack on the Galilee.
The IDF found bulletproof vests, night-vision goggles, mines, hand grenades, and sophisticated Iranian .05 caliber sniper rifles. There were also anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, rocket launchers, motorcycles, troop carriers, and jeeps – like the one we’re traveling in.
The stash of weapons was so enormous that the IDF was able to take only less than half to Israel. The rest was destroyed in the field.
Hadar says he’s too old to continue serving in his infantry unit; however, he and his buddies – other tourist industry employees like him – delivered thousands of meals to soldiers in the North. They also operated a pick-up and return laundry service for the soldiers.
His son Shaked has been serving as a combat medic with the IDF infantry and tank battalion since Oct. 7, first in the North and later in Gaza. And as often in Israel, here’s a story within a story.
IN GAZA, treating wounded soldiers, Shaked Hadar met the love of his life.
“Two weeks after guarding in the North, we were reposted in Gaza,” Shaked would tell me later when I spoke to him by phone. “I called my dad first, and then went to family and friends to say goodbye.
“When you are about to enter Gaza, you take into consideration that you might not be coming back,” he said. “It’s frightening, but it never crossed my mind to refuse to do my duty. This is my country, and I need to protect it.”
Shaked had been in Gaza before, in 2014’s Operation Protective Edge. Back then, he was driving a tank.
Today, aged 30, he’s a head combat medic, teaching younger medics as they go into battle together. He served for 117 days straight, as his unit fought in the Netzarim Corridor, the 8 km.-stretch of land that divides the Gaza Strip south of Gaza City.
They fought terrorists and moved much of the population from the North to the South. There were daily injuries. The worst for Shaked was when four soldiers were gravely wounded by a bomb.
“We treated the four, got them on choppers, and had them in a hospital in 37 minutes. Maybe that’s a world record,” he said. “Best of all, they all survived.”
And then a comely IDF woman medic named Tal joined the crew. Together, they treated wounded soldiers. First, they talked about business. Tal is also a medic in civilian life, riding in Magen David Adom ambulances.
When it was quiet, they started talking about other things. They discovered they had a lot of interests in common: animals, cooking, travel. It’s hard to say if it was love at first sight on the battlefield, but there was definitely a connection and an attraction from his side, Shaked said. By now it’s love, the real thing.
In civilian life, until their next round of reserve duty, Tal is back at her day job, working on Magen David Adom ambulances. And Shaked? He’s a master tattoo artist with a studio in Kibbutz Givat Hashlosha near Petah Tikva.
“I didn’t pick this tattooing, it picked me,” he said. He inherited his dad’s artistic talent and began practicing tattooing on oranges as a teen on kibbutz. (“There are three layers of the orange peel. If you poke too deep, juice will come out.”) Learning tattooing helped him deal with his tough military service in 2008 during Operation Cast Lead. His specialty is fine-lined black and red drawings.
He recently drew a bee on his “busy as a bee, sweet as honey” beloved Tal’s hand.
So, I’m thinking of what Shaked’s father said as we were driving through the burned forests and passed by a set of commercial beehives.
“The bees are very busy these days. It’s time to pollinate and renew the blossoms and flowers.”
Poking out of the scorched ground are pink and white and purple cyclamens. It is said that their delicacy and beauty inspired King Solomon’s crown. By their side are the first anemones, the blood-red kalaniot lauded in the classic eponymous Israeli song from 1948. Like so much of Israel, it’s a mix of love and wistfulness.
Sunset on the hill will blaze and go out,
but the anemones will always bloom.
Storms will thunder and roar greatly,
but the anemones will always bloom.
The writer is the Israel director of public relations at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Her latest book is A Daughter of Many Mothers.