This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

Day 10 of the Iran-Israel War

Zero to six­ty. That’s my heart pound­ing as I throw the cov­ers to the side and pull myself to my feet. My dog, Belle, has jumped off the bed. The siren gets her bark­ing and that’s our sign to move. She’s our own per­son­al Home Front Com­mand representative. 

“Let’s go,” I say.

My hus­band is up and out of the bed­room, putting on Belle’s leash. I grab the bag that’s per­ma­nent­ly sit­ting by the front door of our apart­ment, stuffed with doc­u­ments it would be dif­fi­cult to replace: pass­ports, Israeli birth cer­tifi­cates, divorce agree­ments, Amer­i­can Con­sular Reports of Birth, and the cum­ber­some fam­i­ly tree my aunt June dili­gent­ly put togeth­er in long­hand before she passed away. There’s a lit­tle cash and less jew­ellery. But nei­ther are sig­nif­i­cant. Every­thing that real­ly mat­ters is already run­ning down the stairs of our build­ing or going about a nor­mal life in the Unit­ed States. 

We’ve entered a new phase of the war. The attack by Iran has come after months of Hamas bom­bard­ment that petered out and then segued into an equal num­ber of months of dai­ly mis­siles from Yemen. 

We are well versed in our rou­tine when it comes to sirens. In that regard, noth­ing has changed. 

Except every­thing. 

This attack isn’t like any­thing we’ve expe­ri­enced. All that time spent duck­ing mis­siles, tak­ing cov­er now and then in our shel­ter, should have pre­pared us. But it didn’t. 

We’ve jumped from an under­stood night­mare to all-out terror.

It starts with the noise. When bal­lis­tic mis­siles fly direct­ly over your house it’s deaf­en­ing. I imag­ine a plane land­ing direct­ly on my head.

The imme­di­ate fol­low-up to these nois­es are the explo­sions: not the loud, dull bangs of mis­siles inter­cept­ed high in the sky by Israeli defence mech­a­nisms — some­thing fright­en­ing enough on its own but a sound that, again, we’ve got­ten used to — but a new metal­lic crack­le, loud­er and sharp­er, that indi­cates impact. There isn’t one per­son in the shel­ter of my small apart­ment build­ing who doesn’t phys­i­cal­ly react. Those hold­ing chil­dren pull them in clos­er, tuck­ing their heads into moist neck­lines; cou­ples lean toward one anoth­er; fam­i­lies clus­ter as groups on the col­lec­tion of chairs that have been brought in to make han­dling this blitz more com­fort­able; one or two of the chil­dren gath­ered, maybe even an adult, lets out a gasp. 

This is ter­ri­fy­ing, for all of us.

Shock melts quick­ly into spec­u­la­tion — fueled by fran­tic search­es on the inter­net — regard­ing the loca­tion of what was for sure, a direct hit – very close to us. Address­es, spe­cif­ic build­ings, and neigh­bour­hoods are exchanged and then ner­vous, emp­ty chat­ter takes over. The sub­jects are benign and include the pres­ence of a new fan, heads nod­ding in thanks to the res­i­dent who pro­vid­ed it, the need to have our clean­er remove all the dead cock­roach­es lit­ter­ing the floor, and sug­ges­tions to make the base­ment space more use­ful by installing a stur­dy bike rack. 

Anoth­er mis­sile flies over­head, that same hor­rif­ic screech­ing sound. This time the explo­sion that fol­lows seems dis­tant. Some­how, that’s more bear­able. No one reacts. We’re all numb. Some stare blankly head, some watch the dogs. They’re busy nego­ti­at­ing the tight space that has absurd­ly become a twist­ed ver­sion of a dog park. Each has his or her role: my Eng­lish cock­er spaniel, over­ly friend­ly, is eager to engage; an elder­ly and aloof poo­dle whose fur is whiter than snow, sits on the lap of its own­er, pre­sid­ing like a judge; a very large pit­bull doped up on life-sav­ing steroids, turns away from the oth­ers, just want­i­ng to be left alone. Frus­trat­ed and snubbed, Belle resorts to nudg­ing the dead cock­roach­es, won­der­ing if one might flip over and agree to play. She man­ages to make almost every­one smile.

Con­ver­sa­tion comes to a sud­den halt at the ​“All clear.” We are all tired and des­per­ate to go back to bed, hop­ing to get a bit more sleep before we must, again, run for cov­er. Rinse and repeat.

This phase of the war, iron­i­cal­ly, start­ed on Fri­day, the 13th. Short­ly after I moved to Israel in 1992, I was informed that this date was good luck. I don’t buy it. Too many years liv­ing abroad have taught me oth­er­wise and the tim­ing of this new attack has only con­firmed that belief.

