They also have to be ready to rush into the nearest bomb shelter when the air raid siren sounds.
Ofer Zafrani, a Danzinger teacher, described the situation as "more relaxed" in late October, 2003, as he met with a Jewish Federation of Winnipeg Community Solidarity Mission to Israel.
Danzinger has been twinned with Winnipeg's Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate in a Jewish Agency program called Partnership 2000 for the past five years. Zafrani met with the Winnipeg visitors at the Canada Centre in Metullah, the northernmost town in Israel, before their meeting the next day with several Danzinger students and another teacher at Tel Hai College, a few kilometres north of Kiryat Shmona.
Zafrani told The Jewish Post & News residents of Kiryat Shmona and other towns in Israel's Galilee Panhandle don't have to worry about Hezbollah terrorists specifically targetting them with Katyusha rockets, like they used to.
Now, they have to deal with rockets Hezbollah use to try and "shoot down airplanes" the Israeli Air Force uses to monitor enemy weapons buildups, just north of Israel's border with Lebanon.
"There's almost one a week," Zafrani said of the rockets, which can land almost anywhere in the area, after always missing the high-flying Israeli aircraft.
"When it starts, we're supposed to go to the shelter. We're not allowed to be outside."
Zafrani's relatively calm attitude about enemy rockets falling haphazardly anywhere in the Upper Galilee typifies the stance of Israelis living only a few miles south of the Lebanese border.
Then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak withdrew Israeli forces from southern Lebanon nearly four years ago, to stem the annual killing of dozens of Israeli soldiers there in Hezbollah guerrilla attacks.
Barak built a security fence along Israel's border with Lebanon. The loss of Israeli lives has slowed dramatically since the unilateral Israeli pullout in the spring of 2000. But the Winnipeg mission's visit to Givat Am, a mountaintop kibbutz a few kilometres north of Kiryat Shmona, underscored the ongoing danger.
Arriving at dusk, the Winnipeggers sat in an amphitheatre with a panoramic view of southern Lebanon.
They could hear they steady boom of guns, as Hezbollah fighters shelled Israeli troops hunkered down in bunkers at Sheba Farms, a few kilometres to the east.
Mike Ginsburg, a New York-born member of Givat Am, explained what the Winnipeggers were hearing and seeing.
"You're looking down at Shiite villages," he said of the clusters of twinkling lights on mountains and valleys in the darkness below.
Israeli troops had occupied that five-kilometre-wide area for more than 20 years, after invading southern Lebanon in 1982 in Operation Peace for Galilee.
When the Israel Defence Force withdrew from that self-declared "security zone" in 2000, the United Nations deployed nearly 2000 troops to keep the peace in the area.
But "Hezbollah filled up the gap left on the other side" by the retreating Israeli soldiers.
Their self-proclaimed cause now is to force the IDF to withdraw from Shaba Farms, actually a "village", which they claim is part of Lebanon.
In fact, Ginsburg continued, the UN ruled in 2000 that the disputed "farms" are part of Syria's Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in 1967 and later declared sovereignty over.
Meanwhile, despite the presence of UN troops, Hezbollah forces regularly fire "anti-aircraft" weapons at Israeli jets on surveillance flights. "But they're not high enough to reach the jets, so they land in Kiryat Shmona."
And what does the UN do to stop them? Virtually nothing, Ginsburg replied. A few years ago, Hezbollah penetrated the security fence, and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers.
"A UN soldier filmed the kidnapping, but didn't stop it."
The UN "won't do anything, because their charter doesn't call on them to do anything. If terrorists climb up the mountain," Ginsburg added, pointing to the slope directly below, "they'll notify their headquarters, but they won't stop them."
As for the Israeli troops in bunkers at Shaba Farms, their job is to return the Hezbollah gunfire.
None have been wounded or killed, so far, Ginsburg acknowledged. "But the difference between being hit or not hit is very fine."
Zafrani and his students at Danzinger were carrying on, looking forward to an upcoming visit by a JWC student delegation last month.
And Danzinger students the Winnipeg delegation met with talked calmly about starting military service only a few weeks later. For boys, that could mean patrolling Palestinian areas of the West Bank, which can be far more dangerous.
But as Zafrani acknowledged, the ongoing, unpredictable landing of Hezbollah rockets is never far from anyone's mind in the Upper Galilee.
"Half a year ago, a child in Maalot was killed," he said, referring to Israel's northernmost town, several kilometres up the road. "He was killed. They treated him here, and he died."
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