Canaan Lidor
Times of Israel, June 17, 2024
“October 7 gave us an existential jolt because it unveiled the danger with which we had been living for years. I assumed Hezbollah would invade imminently, and I knew we had no forces that could stop them.”
To the sound of birds chirping, Asaf Ben Lulu reads from the Bible on a Saturday morning in Kibbutz Eilon, 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) from the border with Lebanon.
It’s part of the early morning routine for Ben Lulu, a lighting technician and father of two who moved here in 2019. But the peaceful moment ends abruptly as an army radio emits static and a tense masculine voice announces: “Drone.”
Ben Lulu looks up, his eyes adjusting to the bright light as he searches in vain for the remote-controlled weapon that Hezbollah uses here frequently — and to deadly effect. Later in the day, a drone from Lebanon made another appearance over Eilon, circling for about three minutes over the kibbutz before flying purposefully back northward.
The instant switch from placidity to mortal danger is a feature of life in Israel’s north, an area of great natural beauty and tight-knit communities that some 60,000 people have left since October. Now, only a handful of residents remain, living amid exchanges of fire that began on October 8 between Israel and terrorists in Lebanon.
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