Ani Ohevet Haifa

I just got an email from my friend, Jess, whom I met in Haifa in the fall
(I absolutely adore her). She spent the whole year in Haifa and is actually
still there (for just another week) and sent out a description of what living
there now is like:

Anyways, some of you asked what life in Haifa is like now, and well, it's quiet; I haven't been outside, like really outside for a walk or to a park and *definitely* not to a beach in five days. Instead, I've been in and out of the bomb shelter at my friend's in mid-town or at my boyfriend's up-town when the air raid siren goes off, and I met all of the neighbors, which I suppose would be really nice in other circumstances, like, say, if people weren't launching rockets at us.

If you know anything about the topography of Haifa, you'll know that the entire city is built on a mountain, with neighborhoods on every level. However, what most people don't know is the further up the mountain the better off (socio-economically) the residents are, and that most of the rockets are hitting the lower levels of the mountain and outlying areas, which means that the people getting rockets shot at them every hour are generally not very well off, and having giant holes blown in their houses probably isn't helping the situation.

Now, Haifa is not like Beirut, what with neighborhoods flattened to the ground/no longer existing and stuff, but it's a ghost town. No one is at the beach (though I wouldn't be able to verify that) because rockets land in the sea and nearby. No one is at the malls or the movie theatres because it's hard to hear the air raid siren from inside and also most of the malls and movie theatres are in direct line of fire.

Only essential services are open, which means the stores and restaurants and pools and markets are essentially closed. There are very few cars on the street. No one is playing in the park, and people are generally staying inside with their families. A lot of people have fled south to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Jerusalem being the wiser choice because Tel Aviv is actually reachable by Hezbollah rockets (theIsraeli Air Force deflected one en route to Tel Aviv a few days ago, but people are still going to Tel Aviv en masse).

If I tell you that this is SO SO unlike Haifa, it would be a complete understatement. It was always a busy, beautiful city, with people outside going to restaurants, bars, the mall at all hours. It's such a social city, with the shuk in Hadar brimming with people, even on the days were the produce was freshest and therefore most expensive. I can barely imagine the
streets being so empty, or the Grand Kanyon mall without hordes of men crowded around big screen tv's showing the Maccabi Haifa matches. It's also so depressing to think of what
this is doing to the Haifa and Israeli economies. With everything closed and the reserves called up, the country must be at a standstill. Is it bizzare that all I want to do is go back?