Disclaimer: I live in northwestern Israel, near Lebanon, and I do not read Hebrew well enough to read the news in the nation’s language. What I say is what I know through experience, what I have gleaned online and from friends in other parts of the country. It is not definitive.
Background
Israel has been at war since October 7, 2023. Everyone knows someone who has died, wounded, or is currently serving in this war. The war began because terrorists from Gaza brutally murdered over 3,000 people in a surprise attack that, they claimed, was the first of what would be many more such events. 3,000 Israelis is proportionally equivalent to around 43,000 Americans.
Anyone who says that Israel started this war needs to understand a few things:
Israel’s population includes strong leftists and strong rightists, secularists and religious, Jews and non-Jews. On one thing we are united: We want to live in peace. We have never tried to force our way of life on anyone else; within the pre-1967 borders of Israel, Jews live side-by-side with Muslims, Christians, secularists and others. Our army is called the “Israel Defense Forces” because their job is to defend the country. Israel does not, contrary to lies spread by antisemites, have imperialistic dreams.
Photo by author: A peaceful night minutes before a missile attack. . The Arabs, who never in the history of the world controlled a government that ruled this land, were offered a state in 1947, when the land Britain was given to control for the Jews was to be divided into two nations, a Jewish and an Arab one. The Arabs refused and attacked.
The Arabs were offered nationhood four or five other times in exchange for peace with Israel. Every time they refused. This includes the 20-year failed policy called the Oslo Accords.
Egypt ruled Gaza from the time Israel was founded in 1948 until 1967, when Israel won the land in a war begun by the Arabs.
Israel does not occupy Gaza. Until the Hamas massacres of Israelis on October 7, there was no Israeli military presence there. Every single Jew was removed from Gaza. Every Jewish town, community, and even cemetery was removed in 2005-6.
The Arabs living in this region have been called Palestinians since 1964 when Yasser Arafat, a power-hungry Egyptian, became the leader of the Arabs living in territories Israel won in 1967. He created the narrative that the Arabs living in Israel were their own nationality, Palestinians.
In a free election overseen by western countries, the Arabs living in Gaza voted in Hamas.
Hamas’s goal has been the destruction of Israel. The terrorism across the border by Hamas and its terrorists never stopped. Israel has retaliated; it has never attacked first.
The history of the relationship of the so-called Palestinians and the Jews to this land is documented in my article, Israel, Gaza and Palestine: a Quick History.
Israel has been at war since October 7, 2023. Everyone here knows someone who has died, was wounded, or is currently serving in this war.
During the intense fighting in Gaza, thousands of small businesses closed because their owners and/or employees were in active service. I buy my cooking gas from a small business. It took 2 weeks to replace a gas balloon because all his deliverymen were fighting (I have two balloons, one full and one I am using.) He was in the reserves but was able to take a day off each week because of hardship. This means he served 6 days and worked the 7th day, long hours to serve his customers.
Thousands of families have had to subsist on the small stipend paid to reservists rather than on salaries.
What would the USA be doing if Mexicans had rushed the border and killed 43,000 Americans? Probably eliminate Mexico.
The Second Iran War (The current conflict)
Everyone’s nerves are shot because this is a war zone. You must respond immediately to alarms to take cover. In my region, we have 5 seconds from the time a missile is released by Hezbollah to the time of impact.
Around 3,100 Israelis have been left homeless because of damage occurring during this latest portion of war, which we are calling the Second Iran War. Of those, 2,700 have been relocated in hotels and the others have found housing elsewhere. There have been approximately 40 civilian deaths, mostly in the city of Bet Shemesh, where an Iranian missile made a direct hit on a shelter and synagogue. And 70,000 Israeli men and women reservists have been called back to active duty.
Interesting and possibly relevant fact: Bet Shemesh has the largest American population of any place in Israel. Iran calls the USA “the Big Satan” and Israel “the Small Satan.” We know Iran has guided missiles. I strongly suspect that the missile that hit Bet Shemesh had targeted that city to make a political point.
