Most Anglo newcomers to Beer Sheva want to stay home, rockets and all

New York-born Ilan Haran sure picked a fine time to emigrate from Ireland to Beer Sheva: in the middle of Operation Cast Lead. "My friends and relatives in Ireland asked me: 'You aren't still going, are you?' I said: 'Of course I am,'" Haran told Anglo File this Tuesday. "I wouldn't think of not coming."

Sitting at a folding table in his still rudimentarily furnished apartment, Haran, 65, remembered his arrival in Israel this past New Year's Day. Two days earlier, the first rockets had fallen on Be'er Sheva, which previously had been out of Hamas's reach from Gaza. "My flight into Israel landed early in the morning," Haran said. "I arrived in Be'er Sheva at about 6 A.M. and went straight to friends for coffee. At 6:40 there was a barrage of rockets coming in, so they all blamed it on me," he joked. "I always considered myself Israeli and Zionist. I will not run away from terrorists," he added on a more serious note. "It's as simple as that."

Among the English-speaking residents of Be'er Sheva, which the AACI estimates at around 4,000, are recent arrivals as well as people who have been there for decades. Miriam Green, the counselor for the AACI's southern branch, does not expect the situation, however, to deter new immigrants from moving there.

"Of course, there is this element of fear, especially when you hear the sirens, but it quickly passes," she said sitting at her living room table, while her children - home because school is closed - played Game Boy on the couch. "I spoke to several people who just arrived and they're fine, they're not afraid at all. Our modus operandi is to take it in strides. You do what you have to do to protect yourself but you also to realize that this is where we have to be," said Green, who moved here from the U.S. in 1991.

Indeed, Haran believes it is his destiny to be in Be'er Sheva at this critical time. It is an act of "solidarity with my people," he said. Yet, he stressed that he moved here in spite of and not because of the war. "Tel Aviv is entertaining, and Jerusalem is wonderful for religious reasons," he said of his pre-arrival tour of the country. "The north is very scenic and Eilat has a great climate and the sea. But still, there is just something unique about Be'er Sheva."

Baltimore native Rona Posner, who arrived in Be'er Sheva on the very day the first rockets fell, actually would rather live in Tel Aviv. The 52-year-old was placed in the Jewish Agency's Ye'elim Absorption Center in Be'er Sheva only because no room was available for her in other places, she said. Since her daughter Lindsay has been living in Be'er Sheva for a few years, Posner agreed to start off there.

The first rockets hit the ground while Posner was on the plane from the U.S. "When I landed I called my daughter to let her know I was there," she told Haaretz about her first minutes in Israel. "She said: 'Don't come here, it's really bad, have you heard the news?'" After hearing the news, Posner by her account panicked, "so I asked the [immigration officials] if they could find me some place else. But they couldn't, so I said: 'Fine, just take me to Be'er Sheva. Whatever will happen happens.'"

For the first few days, Posner stayed in her daughter's apartment - not because she didn't like the absorption center, but the rockets made it difficult to leave. "Whenever I was ready to go back, the sirens would go off," she recalled. "We stayed in her room, which is the apartment's safe room, and watched movies." Posner said she is not fazed by the rockets she has witnessed falling - one so close by she could see the smoke from her window. "Not to downplay the war," she said, "but I lived in Florida and once went through five hurricanes in two months. It's the same feeling, or very close to it."

Sharon Garlick, a new immigrant from Cape Town, was also sent to Be'er Sheva by the Jewish Agency. In South Africa, it wasn't hurricanes but several muggings and earthquakes which toughened her up, she said. "I come from a country of major crime, rape, murder and mayhem, every second of the day," she said about why she is not scared of the rockets. "You walk down the mall and could have a gun put to your head."

Though she wasn't enthralled about going to Be'er Sheva when she arrived, Garlick doesn't intend on leaving the city now. "I am determined to stay here and not become a refugee," she said. "The furthest I run away is to my stairwell."

But not every new Be'er Sheva resident takes the constant rocket attacks so coolly. Philadelphia native Jacob Schatz, 24, who moved here in August with his wife, still shivers when he remembers the first time he heard the sirens.

"We were thinking: Oh my gosh, this is actually happening," he said while sitting in his fourth floor apartment, not a very safe place for a rocket attack with its huge windows. That night, the young couple ran downstairs to a safe room, where they heard the explosion of the incoming projectile. "We went back upstairs and asked ourselves: Do we go to bed? Do we go back home? Is this now the beginning of some apocalyptic event?" They decided to go to sleep fully dressed, only after packing their bags and preparing their passports - "We left them at the door, just in case," he said. But even more dreadful than the threat of being hit by a rocket is the sound of the alarm that precedes the impact, Schatz said. "That siren is the creepiest thing I ever heard in my entire life."

Jennifer Cole, who moved from Toronto to Be'er Sheva about two years ago, agrees. "The sirens are scary as hell, you just can't really predict how scary the sound of it is," the 25-year-old social worker told Anglo File. "Forget about the actual rocket, just the sound of the siren raises your anxiety levels."

To save her mother from panicking on her behalf, Cole told her she had left the city as soon as the rocket attacks started. Cole's mother was actually on the line the very first time the sirens were sounded. "I felt even worse because I couldn't tell her what was going on and I didn't know what to do," she recalled. "I just kept talking as if everything was normal, and then I actually heard the boom. At some point she asked me: 'Jen, this is not actually close to you, is it?' I said 'No no, it's still far away.' I knew I was supposed to go to the stairwell, but I just didn't want to leave because I was on the phone with my mom. I just kept talking to her."

After the rocket attacks grew more intensive, Cole left the city because she "couldn't take it anymore." But she returned after a few days. "Life goes on," she said. "My brother just told me: Yalla, what are you still doing in Be'er Sheva? I said: life is here. I don't want to keep running all the time. I want to be home. This is home."