The dam­age from these Iran­ian mis­siles has been like noth­ing I’ve seen before — whole neigh­bour­hoods dec­i­mat­ed by one sole land­ing, 1,400 peo­ple dis­placed. Day after day, as the con­flict pro­gress­es, that adds up to an unfath­omably large num­ber of those who no longer have a home. I don’t know that many peo­ple, and have very lit­tle fam­i­ly, but I know sev­er­al who can’t go home. That says enough. Of course, these dis­placed are on top of those tens of thou­sands who lost their homes in the Gaza enve­lope in Octo­ber 2023 and along the North­ern bor­der in the months that followed.

Worst of all: Peo­ple are dying, many of them while sit­ting with­in the rooms defined as ​“safe” where their last sec­onds were spent cer­tain that this attack was just like any oth­er — per­haps spec­u­lat­ing on the kind of mun­dan­i­ties explored all hours of the day and night in my own shelter.

For them, the alarm to take cov­er didn’t, after fif­teen or twen­ty min­utes, lead back to their beds and a short prayer that maybe that would be the last run of the evening. 

For them, it was an ending. 

This is scary shit. 

Con­cerned that we aren’t safe enough, my hus­band and I for­go the shel­ter where we felt safe for the last eigh­teen months, the one right in the base­ment of our build­ing with peo­ple we’re begin­ning to know well, and shift to the one across the street. With build­ings col­laps­ing, com­plete­ly dis­ap­pear­ing in balls of fire, and instances of peo­ple trapped in rub­ble on the rise, we seek a bet­ter option. We all want to sur­vive this war. 

Direct­ly across from our apart­ment build­ing is a beau­ti­ful plaza, Kikar HaBi­ma, one of the gems of Tel Aviv. Beneath it is a four-sto­ry park­ing struc­ture dug deep into the sand­stone on which the city was built. The fact that this space is also nuclear-safe, adds to its appeal, although until this war, I nev­er dreamed that detail would become ger­mane. Encour­ag­ing indi­vid­u­als with­out a prop­er shel­ter (56% of the city’s res­i­dents) to head to large under­ground shel­ters like this one, the munic­i­pal­i­ty has installed a tent city on minus four. It’s quite some­thing to see. 

Despite the extra minute added to our run, and the melan­choly of leav­ing behind the rela­tion­ships with our neigh­bours that have devel­oped pri­mar­i­ly because of the last twen­ty months of con­flict, we now view this as the safest option. 

We won’t take any chances. 

But it’s pre­cise­ly this dire real­i­ty, rub­bing our faces dai­ly in the hor­ri­fy­ing unbe­liev­able, that has cre­at­ed room for levity. 

Cof­fee dates arranged in the mid­dle of the night. Toasts made as a whole group comes down to the shel­ter, armed with glass­es of red wine. Ques­tions regard­ing who stole the chairs, and how they mirac­u­lous­ly rematerialized. 

Ear­ly in the war, before we decamp to the pub­lic shel­ter across the street, there’s a dis­cus­sion regard­ing the safe­ty of our apart­ment building’s shel­ter. When my hus­band sug­gests to one group gath­ered — remem­ber that we are there sev­er­al times a day — that it’s a fail­ure, the response is a com­mu­nal shrug. No one has a bet­ter solu­tion. The dis­cus­sion that ensues — includ­ing a list of rea­sons we’re not safe — bor­ders on the ridicu­lous. Num­ber one: there’s no prop­er air fil­tra­tion — the father of sev­en points to the fan he brought down­stairs from his family’s apart­ment. Num­ber two: there’s no door to absorb the shock­waves set off by a direct attack — a young man stands up and clos­es the flim­sy wood one lead­ing into the sec­ond room of the base­ment. Num­ber three: the room isn’t steel-for­ti­fied because that wasn’t how they built them in 1958. We’re all a bit stymied. Although we’ve man­aged to laugh the first two off, we now real­ize we’re cooked. A seri­ous mat­ter becomes a joke out of necessity. 

There’s the man who asks me at 3 a.m. if he can take the chair I’ve got my hand on, reserved for my hus­band. I explain that he’s gone off to the men’s room but, after a moment, I add that if he doesn’t return — mean­ing, grue­some­ly, ever—it’s all his. We exchange an awk­ward smile. 

There’s the morn­ing I decide to col­or my hair. It’s risky, even bold. I might get caught out by a siren and have to make the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to sur­vive or be seen in pub­lic with a goopy head. I offer a prayer to who­ev­er is lis­ten­ing: Please just give me one half hour to fin­ish up before the next barrage.

And then there are the dogs. Tel Aviv is full of them. It feels like there is almost one per house­hold. Even more fun for Belle than the cock­roach­es in our base­ment shel­ter, is meet­ing a group of reg­u­lars at the park­ing lot shel­ter across the street. There we can take off their leash­es and let them run wild. I’m so delight­ed that she has a com­mu­ni­ty as well. Per­haps she’ll miss this when it’s all over. 

There’s noth­ing fun­ny about what’s hap­pen­ing here. But the moments we smile and laugh are far greater than those we fear. That is our victory.

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

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