Specifically during this phase of the war, here’s what I know.
Besides being disturbed by alerts and alarms at night, we can hear mortar fire at the border: deep single booms that reverberate in the silence.
My friend and her family live in a very old neighborhood in Beersheva with public shelters, not private saferooms. When an Iranian missile struck an open area in their neighborhood, no one was injured. Many neighbors volunteered to clean the debris.
WhatsApp groups to say Psalms for safety for the country and for complete healing of injured soldiers have been opened. Prayers have increased. Many formerly unreligious people have begun following some of the commandments related to prayer and religious observance.
People are fighting with humor. War humor is dark. A friend, who had once been given a small part of a destroyed rocket, found a dead mouse in his yard. He posted a photo of the mouse and scrap of rocket with the caption, “Mouse didn’t reach the shelter in time.” Widely assumed to be a joke, it was reported that a new app uses exact geographic location and time to determine, using statistical analysis, when are the safest times to use the bathroom and bathe. Babylon Bee, a satire site, did a youtube video on the assassination and succession to Khameni that we found very funny. A cartoon showed a woman with two lists: an “everyday” to-do list with things like “clean the attic,” “put all family photos in albums,” and more on one side, and on the “War” side: “Read” and “Listen for attack warnings.”
A friend and her husband were driving home from Haifa after the Sabbath when there was a siren. Following protocol, they pulled to the side of the road, left the car, and ran towards a roadside shelter. She looked up: a drone was right above her, and an Israeli helicopter was shooting at it. She wrote, “OMG! I was literally in a movie. It would have been interesting had it not been so frightening.”
Where I am staying, a 7-year-old was in the shower when an attack alarm sounded. Her father snatched her out of the water, wrapped her in a large towel, and carried her downstairs into the saferoom. The child told me that another time she was in the bathroom for “other things” when a siren went off.
At the Sabbath table yesterday, we went around the table saying something good and something bad because of the war. The “good” of war? The unity among Israelis. The way so many secular Jews have seen the miracles that have kept them and others safe—for example when missiles that are not destroyed by our missile defense systems land in empty areas or fail to detonate.i
We jump at loud noises. It will be a long time before we want to watch fireworks.
Left: Iron Dome, photo by EconomicTimes.IndiaTimes.com; right fireworks by jingda chen on unsplash. We hate the ads that start up automatically on social media for violent game apps. The noises are too similar to war noises.
It is very hard to concentrate on other things when we have to keep one ear tuned to alerts and alarms.
The local Farmer’s Market, which has not recovered from last spring’s First Iran War, is closed because there is no shelter big enough for everyone. Farmers are suffering from the lack of markets and we are buying vegetables that have been stored instead of picked within 12 hours of purchase,
People without cars are pretty much tied to their homes and shelters. It is unsafe to be on the street when an alarm sounds.
We have become impatient with social media posts highlighting materialistic concerns, such as people who cannot decide between four shades of light gray for their living rooms. We, on the other hand, worry about whether this is a good time to use the bathroom, or if our “relief” will be interrupted by a missile attack.
Conclusion
Life in Israel has been difficult since October 7, 2023. While things in the north eased up between the end of the First Iran War in June and the start of this on February 28, they are very, very difficult now. We need your prayers.
But more than just prayers, we need you to speak up for us. The voices against us are strong and loud. We Jews are 8 million in Israel and 15 million in the world. There are close to 2 billion Muslims, of whom 15-25 percent are radical and want us dead. That is 300-500 million. We are 15 million. The strength of their propaganda is because of the difference in our numbers and do not prove that right is on their side.
Feel free to distribute my linked articles. I also have a powerpoint of the Quick History. It is too big to distribute through this medium. However, if any of you can invite a few friends over for a screening, message me privately with your email address and I will send it to you.. We need your help to win this war, both the one in the air and the one of popular opinion.
i Please do not ask me why 38 civilians have been killed. We cannot know or understand God’s ways, but sometimes we can see His mercy and grace.