Chapter 19 15.Israel behind the mask

When people think, God laughs. —Jewish Proverb The Palestine area where Israel and Palestine are located today was called Canaan in ancient times.Canaan is a country in the Bible. In the Bible, it is a vast and boundless land. All people who have read the Bible unconsciously accept this point of view.In reality, Canaan, that is, the Palestine area, is no bigger than Hainan Island.Its northernmost point is the city of Dan at the foot of Lebanon's snow-covered Herman snow mountain (Herman), the southern end is limited by the "Southland" Negev (Nevgv), the west is the Mediterranean Sea, and the east is the Jordan Valley.Tel Aviv, now the capital of Israel, is located on the Mediterranean coast in the middle of the west of this land.

On the morning of February 2, Tel Aviv was sunny and facing the blue sea in the west, the climate was warm and humid.Perhaps due to the Sabbath weekend, all the shops were closed.I couldn't find anything to eat, not to mention the expensive French cuisine at the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel where I was staying, and I couldn't even read the menu.Commanding my photography department, I went to the street to find a small restaurant when I was hungry, and drank the water in the bathroom when I was thirsty.Lin Chuan, deputy director of the photography department, said that tap water in Europe meets the hygienic standards, and he asked me to save US dollars and use it wisely.Looking at the big fat man in a suit and tie with glasses back and forth, who is full of belly and fat, walking his shiny leather shoes with dignity and solemnity, I feel that I am both unfortunate and strong.

The owner of Tenlichow, a Chinese restaurant in the city center, disappeared because of fear of bombing.A Baghdad-born Jew named Hayarkon volunteered to recommend me to his friend's small restaurant, Avazin, to eat "hisiliq" (a kind of grilled chicken nuggets), which somehow filled my stomach. On the street, there are very few pedestrians.Tel Aviv's Wangfujing-Alambu Street was also empty.There are reminders "please carry a gas mask with you" everywhere.In Ramate Gan, a group of citizens wearing gas masks are in a daze around a house that was blown up by a "Scud" missile the day before.The taxi driver said: "So far, 14 people have died and 192 people have been injured." A hexagonal "David Star Flag" was inserted on the ruins, and a blue flag with a height of 4 meters and a length of more than 10 meters was erected next to it. A giant wooden sign with a sentence written by the governor of the district in white paint: RamateGanStandsfirmlybehind itsciti-zens ("RamateGanStandsfirmlybehind itsciti-zens").Next to the ruins, a bulldozer is leveling the land, planning to rebuild a new house.

An antivirus room was built on the sixth floor of the luxurious Hilton Hotel.Guests staying here were told to go to the sixth-floor gas room immediately if there was an air-raid siren.My good friend, Shinichi Murata, a photojournalist for Japan's "Newsweek", was not allowed to return to the Hilton Hotel because he forgot to bring his gas mask. Jewish taxi driver Haime also had a gas mask in his car.Looking at the bright blue sky, he said to himself, "I hope tonight is safe." That night, the Canadian reporter Joe and I were walking along Derichshalon Avenue when suddenly the air raid siren sounded, and the sirens whimpered like ghosts, like the trumpet of the devil Jericho.Looking up, there is only a sliver of blue sky among the tall buildings, and Jiadi, a young man who lives at No. 99-6-9 of the street, dragged us up to the second floor of his house.This is an empty house of only about 10 square meters, and the seams of the doors and windows are covered with plastic sealing strips.The young man was the last to enter the house, and frantically sealed the big wooden door behind him with tape.Then he ordered us to wear gas masks. Seeing that I didn't have one, he reprimanded loudly: "If the police come across you, you must be fined 200 sheks (120 U.S. dollars)." Civil defense trained and a volunteer.

In fact, I did not intend to use violence to test the stability of Israeli laws, because if I put on a gas mask, I have to take off my glasses, and then the whole world will be "blurred by the moon and dimmed by birds".What's more, a gas mask alone can't really do anything to Saddam's dual chemical weapons.I knew in my heart that the gas masks were nothing more than tranquilizers to calm the hearts of the people. At the same time, at the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel on the 17th floor, the staff are driving all the passengers into the anti-virus room on the sixth floor, just like driving a group of dull pigs into the conveyor belt to be slaughtered.Then use black plastic sheeting and brown glue strips to seal all passages into the sixth floor.

But for journalists, the sound of sirens is like a stimulant.Whenever the alarm sounded, journalists from all over the world rushed out of the room with their reporting equipment, gathered outside the Hilton door, looked up at the starry sky, and waited with bated breath for the "Scud" to break through the night sky.The reporters competed to show off their respective military supplies. "Taiwan TV" Zhu Zengyou had a rainproof army bag tied to his left leg, which was sprayed with black paint: "T3-75 type protective mask", which was originally prepared to guard against the "Communist Party". "Army", I didn't want to squeeze together with me on the other side of the strait to shoot "Scud".He claims that this mask is better than the Israeli one.They were also envious of a Republican Guard belt I bought from a Baghdad street stall.John Haygood of CBS in the United States is even more fully armed, like a marine, wearing a blue American gas mask, a green woolen soft hat, a tightly wrapped rain jacket, black leather gloves, a camera on his shoulder, and a waistband. The battery block made him squat down and stand up one after another, and waved to me: "Tang, here is one, let my mother see how majestic I am."

A film exhibition called "Israel—Life Behind the Mask" ("Israel—Life Behind the Mask") opened at the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv at noon on February 8. 40 black and white and color photos showed the Israeli people since the Gulf War from different sides. Life, gas masks are on almost every photo. The "Jerusalem Post" once published a cartoon: a soldier standing on the front line calls his mother wearing a gas mask at home to ask how the battle is going.This is a brand-new war that does not distinguish between the front and the rear. Even the couples on the beach in Tel Aviv who are lingering in the spring night cannot do without their gas masks for a moment.

According to the organizers of the film festival, they tried to show through pictures: "how Israel was dragged into a war overnight, old people, women, children all became soldiers, all these soldiers armed themselves with gas masks. ... This is One is not the front line of a battlefield." February 8th is the "June 3rd Revolution Day" in Iraq, which also coincides with the Jewish Sabbath, because Baghdad claims that it has SS-12 surface-to-surface missiles (Ss: abbreviation for surface-to-surface missiles) that have a longer range and greater power than the Scud. The original text is surface to Surface), making the guests who participated in the opening ceremony of the film exhibition even more terrified. Everyone hung a pack of gas masks behind their buttocks and squeezed their buttocks in a daze in the exhibition hall.

Inside the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and under the Wailing Wall, thousands of Jews wore gas masks and prayed in the rain.People are worried that there will be "scuds" visiting at night, because Baghdad will definitely commemorate its own "June 3rd Revolution Day" with this.