Rocket fire from Gaza has subsided, but Israelis are still on alert

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS: While a veneer of normalcy has returned, true feelings of security and trust in Israel’s defense may never be the same as before the war.

As I write this, I’m sitting in my living room, and my shoes and keys are in another room.

I feel like I’m getting away with something.

At the same time, I’m half-listening for a siren or an app alert that will let me know that missiles are headed my way. That hasn’t happened in over two months.

If it does, I will need my phone to text whoever in my family isn’t with me and find out if they’re OK, my shoes because our building’s bomb shelter floor is cold and rough, and my keys to open the shelter and then to get back into my apartment when the missile alert ends.

If you spent any time in Israel over the last couple of years, you know what I’m talking about. Tens of thousands of missile attacks were launched – including about 5,000 on a single day, October 7, 2023 – by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Iranians. Some families lost those they loved on October 7. Many more soldiers were killed in the fighting that followed, and thousands more have had to serve months, even years, of military reserve duty.

But even those who didn’t lose anyone and don’t serve in the military saw their lives turned upside down with no warning, as sirens sounded at all hours of the day and night, forcing millions into bomb shelters. Sometimes a few times a day, sometimes a few times a week, sometimes less often.

Precisely how many missiles were fired at Israel from the various fronts is a matter of debate, but so many fell all over the country that being ready to dodge a missile attack changed the way we live our lives. I think it’s weird that despite how much we all must be thinking about this, we talk about it so little.

Which brings me back to the feeling of liberation at not having to keep my shoes, keys, and phone within arm’s reach at all times. I first learned that Israel was under attack on October 7, as did many people, when sirens rang out in my neighborhood. It wasn’t unprecedented; this had been happening in Jerusalem about once a year, and many times during the war with Hamas in 2014. My building has a bomb shelter, but until this war, it was basically used by tenants as a storage unit. It was kept locked and was filled with bicycles, exercise equipment, and strollers.

On October 7, I was the first to the shelter and unlocked it, trying to remember where the light switch was. With all the junk piled up there, there was only room for about 10 people, and all the others stood outside or on the staircase. After we stayed for the required 10 minutes, we went back to our apartments, thinking it was just one of those annoying attempts by Hamas to mess up our morning. But not long afterwards, the siren rang again, and again. There were about six sirens within an hour. At some point in between sirens, I turned on the news and learned of the massacre that was in progress. Later in the day, people began taking their junk to their apartments.

You never knew when the missiles were coming

In the weeks that followed, Jerusalem was hit a number of times by missiles, many fewer than in most parts of the country. Still, you never knew when they were coming. One day in late October, the siren sounded when I was in a neighborhood I didn’t know well, and I wasn’t sure where to go. I pulled my car over and tried to take shelter in a nearby building, but couldn’t find an unlocked entrance. I saw a government building across the street, and as I headed over, the first booms sounded. I had never heard anything louder in my life. It sounded like the explosion was happening a few centimeters from my head. My ears were ringing when I reached the office building, and the guards on duty in a booth at the entrance, who did not seem in the least freaked out by this noise, let me in and handed me a cup of water. I later found out that there had been an interception and that debris had fallen about two kilometers away.

I continued with my day as usual. As thousands were mourning their loved ones and thousands more were risking their lives, it didn’t seem like anything worth dwelling on. In the context of the war, it was nothing, less than nothing. But the ringing in my ears continued for hours, and from then on, I changed the routes I drive around the city so I would be more likely to find shelter quickly.

I still drive those alternate routes I developed. And until a few days ago, I always kept my shoes on or nearby, and my phone and keys in my purse, which I put right next to me.

The missiles from Hamas mainly fell in the south but also in the center of the country – in the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv areas – intermittently for the rest of the war. Missiles from Hezbollah hit all over the North, including in and around Haifa, until the ceasefire in November 2024. But it did not remain a two-front war. The Iranians got into the act, and in April and October 2024, fired hundreds of missiles, including ballistic missiles. After Israel destroyed some of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles and about one thousand suicide drones into civilian areas in Israel in less than two weeks. In the first Iranian attack in April, the missiles sounded as if they were exploding right outside my building, although they probably weren’t that close at all.

I’ve written in these pages before about how, following the first Iranian attack, my 29-year-old son on the autism spectrum was understandably terrified. He still needs frequent reassurances – I’m talking about five minutes, sometimes 10 minutes, of being told that loud noises won’t hurt him, every hour. Following the June 2025 attacks, his need for this kind of reassurance intensified. But while once he awakened several times a night with nightmares, now he has many fewer.

Missiles coming from three enemies sounds like a lot. But then the Houthis, a Yemenite Iran-backed terror proxy, got involved in a big way. They had been bombing on and off since the war began, but at a certain point in 2024, I remember that more of the attacks were coming from them. Toward the end of the war, they seemed to bomb Israel on an almost daily basis, often in the evening. It was tough on families with young children, who would have to scoop up their sleeping kids and head to the shelter. One father of three children under 10 in my building said that he and his wife often let their kids stay up late because they felt that a later bedtime was less harmful for the children than being awakened after an hour or two by sirens.

The Houthis were the comic relief of this war. For one thing, Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s top comedy show, had great routines making fun of their bizarre dances and hats. Often, this terror group would send one ballistic missile hurtling toward Israel, causing a million people to run to shelters because no one knew where the debris would land. One friend in Tel Aviv who lives in a building with no shelter – a predicament that turns out to be surprisingly common – where the tenants had to gather on the staircase, told me, “If it’s the Iranians, I go to the stairs. If it’s the Houthis, I don’t bother.”

Eylon Levy, a former government spokesperson who now works for the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office, made a very funny video about people in Tel Aviv spending their time in the shelter trying to guess who was bombing them now.

