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