It's taken me a long time to come to terms with everything that has happened here in Israel, and even longer to put it into words.
At 3:00 a.m. on Friday morning, every Israeli was jolted awake by an alert from the Home Front Command. Normally, these notifications warn us of incoming rocket fire. But this time, the message was different. It warned of new, urgent security guidelines. Moments later, the sound of IDF fighter jets tore through the night sky. We knew what that meant.
Israel had entered a national state of emergency. Schools and workplaces were shut down. Public gatherings were banned. Our airspace abruptly closed. No one in, no one out.
Working in media and journalism, it wasn't hard to piece together what was coming: a preemptive strike against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Just the night before, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed what many of us already feared, that the Iranian regime was on the brink of acquiring a nuclear weapon. The US evacuated non-essential embassy staff across the Middle East. Anyone paying attention here knew it was only a matter of days.
Video: The site of the Tel Aviv missile impact / Credit: Zina Rakhamilova
I grabbed my emergency bag and began adding extra essentials. As I packed, social media exploded with reports of strikes deep inside Tehran.
This was it.
After years of warnings… after living under constant threats from a regime that openly vows to wipe us off the map, this regime that trained and financed the October 7 attacks, that arms the terror groups who've been firing at us for over a year and a half, we had reached the breaking point.
Israel was officially at war with Iran.
I imagine the average Israeli felt a storm of emotion: dread at the thought of a new front opening while we're still battling Hamas and its proxies… and relief. Relief that we were finally striking at the head of the snake. Relief that the farcical nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran had finally collapsed.
Tel Aviv felt eerie that Friday afternoon. Normally buzzing before Shabbat, the city was silent. Most businesses were shuttered. The few that stayed open operated quietly, with no music, no chatter. We spent the day buying more supplies and packing extra snacks, trying to keep busy.
Then came the sirens – around 9:30 p.m.
Our usual safe spot (the fortified stairwell) was no longer enough. This time, we had ten minutes to run to the nearest underground bunker. As we ran, the Israeli interceptors engaged a ballistic missile over the Tel Aviv sky. I've seen and heard many interceptions in my life, but nothing like this. The boom shook the earth beneath our feet as we dove into a packed shelter with hundreds of neighbors.
It was Shabbat, so people began reading Tehillim (Psalms), singing songs of peace and protection. Israelis are remarkable. With missiles flying overhead, we don't break – we come together. We hold each other up. We create moments of peace in underground bunkers.
Still, the attacks kept coming. Neighborhoods in central Israel were hit. I visited a few. One street was completely destroyed. Miraculously, only a handful of lives were lost; Most, tragically, were people who hadn't followed Home Front Command instructions. But seeing the devastation, it's a miracle that more weren't killed. It truly feels like someone is watching over us.
In Tel Aviv, we spent about five hours in the bunker, from midnight until just after 5:00 a.m. A deafening boom shook the ground. We knew it meant a nearby hit. Friends from outside the city sent me videos of the strike, telling me it looked close to my apartment.
When the all-clear came, I went to check. The missile had hit just minutes away. Entire buildings were damaged. Windows shattered. Three of my friends had to evacuate – their homes were no longer livable.
One of them is Shanna Fuld, an American-Israeli journalist who runs the Israel Daily News podcast. She lived on the exact corner where the missile landed. It took two hours to rescue her from her bomb shelter. She emerged in pajamas, dazed but unharmed. Her apartment – and everything in it – was gone.
Seeing her walk out alive was the moment I could finally breathe again. But seeing my friends processing the fact that they were now homeless, and that my neighborhood had been torn apart, was unbearable.
I walked home as the sun began to rise, crawled into bed, and wept.
This was it. The regime had finally broken me.
But the thing about living in Israel is: We grieve, and then we get up. We don't stay down.
By the next day, the coffee shops near the impact zone were back open. More restaurants lifted their shutters. More people filled the streets, not out of ignorance, but defiance. We refuse to let terrorism dictate our lives.
We are sleep-deprived. We are living in bunkers. The nightly booms shake our walls and our bodies. Our cities are under fire. But we know – we know – that this is what must be done to stop Iran's nuclear program before it's too late.
I'm not a psychic, but I don't need to be to know this:
Israelis aren't going anywhere.
We're going to be fine. We will rebuild, we will grow, and we will never let terrorism win.
