HANITA, Israel -- May workers in American plants never hear it.
The sound of Katyusha rockets overhead during a day's work is something like a jet about to crash, just short of unbearable to ear and nerves, workers here say.
Hanita is a kibbutz, a communal village literally 10 meters from Lebanon. The kibbutz has owned and manned two high-tech industries since the early 1980s. Despite frequent trips to the bomb shelter -- on a bad day it was eight times -- they stayed on the job through five weeks of rocket bombardments from across the double-fenced border.
It wasn't easy.
"That sudden awful roaring, you had to walk around like this," said Alison Navon, hands pressed to her ears. "Some workers just spent the day in ear protection."
Navon, a British-born mother of three, heads Hanita Coatings' global marketing communications.
The firm makes tough sheets of plastic film that go transparently on windows like hang-it-yourself wallpaper, giving considerable shatter-shielding. Hanita's film enables thousands of school, hospital and office windows the world over to ripple, buckle and hang in there instead of spraying in all directions.
Direct hits can't be withstood, but the notoriously unguided Katyushas can blow out panes 100 yards from the point of impact.
"We were comparatively fortunate," said Leon Davids, a non-kibbutz member who heads the firm's exporting. "The rockets overflew us; we're that close to the border."
Less fortunate was the village's other factory, Hanita Lenses. It produces prescription contact lenses for customers' eyes as distant as Russia.
Two mortar rounds struck the plant's parking lot as two employees emptied the trunk of a car. All windows on that side of the building blew out. Fellow workers took shelter in a thickened basement room, a fixture now in most Israeli working places.
The two who had gone outside were both hit by shrapnel. One was rushed to surgery in the resort city of Nahariya beside the Mediterranean Sea several miles off. Three weeks later, the 25-year-old patient, a Russian immigrant, was still receiving plastic surgery for the maiming.
Hanita, established by German refugees from Nazism in 1938, stands high on a winding two-lane road in hills overlooking banana and fruit tree plantations.
Total population here is about 500, including children, but the village membership is 220. All the latter own the industries in common. Years ago they bowed to the necessity of paying differential salaries based on varying experience, professionalism and skills.
"We hire the people who run the plants, but we work for them too," explained Tuvya Livney, 54, quality control manager. "It's capitalism without throwing away the security net."
Members who work for either plant or for the kibbutz itself (in child care, community facilities or the original base of agriculture) are entitled to a home and medical care for life when they retire -- but many work long after 65. Though Hanita escaped death in the rain of weaponry over northern Israel -- the national artillery fired right back over the kibbutz -- an estimated 500,000 Israelis went south.
That drain of labor was a huge blow to the country's economy and tourism, but such was obviously a terrorist goal. Livney, in fact, lost his wife and one daughter to another terrorist weapon -- bullets -- two years ago.
Hanita residents seem regretfully agreed that the recent cross-border violence won't be the last they'll know. Terrorism's shipped-from-Iran rocket arsenal wasn't eliminated by the cease-fire. Certainly not yet. But at least Hezbollah installations on Lebanon hilltops in easy view of Hanita were wiped out in the invasion by Israeli troops.
An official count of 3,984 Katyushas landed in northern Israel, mostly exploding without serious damage, at least in the direct economic way. Israel's government plans a recovery that will cost 4 billion Israeli shekels, equalling close to $1 billion. Probably just for starters.
Terrorist war is hell for a working economy, and Israel's ranks something like 15th to 18th largest in the world. High-tech exports lead the way as oranges, lemons and flowers used to. But that was when the kibbutz movement was young. And the hope of a lasting peace was, too.
Jack Markowitz, a business page columnist for the Tribune-Review, is in Israel with Sar-El, a volunteer effort that performs civilian work for Israel's defense forces.
