TBT:
It's important to hear a voice living in a present day war zone...Read on as a family friend shares her life.
The Past Two Weeks: A Reflection from Tel Aviv
"I’ve been wanting to write something about the last couple of weeks. Not because I have some grand insight or political angle, but because everything’s still a mess in my head, and I need to try to make some sense of it.
Also, I think people outside the region, especially in the West, don’t fully grasp what’s been happening here, or how complex and surreal it feels to actually live through it.
It started about two weeks ago, technically Friday morning, around 2am. A siren went off, but it was softer than usual. It didn’t sound like an air raid siren. At the same time, my phone buzzed with a message: earthquake alert. Which was weird, because I couldn’t feel anything.
I figured maybe this was a different kind of siren, for earthquakes? But then I started texting friends, and someone said: “We just struck Iran.”
I thought, what a wild coincidence, that we hit Iran and there’s also an earthquake alert? I still wasn’t fully getting it.
Then another notification came in: we had indeed just struck Iran. Retaliation was expected. Stay close to shelter.
As it turns out, that first “earthquake” alert only went to Samsung users; it was from the Homefront Command, and maybe they didn’t have a ready-made alert for “we just hit Iran, brace yourself.” So they used the earthquake system to get our attention. Or maybe it was just a glitch. Who knows.
An hour later, another alert: retaliation was imminent.
So at 3am, we packed up, grabbed our dog, and rushed across the street to the shelter. We were tired. We didn’t know what was coming. And even though we’ve been living through a war since October 7, this was different. This wasn’t short-range rockets from Gaza. These were ballistic missiles. From Iran.
That’s a different level of threat. A different kind of fear.
Something I don’t think people in the West understand is that being pro-peace and being anti-war are not the same thing.
To be anti-war is a privilege. It’s not always a choice afforded to those with enemies actively trying to annihilate them.
What’s striking is how much support there has been for this operation from Israelis despite the risk, the consequences, the very real fear. And I think that speaks to something most people outside this region don’t understand: our deep historical and emotional connection with the people of Iran.
Yes, the people. Because we’re not anti-Iranian. We’re anti-regime.
That may sound contradictory from the outside. “How can you say you support Iranians while bombing Iran?” That kind of black and white thinking doesn’t hold up here.
Iranians are oppressed by the same terror we are. Their regime, the Ayatollah, kills women for showing a strand of hair. And that same regime funds Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis… the groups that murder, fire rockets at our homes and use civilians as shields.
Iran is the center of a terror network that stretches across the region, and targets not just us, but their own people, too. In Gaza. In Lebanon. Everywhere.
We proudly stand with the Iranian people. And many of them stand with us. It’s a bond that’s real and growing, even in the darkest times.
Over these two weeks, we were woken up over and over by sirens. Sometimes multiple times a night. Sometimes we spent hours in the shelter.
I don’t even think the reality has sunk in yet. The sleep deprivation, the adrenaline, the grief, it blurs everything.
But this was Iran. This was real. And they actually hit things.
A single ballistic missile can flatten an entire neighborhood.
And they did. Many times.
The closest being less than two miles north of us. Places I go all the time—gone. Rubble. Buildings destroyed. People killed. Families displaced.
And yet, I haven’t fully processed it. It feels too big, too surreal, too much to hold.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, it ended.
The tent cities in the subway stations, where families without shelters had slept, were gone overnight. Restaurants reopened like nothing had happened. Streets were full of life again. Music. People. Laughter.
But this "return to normal"... is still day 628 of war.
There are still 50 hostages being held captive in Gaza.
Nothing is really normal."
