Letter to a Friend
A story for children age 10-14 about the Iran Missile War with Israel
Hi Mazal,
You are very lucky you are visiting your grandparents in Miami, and not home here in northern Israel. You completely missed the last war.
I know, the October 7 war was bad, and it isn't over. It is just over here in the north, but in Gaza it is still going on, and our hostages are not being returned.
But this Iran war was different. We had a lot of attacks, but we also had warnings. The missiles from Hezbollah during the first months were small. They could damage homes and cars, but we were safe in "safe spaces," not just extra-strong safe rooms and shelters.
The two-week war with Iran was different. First, we had warnings. It took an hour for the missiles to reach us, not just the 5 seconds when Hezzy sent them. But also, they were huge. I mean, HUGE! When they hit the ground or whatever, this sent off shock waves. I don't understand, but I know that everyone nearby felt like a mini-earthquake.
One missile landed in a parking lot near my grandma's apartment. All her windows blew out, and most of the glass in her apartment broke. Dishes, glass in picture frames, all shattered. The missile didn't even touch her building! It took hours to clean up the glass. My parents went to help her and her neighbors. A lot of people went to help, but they didn't let kids go near. Even so, Imma said one man got a bad cut on his hand from the broken glass. She said, though, that it was another miracle that there wasn't more damage or more injuries.
The parking lot where the missile hit was the private lot of an office building. Because of the war, the offices were closed and so was the parking lot. There weren't even any cars in the lot! Now the lot needs to be mended--it has a huge hole in it. But no people and no buildings were hurt. That is, except everything needs to have windows replaced.
As you know, we don't have a safe room, our building is too old. So we stayed with my aunt and uncle in Nahariya. They have three children. My uncle Soli and his wife and their baby twins were also there. All together we were fourteen people in the little apartment. Soli, Batya and their twins slept in the safe room. The rest of us children slept on the living room floor in sleeping bags, and the grownups had the bedrooms.
Many of the warnings came in the middle of the night. The warnings woke up the grownups, who came and got us when the attack siren began. Then we piled into the safe room. We sat on the beds and on the floor. Our missile defense system worked well, but the missiles were so high that it took a long time for the pieces to fall to ground. Remember with Hezbollah's missiles, we had to wait ten minutes after the attack for the pieces to fall? With the Iranian missiles, we had to wait until the Civil Defense announced it was safe to leave. A few times we were ready to leave, or just left, and we had another attack.
Abba said that most of the people who were hurt or worse were either running to the shelters and fell, or left their safe rooms too early and were hit by falling pieces.
My big cousins--the two who live in Nahariya and are in high school--went out a lot to see their friends. And the grownups left sometimes to go shopping. But I didn't go outside, and neither did the other younger children. Aunt Batya taught me how to crochet. I learned three stitches. Now that the war is over, Imma bought me enough yarn to make a scarf for winter. My yarn is shades of purple and white. It will look great with my white winter jacket.
The missile attacks were scary, but after almost every one we heard about miracles, like the one near my grandma's, where the missile hit an empty parking lot. One missile hit a hospital in Beersheba. But it was an old building, and a few hours earlier the building was evacuated. That means they took all the patients and all the equipment they could, and moved them to the basement of another building. The first building was destroyed, but it was empty. Not one person was in it.
A day care center was destroyed by another missile, but it was empty. A lot of the missiles that got through ended in empty streets or parks or parking lots. Abba said that the missile defense system destroyed about 80-90% of the missiles that could have hit. He said that the USA helped shoot down the missiles and that helped prevent bigger problems. But mostly, he said, God directed the missiles to places where there were no people.
The day after the ceasefire, we were back in school. We had only a week and a half of school until the end of the year, but a lot of that time was exams. Now we're on vacation again, so I have time to write.
Are you still staying in the USA all summer? It will be boring without you. I am not sure what I'll do. I think I'll mostly stay close to home. When I finish the scarf I am crocheting, maybe I'll start a bigger project, or maybe I'll make more scarfs to give away. Anyway, enjoy your vacation. Send me some pictures, too!
Your friend,
Shuli
For Parents, Teachers and Others
We Israelis are very conscious of the incredible miracles that kept the death toll from the recent Iran Missile War with Israel relatively low. The IDF intercepted 86% of the missiles and 99% of the unmanned ariel vehicles (UAVs—attack drones) sent, according to the Israeli news. I have not seen a definitive number of missiles fired at us, but it is probably in the thousands.
Each attack except the last, which was sent several hours after the cease-fire was supposed to take effect, included up to hundreds of missiles. (That last barrage, which Iran denied sending, reportedly included only one missile.) Thus the whole country was issued a warning that the attack was coming, to give people time to get to safety. Then, when the missiles were close enough that their trajectories could be measured, those communities in the direct paths of incoming missiles (and UAVs) received attack alerts, at which time there was only a moment or two to enter the safe room and secure the door.
Warnings came through the civil defense and other apps on smartphones (even many very religious Jews who do not use the internet and generally use flip phones have one smartphone that they carry for civil defense emergencies, to contact banks, etc.) and then attack sirens were sounded in targeted communities. There is a known problem about notifying deaf people.
Many times the booms from interceptions could be heard from inside the safe room where I was. Luckily for me, no missiles reached my area.
Moving Forward
How will this affect us going forward?
First, we are all still jumpy. Sudden noises, whines, children’s video game soundtracks, and more make us adults stop momentarily, maybe even check our phones, before we resume our activities. Concentration is still difficult. Some days we awaken and have trouble focusing—part of the brain is still processing whether this awakening is because of trouble, or just normal.
I lived in the USA during the Scuds War, and I heard stories of miracles occuring in Israel. I didn’t believe them: I thought they were exaggerations or complete fabrications. But this is a very small country, and with that reputed “6 degrees of separation” we are all connected. We know people who experienced these miracles of near-misses, or who are just one degree of separation from them.
My friend in Beersheba, for example, knows people who worked in the hospital building that was evacuated, and has a neighbor whose child attended the daycare center that was hit at a time it was empty.
Only 14% of the sent missile landed, and of those, the vast majority landed in empty buildings or on empty land. This is a densely populated country. That Artscroll has recently released a book documenting many of the miracles from the Oct. 7 war. There will certainly be another on the miracles of the Iran War.
Because so many people have felt God’s power, or have been moved by stories from the released hostages who felt God’s protection, the number of formerly completely secular Jews lighting Sabbath candles and doing other mitzvot has skyrocketed.
Searching for Honest News about Israel
Interestingly, every time I google a question positive toward Israel, the search has been turned upside down. For example, I asked how many Israelis returned to Israel since Oct. 7—a vast number of people with student, tourist, and permanent resident status abroad chose to return. But google only found me the number of people who have left Israel since then.
The same thing when I searched for the number of missiles Iran sent: I only got results on the number of missiles Iran has left, and how Israel will not be able to defend itself from these.
Be warned: google is extremely biased against Israel, and you will have to dig deeply to find positive articles.
Sweet, realistic and educational