At 2:17 a.m., the siren goes off.

You have about 60 seconds to get to a shelter.

Whether you live in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or elsewhere in Israel, that means grabbing a child who is still half asleep, guiding another who already knows the routine too well, and moving, quickly but calmly into the shelter. The big steel door shuts behind you. You sit. You wait.

If you are fortunate enough, you have a safe room in your apartment.  If not, you go to your building communal shelter, or if you live in a building that has neither, you run to nearlby municipally approved shelters.  Either way,  the booms overhead crash like a Battle of Britain movie soundtrack. This is what war sounds like.

Finally, you hear the thud that tells you it’s over, at least for now.

In the shelter no one asks who is sitting in the White House. No one debates party platforms. No one checks how they voted in the last election.

In the shelter you count your blessings. You are still alive, and your home is still intact.

For us, American Democrats living in Israel, this is not a metaphor. It is a lived reality. And it explains something that fellow Democrats in the U.S. find impossible to reconcile: Many of us living here under fire, support Israel’s........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)