Through all this, I never cancelled an appointment or missed a deadline due to the bombings, and neither did anyone I know, although the Haifa International Film Festival had to be postponed and many cultural events were cancelled. But it shaped how I planned many aspects of life. If I were about to cook, wash my hair, or take a drive, I would think, “There was a missile yesterday, so there probably won’t be one two days in a row at this time.” I never put on my pajamas without thinking whether they would look OK in the bomb shelter in front of all my neighbors.

A piece I wrote, meant to make people laugh, on whether women were sleeping with their bras on after an Iranian attack was predicted, made page one, and I got emails like never before. I think it touched a chord because it was something so many people were thinking about but weren’t talking about.

While those of us who went through the war in areas like Jerusalem could occasionally laugh about it, the missile attacks made me realize how difficult life had been for decades for those living in Israel’s south. They had to contend with hundreds of missiles every year, with only 15 seconds to make it to shelter, for nearly two decades. In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, by contrast, people have the luxury of 90 seconds. Last spring, the Home Front Command started sending messages that there was likely to be an alert soon, giving us five minutes or so to get ready.

The missile that sounded as if it were right by my ear in October 2023 made me think about what civilians in Gaza have experienced during the war. The released hostages have described the deafening booms and their fear that they would be killed in IDF missile strikes, as some of them were, and as thousands of Gazans were. Israel has the Iron Dome, and most Israelis have access either to public shelters (although these are often difficult for the elderly and the disabled to make it to in time, and few Bedouin villages in the Negev have enough of them), safe rooms built in homes, or shelters in buildings.

Gazans don’t have the Iron Dome, but they do have one of the most extensive networks of tunnels in the world at their feet, which has 500+ kilometers of tunnels. The difference is, Israelis by and large can make it to shelters, while Hamas forbade Gazan civilians from taking refuge in their tunnels. Surely many, if not most, civilian deaths in Gaza could have been prevented by allowing people to enter the tunnels. We know from recovered video that Hamas leaders such as Yahya Sinwar and his family fled below ground after attacking a much better-armed neighbor and knowing that a war would start. But even children, the elderly, and the disabled were not allowed into the tunnels during the war, according to reports.

Compare that to London during the Blitz, where children were sent to the country out of harm’s way, and the citizens who remained in the city often slept deep in the safety of the Underground train system. As the winter rains fall, Gazans living in tents are apparently still not permitted to shelter in the tunnels.

Following the release of all the living hostages and the return of the remains of all but Ran Gvili, Israelis are trying to return to their patterns of pre-war life, as much as possible. But even though the missiles have ceased, some factors make this challenging. One is that Hamas has not disarmed, and despite the frequent reports from Israeli government officials that they had crumbled, they are still there and are now killing their opponents among the Gazan population.

Another issue is that Israeli officials don’t seem to talk much about how they have taken steps to ensure no massacre like October 7 can happen again. How have they reformed the system so that warnings like those sent by border observers, which went unheeded, will be taken seriously next time? If another terrorist incursion were to take place, does the army now have an emergency plan, which it apparently lacked two years ago, when television reporters seemed to know more about the ongoing massacre than the military and the government? An independent commission of inquiry into the war would seek to answer these questions and many others, but the prime minister is refusing to allow one to be established. No one can really go “back to normal” until these questions, and many others, are answered.

How do we fix this?

When I was in college, I had a Russian literature professor from Moscow who said that whenever something went wrong in the USSR, people would ask, “Who is the guilty one?” rather than, “How do we fix this?” We know how that attitude turned out for the USSR, and the Israeli government’s refusal to look hard at what happened could be putting lives at risk here.

It’s hard to look ahead with so much uncertainty. I think back to the early days of the war, and I remember watching the news and seeing the death toll climb by hundreds every hour. There were no regular commercials on television, only public service announcements, and I recall one with actress Miri Bohadana explaining how to make a tourniquet and treat the wounded at home. I have told friends abroad about this, and they were incredulous, but in those first days of the war, it seemed conceivable that many of us might need to take care of gunshot and stab wounds or injuries from missiles on our own.

After learning how quickly military bases and police stations were overrun, of finding out how a quarter of the residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz were killed or kidnapped hours before soldiers showed up – even as they called news outlets pleading to be rescued –I am not sure my trust in the government and the defense establishment will ever be completely restored, not unless there is a serious reckoning that does not seem to be on the horizon. I know I’m not alone in this.

There was music on the radio even in the early days of the war, and when, needing a break from the news on October 8, I turned on 88 FM, the first song I heard was Yehudit Ravitz’s “Just a Kind Word”: “Usually a kind word/Immediately makes me feel better/

Just a kind word or two/No more than that.” It sounded so sweet, and it reminded me of a time before the war, which seemed like a faraway era even a day later. Now, at least for people who did not lose loved ones, there is a veneer of normalcy. I can watch The Next Star for Eurovision, Master Chef, or Dancing with the Stars. There are commercials for banks, insurance, perfume, and snacks. I can leave my keys and shoes in another room. I can wash my hair even during the Houthis’ favorite time of the evening to bomb us. But I still can’t imagine a time when I won’t be half-listening for a siren or an app alert.

During one of the last Houthi bombings in October, the children in my building sat down at a kid-size table in the shelter, on top of which people had put paper, crayons, markers, and other art supplies. The kids got to work on the drawings they had left there. All the bikes and strollers were long gone, and there was now a carpet on the floor, posters and pictures the kids had made on the walls, and bottles of water and snacks. My son leafed through a box of books he likes that I had put there.

One of the children, looking up from his drawing, asked, “Remember when we used to be in here all day?”