I had just finished watching an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s final season at about 9 pm on Saturday night, and decided to scroll through the Twitter feed to see if anything had tipped about the ongoing Iranian threat to retaliate.
After the whole country entered crisis mode over the last week, Shabbat had passed peacefully, at least in regards to Iran. The West Bank was a mess, sparked by the brutal murder of 14-year-old Binyamin Achimair and the resultant retribution by extremist settlers. And Hamas, as was expected, rejected yet another proposal to implement a ceasefire in Gaza and hostage release.
Expecting to see that Tehran was bluffing or just making life edgy for us following last week’s attack attributed to Israel that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Muhammad Reza Zehidi, I instead jolted up when tweets started exploding saying Iran had launched a massive drone and missile attack aimed at us.
Goodbye ‘Curb’, hello N12, where the news was confirmed, along with the information that it could take up to eight hours for the load to arrive at its destination.
Like most of the rest of the country, my wife and I remained glued to the TV for the next couple hours, amid the great uncertainty that engulfed the unfolding events. Would the missiles get through? How much damage? Would they be targeting Jerusalem, with its sizeable Muslim population, not to mention the Aksa Mosque?
And most pertinent, what the hell were we going to do? Stay up all night and wait for Iran’s present to arrive? For some, going to sleep when a missile could be headed to your home is an impossible mission, but at 11.30 pm, that’s exactly what I did.
My wife, who belonged the normative side of the population, stayed up and shook me awake at around 1.30 am and said ‘ let’s go to the shelter, there are alerts in Jerusalem.’ At that moment, a series of booms emanating from the East toward the Dead Sea and Jordan shook windows, as I blearily fumbled for my glasses, phones, shoes, and attempted to gulp a cup of water.
Down the stairs outside our home, around to the other side of the building and up one flight to the reinforced shelter, we found a couple of neighbors milling about in the jammies. Others either chose to sit this one out or, because there was no siren alert, weren’t even aware that something was amiss, and sleeping through it.
After the required 10 minutes in the shelter, we trudged back home, watched a little more TV. Realizing that if there was another volley, it wouldn’t be a for a few hours. Exhaustion overtook caution, and with a silent curse to the ayatollahs, we went to bed.
The birds outside the window woke me up sometime around 7 am, and I quickly realized that we, and our building, were still standing. A quick perusal of what we missed revealed the astonishing accomplishments of the defense system triggered by the IDF and its coalition partners, most prominently the US, but also England, France, and even Jordan.
Meme surfaces online: "First direct flights between Iran, Israel since 1979"
There was plenty of nervous laughter and release. My friend Matthew posted a meme declaring “ the first direct flights between Iran and Israel since 1979.”
Coffee never tasted so good. The surreal thing about the day after Iran fires some 330 missiles at you, is that there's still laundry to do, appointments to keep, and life to live.
In the course of a few months, Israelis have experienced an embarrassingly rich series of ‘firsts ’ -October 7, the resultant hostage crisis, and now a massive direct attack from Iran. How many more ‘unprecedented’ events can our fluttering hearts suffer?
Only a few years after making aliyah, I remember rushing to our sealed room with gas masks in operation during the Gulf War and thinking that this was a once in a lifetime occurrence. But with each passing year, and the hope that the region may be headed to a summation of the strife that’s plagued it for decades, something even more unbelievable goes down beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.
The snarky curse “may you live in interesting times” surely has taken hold with a vengeance in this part of the world. As we all wait for the dust to clear and the next moves by all the players involved, the only thing we can be sure of is that it’s going to get pretty, pretty, pretty interesting before it gets dull.