Published in The Canadian Jewish News
Nearly a month into the war with Iran, it’s safe to say that much of what we have been experiencing in Israel has been unprecedented.
It’s the first fully joint American Israeli military operation. It’s the most audacious effort yet to wipe out the Iranian leadership, foment regime change in the Islamic republic and reshape the region. And it’s the most devastating barrage of missile attacks Israel has ever endured, both in scope (110+ air raid sirens and counting in our area of central Israel alone, totaling nearly 30 hours of shelter time, (as of March 26) and type (the introduction of cluster munitions that make each missile much deadlier).
The thing is, over the past three years, “unprecedented” has become a way of life in Israel. You hardly have time to recover from one first-time experience before you are bombarded by another.
As surreal as it may seem to outsiders, we have already somewhat normalized a twisted reality of occasional suicide bombings, shooting attacks and rocket fire from Gaza and Lebanon. We’ve largely accepted that this is the cost of doing business in the Middle East. But as each round of conflict has intensified and escalated, previously unthinkable scenarios have become routine.
Oddly, it was an internal divide that most recently triggered a sense of the ground shifting beneath our feet. Back in 2023, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to protest the government’s attempted judicial overhaul and assault on Israeli democracy. At the time, that seemed unreal.
Then came Oct. 7, and everything changed. As we tried to make sense of that deep trauma, there was at least a glimmer of hope that we had hit rock bottom and could now begin to rebuild. But since then, the punches just keep coming. There was the anguish of the prolonged hostage crisis, the death and devastation to Palestinians (and our own soldiers) in Gaza, a spike in Israel’s international isolation and in global antisemitism, an expansion of the missile attacks from Gaza to include Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and then, finally, Iran as well.
Last summer’s 12-day war with Iran upped the ante even further, as the country was effectively shut down with several dozen Israelis killed in strikes and heavy damage caused to military bases, strategic sites and residential areas. We had hoped that unprecedented conflict would buy us an extended spell of quiet. And yet, here we are again, less than a year later, back in a loop of sirens, uncertainty and destruction.
On Feb. 28, we quickly snapped back into that now-familiar war mode of limiting our movements, studying and working remotely, timing our trips to the shower after sirens and squeezing five of us into our steel-doored, fortified safe room to sleep as well as we can at night. (Even so, we have had perhaps just a handful of nights of uninterrupted sleep so far.)
For many, the frightening first week of persistent missile barrages largely halted day-to-day life. But slowly, the unprecedented has once again become the norm. We wake each morning to a siren, go to sleep to another, and watch the news flicker all day long with updates about the various attacks in between. Somehow, we still work, study, go shopping, take a walk and carry on in this new “normal.”
It is a daily grind that exposes vulnerability, tests resolve and builds resilience all at once. Others are not as fortunate as we are to have a safe room in their own home and are forced to rush downstairs to a shared or public shelter several times a day – and night – often with small children. This has spurred many to relocate to relatives who have more convenient accommodation. Those with no shelter at all simply cover their children and pray.
These shelters and underground parking lots have become communal gathering points in turbulent times, often converted into makeshift camp grounds, synagogues and yoga studios. Schools and kindergartens have shut their doors to students – forcing all three of my kids back to Covid-era remote learning – but opened them to the public as places of shelter.
My oldest daughter, who never properly finished Grade 7 last June because the war period slid into summer vacation, keenly noted that they haven’t really returned from this year’s Purim break in early March either, since this war has now run into their Passover break.
Technology has made things a bit easier. In addition to the traditional air raid sirens providing 90 seconds to find cover from missiles from Lebanon, various siren apps now also usually provide an additional 10-minute warning after detecting that missiles from Iran are heading your way. It’s quite a spectacle to witness dozens of ring tones simultaneously going off and then see a playground of parents and children instantly disperse.
With these sirens and cellphone alerts blaring warnings every few hours, most tend to stay close to home. You think twice before taking to a highway, where you are most vulnerable and have nowhere to hide. The heightened tension might explain why already notoriously aggressive Israeli drivers have been speeding more than ever. It sparked a wartime public service announcement warning against such recklessness. I had a scare myself last week when one such driver brazenly whizzed through a red light as I was passing through an intersection.
Foreign airlines halted their services immediately and recent explosions near Ben-Gurion Airport have created severe flight restrictions even for the Israeli airlines, turning the country into a virtual island and nixing the Passover travel plans of hundreds of thousands of Israelis. (I was scheduled to be in Canada now, giving book talks in London and Windsor).
It is only when speaking on video calls to colleagues overseas and casually mentioning the need to leave a meeting to take shelter from a missile, that you realize how one person’s routine is another’s version of insanity.
Before Oct. 7, 2023, our safe room mostly served as a home office. But since that day, it morphed into the family slumber room with my three daughters sleeping on mattresses on the floor to the sounds of distant explosions outside. As the sirens slowed and eventually ceased (for a time), the older two retreated to their bedrooms, but my youngest never left, claiming the room as her own.
Now we’re all back in that room again, where it serves as our hybrid office, classroom, playroom and bedroom for five, as we wait out yet another war that feels like simply the latest in a lifestyle defined by a never-ending state of emergency.