Double Life – Red dots

By Daniela Fubini*

Anyone who is even loosely acquainted with the hi-tech scene in Tel Aviv has been at least once on a high floor of the Electra building, across from the three Azrieli towers that used to mark Tel Aviv’s skyline in times when 46 floors above the ground were a wonder and a hubris.

Google sits on 15 of the 45 floors of the Electra, and that is a good reason enough to visit, or a very good excuse anyway. So, when on tv on an otherwise quiet Thursday evening they started showing footage of two reddish dots in the sky above that one building in Tel Aviv, and the familiar sound of a muffled “boom” made by the Iron Dome intercepting the missiles, we just stared, slightly hypnotized.

Fear is not even in discussion here. Unease, an annoying feeling of deja-vu, maybe. We have been there, seen that. But it wasn’t until the morning after, when we all woke up after the quietest ever night, with no other disruptions coming from above our heads, that we realized that there was a deep disconnection between the images we saw on tv and the statements of the IDF, who spoke about two missiles but no Iron Dome activity whatsoever. No interception. No muffled “booms”.

So what did we see on tv? Can we call it fake news? Or just lousy journalism? Taking footage most probably from 2014 and using it as a bootleg clip just delivered by an irresponsible Telavivian who recorded a video seemingly from a roof, instead of running for cover, is even legal these days? And what is even more surprising: how the news broadcasters didn’t realize that today the Electra building is only one tower in a thick forest of skyscrapers that are visible in all directions and certainly from the angle the clip was taken? The power of images. In five years Tel Aviv has changed dramatically, the whole area around Azrieli is literally unrecognizable, but all what we could see was two reddish dots. Note to self: next time, hopefully never, would be good to switch on the brain too, not just the tv.

*Daniela Fubini (Twitter @d_fubini) lives and writes in Israel, where she arrived in 2008 from Turin via New York.