The first two days of the war with Iran have been a doozy.
When the war started at 3 a.m., Friday morning, we were warned to stay close to protective areas. Many people have a reinforced room in their houses, so when an alert goes out, they can move effortlessly from the dining room to a metal-reinforced bedroom. All major stores have to have protective areas for customers. Older homes like ours do not have a formal “mamad,” so we are instructed to run to the nearest bomb shelter as instructed.
The war started with lots of great news. Assassinations of generals and nuclear scientists, attacks against nuclear sites, and the Mossad again doing the impossible inside Iran, where it destroyed much of their anti-aircraft capabilities and unleashed drones to destroy ballistic missiles meant for Israel. During the day and until around 7:30 pm, there were no instructions to get into a protected space. There were many stories of Israel and other countries, not all officially friends, swatting away hundreds of projectiles on their way to the Jewish state. So Friday night, we entered the Sabbath with a strong feeling that the threat of attack was low.
Around 9:30 pm, one son heard the horrible sound from the phone, meaning there was a safety warning. He went outside and said, “Look!” I went out and looked up. If I were five years old again, I would have told you I saw fireflies as I had in my youth. Instead, I saw a ballistic missile with its hot exhaust pulsating directly over our house. There were more of the same in the distance. “EVERYBODY OUT NOW!” So we and our guests ran to the parking lot and turned into a bomb shelter across the street. Humans are such funny creatures. Everyone ran to the parking lot but stood at the entrance to see the celestial jousting. At night, one sees the incoming projectiles and often the missiles fired from Israel’s various systems to take them down. There are different sounds, including one huge BOOM, but knowing where they came from and what they mean is impossible. After about 40 minutes, everyone just went home. There had been no formal sirens for that attack, and it seems the home front is not warning of all threats in real time.
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I reintroduced myself to my chicken, but it was in vain. Fifteen minutes after we returned, the sirens went off full blast. I went outside and heard the unmistakable sound of an Iranian drone. If I didn’t oil it for a decade, its propeller sounded like my lawnmower. The last time I heard such a noisy drone was at the NFL Draft outside the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas in 2022. One tries to parse every sound he hears. So, back to the bomb shelter. Half an hour later, everyone returned, but nobody had an appetite. So what do you do? Stay awake? Stay dressed? We debated the matter until finally going to bed at around 12:30.
At 1:05, the sirens blared again. I was proud of how quickly everyone got out. The boys went in pajamas as they didn’t care. While we were there, once again standing near the entrance, a sound defied description. It sounded metallic with some kind of propulsion, getting louder and louder. People ran for their lives deeper into the parking structure. After the fact, it turned out to be an anti-missile missile fired near the Knesset to destroy a large part of an Iranian missile that had been previously shot down. Everyone heard it, and all were terrified by the sound. In the parking lot, there was quite a debate about where best to be. My feeling is that the entry level is okay if one is not in a direct line of sight with the entrance, should shrapnel come flying in. Others insisted the levels -2 or -4 were the place to be, in the event of a direct hit and the building collapsing. These are not the kinds of discussions one really wants to have at 1:30 in the morning.
After getting home, I got a couple of hours of sleep. Around 5:15, I saw a little poof of smoke—it looked like a miniature white mushroom. My wife was awake, and we went outside and saw multiple contrails of Arrow or THAAD missiles hitting their ballistic targets outside of the atmosphere. Every interception was a little puff of smoke with very little sound making its way to us below. There were no warnings for those missiles. Since that time, and now hitting 10 pm, we have not heard any sirens or strange sounds. There are warnings of renewed attacks for the evening, and we are making arrangements to be in the bomb shelter as fast as possible.
When I looked up and saw the ballistic missiles and their flaming exhausts, I thought of all of the submariners who would look up as they waited for a depth charge to hit their boat and explode. It defied description seeing those missiles heading towards targets in Israel. While writing Saturday night, we were once again sent scampering to our new home away from home. This round included two trips to the parking garage, one at 2:30 in the morning. One can see the missiles coming in, and sometimes the rockets sent up to knock them out. Hundreds of millions of dollars in rocketry are dancing in the heavens each time this is played out.
With some missiles getting through, people killed, and property destroyed, why don’t people just get up and leave? Ambassador Mike Huckabee noted that 700,000 Americans are living in Israel. There are also hundreds of thousands more with French passports. Ditto for British, South African, etc. The simplest answer is that Israel sent all of her planes to Cyprus and Greece. It’s weird to see the national airport devoid of airplanes. But beyond that, people realize that this process needs to happen. Iran has been the epicenter of anti-Israel/anti-Jewish terror for decades. But one can applaud Israel from 10,000 miles away as well. But let’s look at Europe where in France a 12 year old Jewish girl was raped by two thirteen year old Muslim boys. Every Jewish institution requires police protection around the clock because of the importation of so many Jew haters. Since the Hamas pogrom, Jews in the US have been harassed, and Jewish stores have often been attacked. Is the grass so much greener outside of Israel?
As is always the case with terror, Israel is trying to do precise targeting, whereas Iran sends its inaccurate rockets and drones to kill as many people as possible. They just wiped out an Arab Christian family Saturday night and killed Jewish civilians in various cities in Israel’s center. Israel is trying to curry favor with the Iranian (Persian) population, so she probably will not wipe out neighborhoods in Tehran, though if one wants to defeat terror, he has to speak its language. Look at the utter destruction of Gaza, and Hamas still will not throw in the towel. The more asymmetric a war is, the longer it will take and the worse the outcomes.
Like during the Blitz, during the day we try to lead normal lives while at night we plan to meet our new friends under several tons of reinforced concrete. Israel needs to win this war. Period.
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