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Journalism of Courage
Moving to safe rooms the moment sirens go off, keeping glued to radio and TV, preparing for the worst: The past five days have been an unfamiliar time in the living memory of many in Jerusalem. Even though it is around 70 km away from the southern cities of Ashkelon and Sderot that have been directly attacked by the Hamas from the Gaza Strip, the days here are full of uncertainty.
Speaking to The Indian Express over the phone from Jerusalem, Noah Massil — who runs Mayboli, a quarterly magazine in Marathi published in Israel — says there have been many moments in the last four days when they’ve felt unsafe. Massil, an Israeli citizen of Indian origin who moved to Jerusalem from Mumbai five decades ago as a 21-year-old, says the deadly Hamas attacks Saturday morning have shocked them, considering the reputation of the Israeli intelligence and armed forces. Massil, who is also president of the Central Organization of Indian Jews in Israel, says they took time to realise the scale of what had happened.
“On Sunday morning, a day after the attacks, the sirens went off in Jerusalem — signalling we had to immediately run to the shelter rooms in our building,” he recalls, adding that all residential and office buildings across the country built in the last four decades have shelter rooms on each floor. “So now, 90 per cent of buildings in Israel have shelter rooms, where you can hide to evade such attacks,” he says. And in case one is on the road, or driving, there are public shelters that can hold more than a 100 people at a time, says Massil. Although there is some sense of normalcy in Jerusalem, with grocery stores and gas stations working and people being free to move, there is an air of apprehension. The sirens have rung a couple of times now, forcing people to rush to the shelters.
There are approximately 85,000 Jews of Indian origin in Israel, holding Israeli passport holders. The main waves of immigration into Israel from India took place in the 1950s and 1960s. The majority are from Maharashtra (Bene Israelis), and relatively smaller numbers are from Kerala (Cochini Jews) and Kolkata (Baghdadi Jews). In recent years, some Indian Jews from North-Eastern states (Bnei Menashe) too have been settling in Israel.
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