62 | APRIL 18 • 2024 
J
N

T

he sirens started blaring 
all over Israel just before 
2 a.m. — in the south, 
in the north, near army bases 
around the country and, unusu-
ally, in and around Jerusalem.
The sirens are meant to stop 
Israelis in their tracks — or wake 
them from their slumber — and 
send them rushing to safe rooms 
when an air attack is detected.
Not that many people were 
sleeping easily. The barrage came 
after days of increasingly insis-
tent warnings that Iran was plan-
ning to attack Israel, and hours 
after Israeli leaders, tipped off 
by U.S. officials, confirmed that 
Tehran had let loose an unprece-
dented volley of missiles.
Hundreds would be shot 
down on their way toward and 
over Israeli territory. For Israelis 
already on edge after six months 
of war with Hamas in Gaza, the 
warnings and then the assault 
made for a fear-filled night.
“I’ve never been blessed to 
need to wake up the kids and 
run … until now,
” Michal Sklar, 
an American who moved to 
Jerusalem, wrote in an Instagram 
story. “Everyone singing nigguns 
[wordless Jewish songs] in the 
staircase helped. I’m now fully 

dressed and feel like I have seven 
cups of coffee in me.
”

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY
Beatie Deutsch, the trailblazing 
Orthodox marathoner, posted 
about being atypically terrified 
during the assault.
“Tonight has not been an 
easy night,
” Deutsch wrote in 
an Instagram story, in words 
imposed over a video of an 
overhead explosion taken from 
where she lives in a small com-
munity near Jerusalem. “I have 
never woken up in the middle of 
the night since the beginning of 
the war, but tonight I was frozen. 
Psalms on repeat. … I actually 
thought our moshav [farming 
community] was being attacked.
”
In the lead-up to the attack, 
Israelis had largely gone about 
their lives while also stocking 
up on bottled water and making 
sure their phones stayed charged. 
Social media posts showed busy 
beaches on Saturday in Tel Aviv 
and in Jerusalem, the central Gan 
Sacher park resounded with cele-
brations for Sri Lankan New Y
ear.
But after the IDF announced 
that rockets were incoming, the 
parties stopped and people head-
ed home to hunker down. Soon, 

the sound of explosions filled 
the air — not of rockets reaching 
their targets, but of interceptions 
that prevented them from doing 
so. Israeli officials said several 
hours after the assault that 99% 
of the drones and missiles aimed 
at Israel had been shot down.
“
As I sit in the mamad [safe 
room], dozens of explosions in 
the background, the only thing 
I can think about is how much 
I love each and every one of 
the people who developed and 
took care of all our intercep-
tion systems,
” tweeted Amit 
Mandelbaum, an Israeli tech 
entrepreneur. “Thank you, you 
are our angels.
”
For some Israelis, gratitude 
about the functioning of the 
defense systems was entwined 
with disdain for the govern-
ment for what its critics say is 
a predilection for conflict. Just 
before the attack began, tens of 
thousands of Israelis had turned 
out in Tel Aviv for a weekly 
anti-government protest that has 
recently resumed and strength-
ened, despite a new ban on large 
gatherings.
Some who have been critical 
of the government focused on 
thanking Israel’s allies.

“Thank you, President Biden. 
Thank you, U.S. military. Thank 
you for helping to protect our 
children tonight. We Israeli par-
ents owe you after this night,
” 
tweeted Amir Tibon, a jour-
nalist who is on leave from the 
left-leaning newspaper Haaretz 
while he completes a book about 
his family’s harrowing Oct. 7 
experience. He was among sur-
vivors of Hamas’ assault on Israel 
to meet with Biden in October 
and has praised him effusively 
since. 
Before the rockets flew, 
Tibon had joked on X, formerly 
Twitter, about his family’s prepa-
ration for the Iran threat.
“Being married to a Russian, 
the granddaughter of the survi-
vors of the siege of Leningrad, 
means that tonight I’m not 
standing in line at the supermar-
ket or the Super-Pharm, because 
she sent me to buy everything 
for a week in the shelter the very 
day we killed that Iranian gener-
al in Damascus,
” he had written.
Tibon was far from the only 
Israeli to joke about the threat. 
Social media was filled with 
memes and quips of varying 
degrees of darkness posted by 
anxious Israelis accustomed to 
countering danger with gallows 
humor.
“
As far as I’m concerned, this 
is an exercise by some product 
manager … from the Home 
Front Command who realized 
that people were starting to 
uninstall their app and had to 
meet the quarterly goals of active 
users,
” tweeted a man who works 
in Israel’s high-tech sector.
On Sunday morning, Israelis 
woke from their interrupted 
sleep to a sunny day, a sweeping 
sense of relief and even more 
efforts to make light of a scary 
situation. The order to stay close 
to their bomb shelters had been 
lifted. 

For the latest news from Israel, visit 

theJewishNews.com.

PHILISSA CRAMER JTA.ORG

ERETZ

Under Attack
For Israelis awaiting Iranian missile barrage, a night 
of terror punctuated by attempts at humor.

People take cover in a 
stairway in Jerusalem, 
as a red alert is sounded 
when drones and missiles 
fired from Iran neared 
Israel on April 14.

ARIE LEIB ABRAMS/FLASH90/JTA

