Utah resident currently in Tel Aviv, Israel recounts air attacks

Lusk has a grateful response to the dome considering the close and lucky calls she has had with the incoming fire. "I saw one of the missiles outside my window coming toward (my neighborhood) and there was an Iron Dome missile following behind it, trailing it, and it and blew it up before it hit. One actually landed two blocks away from my apartment. Two days in a row I saw the same thing," she said, with steady delivery. Lusk is another new veteran of Hamas aggression and recipient of Iron Dome shelter.

On the psychological warfare front, Hamas may be winning with Tel Aviv residents. How many days will Hamas wait before they send another round?, we wonder. As of this writing it has been more than 48 hours since the last air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv. Is it because a peace process and ceasefire will take hold and temporarily stop the conflict? Or is Hamas waiting, playing mind games until they continue opening "the gates of Hell" as they promised. Still, we are all really grateful to not be in Gaza, where people suffer even more. We vacillate between sympathy for them and anger for their militant citizens.

The last rumor we received was that the US had three ships off the coast, ready to ferry US citizens out in case of trouble. However, I would like to finish my studies here. Viewing war and conflict from the inside is part of the learning/studying process, which is my real mission here in Israel. But things are a little too real right now. Jensen is staying the course, too. "The only way I would leave is if there was a pan-Islamic war front on all sides with the help of Russia and China," he says, adding as an afterthought, "at least that is what I say, but perhaps if my embassy told me to leave I would probably listen."

And I will too. Somebody else's war just became mine, but that doesn't mean I have to die for it.

Jonathan Paxton is a Utah resident studying conflict mediation and resolution and Arabic at Tel Aviv University.