People could not go about their business safely because of conflicts (Zechariah 8:10)

My deepest apologies: Sometimes living your life gets in the way of blogging about life. In the past couple of weeks, my dad was visiting, but I was still doing my day job, including writing comments for midterm grades, planning a Poetry Night, and reviewing proposals for my school's new Web site. Plus, there is always the "nightlife" to contend with, including going-away parties, intramural floor hockey games, and Hebrew lessons.

So I guess the title of this post is a bit of a misnomer. Despite all of the recent escalations in the Middle East conflict, I am still going about my business. But I will admit that "safely" is becoming a relative term. At the beginning of the week, the embassy sent out a message urging Americans, including workers at the international school, to stay away from east Jerusalem. Normally, I would dismiss such warnings as overly cautious. After all, embassy workers also are encouraged to avoid buses and trains, which Tim and I ride regularly with no qualms. A day after that message, however, an east Jerusalem resident opened fire in a seminary in west Jerusalem. Obviously, I am one of the last people you would catch at a religious school, but this was yet another in a series of ominous situations.

Just five days earlier, more than 50 Palestinians were killed in the deadliest day of fighting in Gaza since 2005. And a day before the Jerusalem shooting, it was revealed that the number of deaths from that offensive had more than doubled. One of the main provocations for this incursion was Hamas' launching of rockets from Gaza Strip toward Sderot, including one that killed a university student at Sapir College. Despite the fact that this was a rare Israeli death from rocket fire and college students and professors were mostly unified in their plea for no retaliation, Israel launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip border and raided a refugee camp in the West Bank, on the other side of the country.

All this news happening, in two areas both a one-tank trip away from my home, and yet my life continues normally. It's like living in Cleveland and not noticing a war going on -- even if that war is in Columbus. Certainly, there have been murmurs of heightened concern from the long-term Israeli residents at my school. It is worse than in the past: More Israelis have been killed so far this year through acts of terrorism than throughout all of last year. But I wouldn't say these people seem to be caring any more, and why?

My reasons are not going to be deep, let me forewarn, but I'll take some stabs. Israelis don't care because they don't know what to care about: There is a media blackout in the Gaza Strip, meaning Israeli journalists can't enter with the intention of reporting on the situation there, and if they manage to sneak by, they can be fined or jailed. The more academic press, like The Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, give detailed -- and often insightful -- accounts of the conflict, but they are not the popular press. Just like in the United States, more Israelis read the equivalent of the Metro tabloid than the full Washington Post.

But even those who are well-informed seem to find the conflict more surreal than real, including myself. Unless your daily life is governed by unemployment and food aid and disrupted by water and medical care shortages, it's simply hard to give a damn. And even if you're a lot more empathetic than me, it's easy to get desensitized when your interests don't follow the extremes that drive the dispute: You neither fully support the Palestinian hard-liners or the Israeli settlers, and all you want is compromise -- a peace that never seems to come. No matter how many speeches by George Bush or visits from Condoleezza Rice. And it's certainly not going to help that the new U.S. ambassador has no "significant experience in issues related to Israel or the Arab states."

So you give up, decide to stop devoting your thoughts and energy to an issue that you can't control. It reminds me, dare I say it, of a little thing called the Iraq war (with a little "w," thank you very much). If we aren't careful, this war could easily turn into a second long-standing "Middle East conflict," with Americans dutifully sending their sons and daughters off to service without really understanding how it helps get anyone closer to resolution (but hey, at least it's not conscripted like in Israel -- yet).

Trust me, I have no right to feel superior. I, too, can't seem to care about rockets that are killing people an I-71-ride away. And I'm finding it harder to care about those Americans being killed now two states over from me. But I now realize that every Middle East story I edited or read for the newspaper was not just the daily "bleading lead." Each one is a warning blast, its siren stifled by apathy.