I was going to write a post about how American students and expats in Beersheva were dealing with being under rocket attack. But apparently, a Grad landed behind my apartment complex a few hours ago.

It makes me happy that I decided to head up the road to Tel Aviv a few days back - which in retrospect was a damn good decision.

This is what I found on my Facebook wall (If 'Nam was televised, this crap is microblogged) when I came "home" a few hours ago, courtesy of one of my classmates and friends, who lives in the same apartment complex as I do:

“woo did you miss action. A rocket hit the fence next to your building. Very loud. Lots of security people walking and people with huge cameras running after them. I wonder if we will ever learn again? B”S is deserted. There are still some people in the dorms, but the university is empty. Hope your Israel tour is going well! I’m calling it a tour to make it sound exciting.”

Writing anything under these circumstances... fuggedaboutit. Glad I decided to stay in Tel Aviv and didn't go into missile range today. Let's just hope the suicide bombers don't start again anytime soon.

I put up some more about this at Negev Rock City; as for me, I'm just reflecting on the irony that my MA will be in "Middle Eastern Studies." Yeah, this is some Middle Eastern study.

UPDATE: A student at Ben Gurion University captured the rocket attack on my building on video:

Below is an urgent email from journalist Neal Ungerleider, who is currently in Beersheva:

So it looks like Beersheva is now within range of rockets from Gaza. Two rockets just hit near my apartment— we heard them land audibly and saw the ambulances bringing injured to the hospital.

I'm okay and everyone in the apartment complex is safe. Both rockets hit within densely populated areas in central Beersheva. One exploded directly opposite a kindergarten—I'm just happy this happened at night and not at day.

It's increasingly obvious there will be a ground invasion here—soldiers are being called up and many students at our university have gone on duty this week. Things are a bit quiet and my thoughts are with the soldiers and the civillians on the ground in Gaza. This situation is a mess and ... hell ... what can I say?

But I'm safe and am getting the real Israel experience, apparently.

For everyone whom I owe emails, I'll be in touch soon. Have been overloaded with classes lately.

Best, Neal Ungerleider

[Note: Benjamin is the Shvitz's new Israeli-based correspondent. He'll be blogging here on a regular basis about politics and culture in the Middle East. --MW] 

Living in Beersheva has its advantages and its disadvantages. Usually the latter loom larger than the former, the heat, the sandstorms, the relative distance from the all-important mercaz, the neighbors who slaughter their own Passover dinner...but I digress. One of the good things, in fact the best thing, at least from the point of view of a recent arrival (five years and counting) is the lack of a bubble mentality.

Unlike the Anglo bubble in Jerusalem, which sometimes seems obsessed with reconstructing Brooklyn in the middle of the Old City, or the Tel Aviv bubble, with its relentless cosmopolitanism and hipper-than-thou obsessions with sex, fashion and designer drugs, living in Beersheva forces you, for better or for worse, to confront the real Israel, such as it is. Which is to say, a rather dusty community of underpaid, overworked, family oriented, Hebrew (or sometimes Russian) speaking folks who find it utterly incomprehensible that you don't take sugar in your coffee. Beersheva sometimes feels like a microcosm of the under Israel, the Israel left behind by tourists, reporters and Biblical fetishists alike. This does not, however, imply that places like this are disconnected from the rest of the country.

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