To the sound of birds chirping, Asaf Ben Lulu reads from the Bible on a Saturday morning in Kibbutz Eilon, 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) from the border with Lebanon.
It’s part of the early morning routine for Ben Lulu, a lighting technician and father of two who moved here in 2019. But the peaceful moment ends abruptly as an army radio emits static and a tense masculine voice announces: “Drone.” Ben Lulu looks up, his eyes adjusting to the bright light as he searches in vain for the remote-controlled weapon that Hezbollah uses here frequently — and to deadly effect.
Later in the day, a drone from Lebanon made another appearance over Eilon, circling for about three minutes over the kibbutz before flying purposefully back northward. The instant switch from placidity to mortal danger is a feature of life in Israel’s north, an area of great natural beauty and tight-knit communities that some 60,000 people have left since October. Now, only a handful of residents remain, living amid exchanges of fire that began on October 8 between Israel and terrorists in Lebanon.
Ben Lulu is one of many thousands of reserve soldiers who have been guarding the border amid a gradual escalation in hostilities following the initiation of a conflict with Israel that Hezbollah and other Lebanon-based terrorist groups initiated following Hamas’s October 7 onslaught on Israel from Gaza. Yet Ben Lulu isn’t just a soldier deployed at a random spot; he’s also a resident. When he’s off duty,.
