Israel suffers from short-term memory loss

David Wilder
Guest Blog/JPost
15 September '10

Rosh HaShana Eve. I was downstairs at Beit Hadassah, where I had moved with my family from Kiryat Arba two years earlier. A friend of mine was examining emergency medical equipment in special lockers. We were killing time waiting for the selichot services, special penitential prayers recited prior to the New Year, to begin.

I must have been around 11:30, when suddenly shots rang out. In Hebron, nothing can be considered strange or unexpected, but the sound of live ammunition being shot was not an everyday affair. The gunfire was not sporadic or single shots. It was massive.

As we ran upstairs, the emergency security squad took up positions around the building and in the street. The source of the shooting was from the hills to the north of the building, Harat a'Shech. Clearly the bullets were aimed at us.

I ran up to my home and found my wife and kids crouched in a corner. Almost all the windows in my apartment face the hills from which the shooting was initiated. They didn't know where to hide. Finally they went downstairs to an 'underground apartment' where one of my daughters and her husband were then living.

Officers and soldiers, taken by surprise, started making the rounds throughout the building. Upon reaching my apartment, and following a quick look around inside, they asked my permission to set up a temporary base in one of the rooms, clearly overlooking the hills. I agreed, and they remained there for over three weeks.

That was the beginning of what is popularly known as the Second Intifada. I call it the Oslo War.

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