It can be a microcosm of the absurdity of life
It’s 3 a.m. Sirens wail, and the Israel Home Front app is shrieking. We live on the sixth floor of an apartment building and taking the elevator is ill-advised. Bleary-eyed neighbors clog the stairwell. It’s narrow, dim, chaotic. People descend at different speeds. Some are calm. Others, not so much.
Suddenly, a commotion! A woman — late 70s, visiting from France — tumbles headfirst down the stairs in a darkened section. She doesn’t speak Hebrew or English. Her daughter, an immigrant to Israel, cries out. People try to help. Hell, I try to help. Mainly there are proffered hands. The woman is finally reorganized, sitting dazed on the steps, and the stairwell is blocked.
My wife — who takes the Home Front alerts as seriously as is humanly possible — is already nervously waiting in the underground basement shelter at the very bottom of the stairs. No reception down there, so her nervous texts don’t go through. She dispatches our daughter, home from college in the US for what was supposed to be a relaxing visit, to check on me. She peers her head outside the huge metal door, impatient with my sloth.
I communicate with hand signals, indicating the old lady: It’s force majeure. An old woman fell on the stairs, and I’m letting her go first. Surely even in wartime that buys some grace. Especially on Father’s Day (I never cared about these Hallmark holidays, but you use what tools you have)! That said, no dice.
Miraculously, the French woman seems okay. Maybe it’s the adrenaline. Or the carpet. Never underestimate the value of a carpet on steep stairs. “Tu vas bien?” the daughter asks. The old woman nods. Everyone nods, quite pleased; this is French that almost all can understand. One feels a polyglot.
Down in the shelter, my wife passes around birthday cake. It’s our daughter’s birthday. Neighbors smile politely. One man pats his belly to decline — no explanation needed. A little girl accepts a paper plate, followed by others, and also two adults. “Chocolate?” one asks. “Dark,” my wife replies. This meets approval — it’s more adult.
Everyone sits in plastic chairs arranged along the perimeter of the wall. Someone brought water and soft drinks, arranged on a rickety table. My daughter, a backgammon set.
“If I bring whiskey next time, will you drink with me?” one of our livelier neighbors asks me. She’s always with her two enormous Great Danes. I’m usually wary of large dogs, but these are docile, and one insists on chin rubs from my daughter, repeatedly extending a beseeching paw. My wife looks on unhappily — not a fan of dogs. “Wine is better,” I tell the neighbor. “Upsets my wife less.”
Suddenly, a deafening explosion that sounds like it happened right overhead. “Are we hit?” asked one woman. “That kind of explosion means an interception,” answers a middle-aged man. “The issue now is falling debris, since with these Iranian rockets that’s a missile in itself,” he adds. It’s true.
An elderly couple bickers. The man, Shabtai, fumbles with an old-school transistor radio — very smart to have one, as there’s no internet here. “That’s not the right channel!” his wife snaps, making urgent hand motions. That would be Israeli public radio, with a running news program providing specific location alerts, commentary and interviews. I spring into action — my second act of minor heroism for the day. “95.5 FM,” I explain, and find it for him on the dial. Shabtai seems both grateful and annoyed; at least his wife is mollified.
Then the radio announces that there actually was a landing, in metro Tel Aviv. They won’t say exactly where. A silence fills the shelter, except for the announcers droning on. There is a lot of filler on such shows — since after all, silence would be odd. Well, no one is laughing now.
There are worse traumas happening in the world, to say the least. That’s very sad and should bring perspective at all times. But people, like other creatures, focus on what’s happening to them right now. That’s just the way it is, and it is the way it’s always been. I don’t anticipate a change.
Israel is a nation in trauma. The unraveling began days after Benjamin Netanyahu’s government took power. On Jan. 4, 2023, “Justice Minister” Yariv Levin unveiled a judicial “reform” plan that would have neutered the courts and cemented authoritarian rule. The country erupted. Nine months of paralyzing protest followed. Division seeped into every crack of society. Defense officials warned Netanyahu that this kind of internal fracture invited attack. He ignored them.
Then came October 7. Thousands of Hamas terrorists stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping another 250 to Gaza. It was one of the most barbaric attacks any modern nation has endured. In the north, Hezbollah began relentless bombardment. Over 50,000 Israelis evacuated their homes. The Houthis of Yemen joined the fray. Missiles, drones, attacks on merchant ships. Many nights, the sirens screamed.
I live in Israel these days, and in the months since, we’ve all learned the routines: shelter, wait, check the news. We’ve watched the casualty numbers tick upward. We’ve seen hostages die — some by enemy hands, some tragically by friendly fire. Many people are horrified by the Palestinian death toll; too many are not. Many believe this war is being prolonged by politics: That Netanyahu can’t end it without losing his far-right coalition, and that keeping the conflict alive is keeping him in power. That should be absurd. The hatreds such surreal cynicism breeds are corrosive. Former Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak warns of civil war. It doesn’t feel like an exaggeration.
And now — war with Iran. Its missiles have payloads far beyond anything Israel has faced. Entire buildings have been obliterated. The sirens mean something different now. If you’re not in a reinforced shelter, you might be toast. Yet there are memes going around about Israeli dads ignoring the sirens, or moving at a glacial pace while the womenfolk bolt to safety. A sexist trope? Perhaps. But lemme tellya: it checks out. Just ask my wife.
But I’m in the shelter now, so everyone can just relax. Our third-floor neighbor calls me over. She and her visiting boyfriend have politics on their mind. They hate Netanyahu, like most people in this north Tel Aviv neighborhood. They know I write commentaries and appear sometimes on TV. They know I’ve met the man (trust me: not a point of pride).
“What do you think?” she asks. The boyfriend hesitates, then admits: “I actually support him in this case. I think we had no choice — with the ayatollahs getting nukes.” He looks embarrassed, but defiant: He has the right to support a Netanyahu action! Even a broken clock, and so on.
My daughter fiddles with her phone. Below is the Instagram story she posts. I can’t imagine where she got this snark. Must be her mother!
The radio suddenly spits out a list of missile targets, accompanied by audio effects: One is nearby Givatayim. I decide that this is not the moment to spread more doubt. “I don’t rule out that you’re right,” I tell the boyfriend.
“It’s hard to believe,” our neighbor sighs. More importantly, she asks me to help assemble a portable fan: a disposable plastic part is stuck. “A test of your manhood,” she says. I ask for pliers. There is a flurry of people looking around, as if pliers grow on bomb shelter walls. A Russian immigrant thinks he may have the solution. “A handyman,” the neighbor says. More fussing.
“All clear!” shouts Shabtai. The radio has so announced.
His wife rises, slowly, painfully and skeptically. Youngish men help the French old lady to her feet. She insists that she’s okay. With a sort of creaking flourish, Shabtai swings open the heavy metal shelter door. Stooped though he may be, he remains the building’s chief organizer of things; it is his brand.
“See you all in a couple of hours!” says the jolly neighbor, tugging at the sluggish dogs. Everyone laughs this time. A laughter unattached to humor.
