Israel conflict through Penn eyes

While most college students are getting news about the Israeli war with Hezbollah on television, some Penn students are witnessing the conflict firsthand.

Life in the north of Israel is continually disrupted by rocket attacks but students and University staff are finding a surreal sense of normalcy in Jerusalem as the conflict rages less than 100 miles to their north.

"Life up north is incredibly disrupted -- there's no food in the supermarkets, no money in the ATMs," said associate director of Hillel Mike Uram. "But life in Jerusalem is very normal. It creates a strange reality."

Uram traveled this summer to Israel on business but returned Friday as originally scheduled.

The Penn-section of the Taglit-birthright program -- which gives Jewish students the chance to travel to Israel -- already took place this summer and those 80 students returned to the States at the beginning of June.

Uram said that while Penn's birthright trip is over, trips from other colleges are in Israel now.

The trips were routed to the southern, more secure parts of the country but almost all visitors remained in the country, Uram said.

But even though the birthright travelers returned safely, other Penn students remain in Israel for internships, jobs, and family reasons.

2006 College graduate Tara Schmutter moved to Israel permanently on July 19th and said she was asked by reporters why she was moving to a warzone, a question that has bothered her since.

"I have been in Jerusalem for almost a week now and it does not feel like a warzone," Schmutter said, adding that the city is plastered with signs reading "be strengthened and be fortified."

Schmutter said that while she is safely in her apartment in Jerusalem and is not in a warzone, she is acutely aware that a war is going on nearby.

Her cousins from Kiryat Ata -- a town outside Haifi in northern Israel, which has seen significant damage -- fled to Jerusalem for a few days to get away from the conflict but have since returned, despite the fact that Hezbollah rockets still fall.

"They stay in the house all the time ... and when there is an air raid they enter a security room, which is an enclosed room with a heavy door and thick walls," Schmutter said. "I wonder how long they will have to live under such circumstances."

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