Images Chronicle 2006 Attacks on Haifa, Israel: Part One

Like WWII Blitz air raids over London, bombs still level buildings and change lives in Palestine & Israel. Our British War Photographer's report features images of the fighting in Haifa three summers ago.

Haifa photos by Dexter Phoenix Salem-News.com To purchase photos of Israel, Lebanon and a long list of other world places, write to Dexter at innocent_p0stcard@hotmail.com.

(SALEM, Ore.) - Haifa -- A mostly modern place, houses spread across a large hillside that overlooks the sea. The city is large, but is mostly an industrial city, with a large port and a few large power stations spread across the landscape.

When I arrived to this city by bus, I was surprised to see it all intact, especially after having heard about it being the most attacked city in the whole of Israel.

The rockets that the Hezbollah use are called Katyusha, smallish in size, and not really designed to have large explosive impact.

Instead, they rely more on small ball bearings that the rockets contain inside of them. Those small pea-sized balls are the main reason for the deaths and damage that the rockets inflict.

Once exploded, they shoot out tens of thousands of white hot small ball bearings that rip through people's houses over a widely spread area.

These things are extremely nasty to say the least.

If you ever had the misfortune of standing close to one, even at 300 yards away, those little balls would rip straight through you like a hot knife through butter.

Haifa did have early warning detection systems that tracked incoming rockets; once detected, the whole city was covered by a loud, slow, whining siren.

It reminded me of the blitz in London in the 40’s (even though I was not yet born). The blitz in London had air raids nearly every night while large amounts of German bombers were dropping hundreds of tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on England, though mostly on London. Then there were the flying rockets (V1 and the V2’s, also known as the doodlebugs).

London Blitz, World War Two

Those rockets were mostly carrying one ton warheads, that could travel up to 3600 miles an hour, only slowing down as they got near to their target, at the rate of about a 100 a day... kind of makes Israel's bombing look like a friendly badminton match.

This is something a lot of Americans did not really have any idea about, and wondered why we had such a hard time in combating the Germans. If this ever happened in America it would have given a completely different perspective altogether about us, and what we went through in World War Two.

If America had the kinds of bombings we had to go through, nearly all the cities would have been burnt down. Especially if it was the west coast, where most of the houses are made of wood.

I do realize that there were American troops stationed in England, but most of them were stuck out in the nice safe surroundings of the countryside while all this was going on (as long as they were not near any RAF airfields they should have been reasonably safe from German air attacks).

I thought I'd just nudge that in there, and give you a bit of perspective, as a lot of Americans seem to have an odd upbringing, in your selective-minded history lessons when it came to the British in WWII... a bit lop-sided to say the least, (a history where Britain and European people did not exist, just the Americans and the Germans fighting it out since day one???! I do blame mostly HOLLYWOOD for that one).

All I can say is, you lot as well as ourselves need to thank the Russians for winning the war, drawing the best of the best of the Germans' mighty, highly skilled and battle hardened military war machine, to their cold front borders of Russia.

If that was not the case, I can guarantee that Great Britain and America would still be fighting a few more years, with a far higher mortality rate!. Just a shame the Russians went too far in putting up a wall across Germany afterwards. But hey, if it was not for the cold war, Mi6 and the CIA would be out of business by now.

It was a great boost for employment and technology advances for both of us, as well as a great excuse to boost their war chests with billions of dollars and English pounds, to play around with. It must have been a wet dream to those agencies then, like a kid in a toy shop -- with parents who had just won the lottery!

Destruction in Haifa by Dexter Phoenix

Back to Haifa...I decided to stay downtown in the industrial port area where most of the rocket attacks had seemed to be. This part had some nice old stone buildings that had obviously been there longer than their occupants. I managed to find a hotel that was still open at this time, as most of them had closed down due to a situation called... war.

Now, there was one thing I did notice about the Israelis when I was over here, they all seem to like their money!

And even more so, they liked to overcharge and make a complete mockery of anyone who was foreign, that happened to be in their country (it felt like legalized daylight robbery). Their prices were sky-high, even when most of the small towns or cities were deserted due to the war that was going on.

I had the impression that things would have been a lot cheaper here, and desperate for business due to the ongoing situation. This was nothing like Lebanon that was rock bottom cheap when I was over there, and had a far worse on-going situation, that of it being flattened back to the stone age.

