I recently received a call from a friend who a couple of years ago had relocated to Kiryat Shmona from Jerusalem with her husband. They loved the pastoral idyll, the beautiful and spacious homes, and the low cost of living. But now they had been evacuated to a hotel in Jerusalem. When I went to see her, she introduced me to some members of the Kiryat Shmona community. Since October 7, the entire community has spread over 230 hotels and rented apartments in Tiberias, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. All I did was listen as they described how they feel like refugees in their own country and asked how one can abandon a whole region.
Kiryat Shmona was founded in 1950. Most of its 24,000 residents emigrated from Middle Eastern countries. Even before October 7, Kiryat Shmona suffered from shelling, a weak economy, and long wait lists for medical services. One woman remarked that in the center of Israel, one doesn’t hear missiles unless one turns on the TV. The residents feel that they have no leverage and suffer from, in their words, “beaten woman syndrome.”
