Interception attempts are made by Israel as missiles are launched from Iran, in Jerusalem, on Sunday.Ammar Awad/Reuters
February went out like a lion in Israel, and March is roaring in like one: beastly, dangerous, on the hunt – and being hunted – as the country, with the U.S., launched Operation Lion’s Roar against Iran, killing its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and changing history.
Air raid sirens are sounding all over central Israel, iPhone alerts announced through the weekend. The red dots on the digital map blurred into blobs, so thick they obscured the names of some cities – Netanya, Rehovot, Ra’anana – where families were gathering anxiously in bomb shelters, instead of celebrating the joyous holiday of Purim, which begins Monday night. A holiday where kids dress up in costumes, based on the story of Queen Esther, which took place in Persia – now Iran.
Air raid sirens are a fact of life in Israel. But at war with Iran, this howling signals a heightened level of alarm.
“You have crossed our red line and must pay the price,” Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, warned the U.S. and Israel on Sunday. “We will deliver such devastating blows that you yourselves will be driven to beg.”
For Israelis, these sirens, this new war, come after more than two years of war with Hamas, and while the country is still recovering from the devastation – psychological and otherwise – of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks – as well as the Iranian strikes last June.
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In November, when I visited Israel postceasefire, the impact of not only the war in Gaza but also the 12-Day War with Iran was evident. In Tel Aviv’s Old North district, buildings destroyed by June’s Iranian missiles loomed over a residential street like monuments.
Safe in Canada this weekend, watching a new war unfold on CNN, I have something else ringing in my ears. The words of a Canadian-Israeli who told me over coffee in Tel Aviv: “Every time you hear the sirens, that’s the sound of someone wanting to kill me.”
The killing is endless. School girls in Iran, state media reported. And quickly thereafter, civilians in Israel. Nine people killed after a missile hit a public bomb shelter in a synagogue in the central Israeli town of Beit Shemesh. A 32-year-old woman from the Philippines, a caregiver who was trying to get her employer to a bomb shelter in Tel Aviv when she was struck by shrapnel.
There will be more deaths, it seems certain. On a rocket alert website Sunday morning Pacific time, the graphic states that there had so far been 1,285 red alerts on Sunday. On Saturday, there were 11,353.
When I see the “H” of the city of Holon on an alert map, the “olon” part hidden under red pin marks, I think of Amit Musaei, the tour guide who had survived the Oct. 7 attacks at the Nova Music Festival and now takes groups back to the site of his horror, where the three friends he was supposed to meet were killed after hiding in a bomb shelter. Mr. Musaei lives in Holon with his young family. I send him a WhatsApp message. How many visitors from around the world, who have heard his story, are sending him these messages? Viewing this new war through his already traumatized lens?
Eyewitness video released on Feb. 28 showed crowds in the Iranian town of Galleh Dar toppling a monument dedicated to the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Reuters
On Saturday morning, I text the cousin who had shown me those Iranian-hit buildings in the fall. Is she okay? She tells me she is in the bomb shelter for the 12th time.
Our mothers survived Auschwitz together – her mother was my mother’s aunt. My cousin has survived countless wars in Israel. Last year’s Iranian strike had damaged the apartment building where she lives. Her story is not even close to unique in that country. Descendants of survivors, trying to survive.
Bomb shelters and safe rooms are ubiquitous in Israel, but a January report warned of a shortage of these protective spaces, especially in Arab communities. Only 37 of the 11,775 public shelters are in Arab municipalities, and eight of those are not fit for use, according to Israel’s state comptroller, citing data from last year.
The West Bank and Gaza are even more vulnerable.
In Israel, there will be overwhelming support for taking out the Israel-despising Khamenei and his oppressive regime. But it won’t be unanimous from a country exhausted, depleted by war. Especially as another 100,000 Israeli reservists have been mobilized. As for Palestinians in the occupied territories, they are beyond depleted – and oppressed themselves.
There are rarely hard either/ors in war. Even as people around the world – including many diasporic Iranians and Israelis – celebrate the attack on an oppressive regime, there is also justified grave concern for family back home. What is happening to their loved ones? What has happened already? And what will happen next?