25th Jan
Couple of guys here are getting cold turkey from not drinking beer. They didn't want to be drunk, just in case...... stumbling about and fumbling with their masks. Even taking a shower holds a high degree of risk. Imagine running to the shelter dripping wet, towel wrapped around the waist, wearing the mask!!
I've heard there are less than 200 volunteers left on kibbutzim here in Israel, (270 kibbutzim in total.) So I guess we've got quite a percentage here.
Now that there's been a couple of attacks we don't think twice about taking masks with us to work, and certainly don't want to get complacent! Someone pointed at my mask box and asked what flavour biscuits were inside!

Wonder how the news is going down in England? Phoned a friend a few days ago, asked him to let people know that all's OK. He asked me if I was staying. 'Of course,' I said. It's pretty safe here on the kibbutz, unless a missile directed towards Haifa falls short or runs out of fuel and lands nearby. Preferably on the bakery!!

It seems to me that the bakery is taking the alarms very lightly. If there's a warning, it's on with the mask and carry on working as normal. One night the alarm sounded so I started to walk to the main doors of the bakery hoping to catch a glimpse of something. All of a sudden there was this real fuck-off bang. I turned around to go back inside and thought maybe Haifa had got that one. Someone said it was Tel Aviv - big bomb if it was!! On the following morning's news found out the noise was a Patriot missile intercepting a Scud on it's way to Haifa. It was blown up over Northern Israel.
If it's a chemical weapon, the people who work in packing are fucked. While everyone back on the kibbutz are in a sealed room or shelter, we're still working with doors wide open.
It's nice to know that Scuds to Haifa take a scenic route over the kibbutz!!

The Patriot missiles are supposed to knock the Scuds out of the sky. What happens if they miss? It's already happened. Great. Getting hit by a US missile. Bad enough from debris of the two Patriots doing the intercepting, but getting hit by the 'Stars and Stripes'? Like getting stabbed in the back.