The hotel I stayed at was more like a hybrid hotel. It was half hostel and half hotel that was a medium two-story building. There was only a small door at the entrance. The bottom floor was more laid out like a a house that had been semi-converted to look like a hotel.

The family there were of military background. The Father was a high ranking military guy that was retired, and his son use to be a sniper for the paratroopers (Rangers if you are American). Oddly enough, he had not been drafted up to the war. He was mostly hanging around his Asian girlfriend, and helping his parents out with building work inside the hotel.

Destruction in Haifa by Dexter Phoenix

I found that a bit odd, considering I had seen people from all walks of life flying in to Israel to fight for Israel. A lot of American Jews were over here as well, getting trained up for combat.

I was so tired and drained after being on a long bus trip from the North. I just had my ass dragged over the Lebanon border (while having a valid Lebanese multi-entry visa in my passport, so I was in Lebanon legally) by Israeli special forces, that were driving around in open top Humvee's with huge guns mounted all over their framework. They were all dressed in dark colors, black, grey and dark green, with most of their faces covered in black scarves or masks... looking like something out of a sci-fi ninja movie.

These people really stood out from the rest of the Israeli military, they were well equipped, although they all seem to have the freedom to dress themselves up in any style they wanted. A bit like the Israel military, they all seemed to be dressed up in odds and ends of here and there left overs -- like there was a shortage of equipment or uniforms. Think of the Israeli military as a patchwork quilt -- got the idea?

They had dragged me over their border saying it was “in my best interest and for my own safety” that I reside in Israel (even though I was the only photojournalist stuck in an area of Lebanon, with some of the most intense, worst bombings in Lebanon's history!).

They also thought I must have been an informational hazard for them, as they did confiscate my camera equipment, as well as my mobile hard drives, and decided to erase everything on them, to the point that two of my memory cards were now permanently corrupted and my data recovery software from Sandisc as well as Lexar did not work on those cards afterwards.

To top it all up, my hard drives had burnt out after trying to use them again. I had no idea what they did to my digital camera memory cards and hard drives to make them react that way.

All I had left was my 80 gig ipod that I had to now use for a hard drive!. I was in a photo journalist's heaven, only to be dragged away from it. The only real chance of ever making good money from my photos had now been erased by Israeli intelligence services -- nice!

As I tiredly walked in to the hotel, covered in dust and feeling like my clothes had became my second skin, due to the harsh hot sweaty environment that I had been stuck in the past few days, I was greeted by a friendly lady that did not hardly seem to have blinked an eyelid towards the state I was in, let alone the way I looked.

She was all smiles, like she had no care in the world. I am sure all I could see in her bright wide-open eyes were dollar signs reflecting off her pupils.

I was pretty shocked when she mentioned the prices in her hotel. I did give a rather restricted, lip biting sarcastic comment, that there was a war going on, and I did not see much business going on around here, and it was hardly peak session let alone the right time to be charging full prices?!

We did manage to barter a bit, until we decided on a price that we both agreed on. I got my keys and dragged my heavy bags up the steep, long stairs. She quickly showed me around the hotel room.

The room itself was a nice largish open spaced minimal modern looking room with tiled flooring and a large king size bed. As soon as she closed my hotel door I just walked slowly in a zombified way towards a nice large clean bed, and proceeded to drop semi-unconsciously onto it.

I laid on my back staring at the moving fan on the ceiling above me, and slowly thought about all the things that had happened to me... until I slowly dozed off into a deep much needed sleep.

Dexter Phoenix has worked as a staff and freelance photographer since the mid-1990's and has a wealth of professional experiences on his resume. We welcome his presence to our staff and Salem-News.com.
This native of Great Britian moved to Los Angeles in 2007, where he photographed general news, general Interests, sports, freelance model photo work, and also stock images. In his career Dexter has had photos published : World wide, in many magazines and newspapers and online. Throughout the course of his career he has experience with technology of all imaginable types. In his career as a photographer Dexter has covered stories in Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, France, Mexico, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Somalia, Tunisia, Algeria. Angola, Iran, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Colombia, United States. Email inquiries about photo purchase to Dexter at the above address.
You can email Dexter Phoenix, Salem-News.com Photographer/Reporter, at innocent_p0stcard@hotmail.com