Lying awake in the darkness, my heart hammering in my ribs, I reach out across our fold-out futon and clasp my husband’s hand. We are silent, not wanting to wake our kids asleep on the mattresses by our feet – though the white noise machine keeps the ocean waves steadily lapping near their ears. There is something eerily unsettling about the nighttime sirens compared to the daytime ones. I mean, they shouldn’t be; after all, they are the same ballistic missiles whether by day or by night. And yet somehow, you feel it more at night – more vulnerable, more exposed.

We keep our phones and tablets in the safe room on airplane mode, as it’s the only way to silence the alerts. So all we hear is the street sirens outside blaring for the minute or so that they do – and then there’s this moment, this silence between the after-siren and the boom, where you’re just waiting. It’s a terrible moment of shallow breath and prayer – waiting for the booms to come. As I lie there on our pullout in the safe room, looking up at the ceiling, picturing the one-ton cluster warhead missiles in the skies above me, I can barely fathom how the miraculous genius of a few Jewish minds and advanced technologies are everything that’s protecting me and my family right now from being blown to pieces. All it would take is one little slip, one human error, and that’s it – I could be gone from this world. Just like that. In the silence between the sirens and the boom, I feel utterly in their hands, utterly powerless. Blessed, grateful, alive, and terrified. BOOM – and then we breathe.

We have grown accustomed to the booms, for the most part. It’s amazing what human beings will acclimatize to, what we can normalize. It’s not our first war, after all. But at the beginning, the very first night of Operation Roaring Lion, there was a missile that impacted a building in Tel Aviv about 15 minutes from us – and when it did, my heart jumped from my chest. That was terror in pure extract – emotion you don’t even register, it just takes over your body, turns off your thinking mind, sends the nervous system into full-frenzy mode. It wasn’t a boom so much as a shuddering, a slamming from the atmosphere, so close I was sure it was in our neighborhood. Surreal, and too real.

The major difference between this war and all the previous ones, for me, is the amount of time we had to prepare. Part of the post-trauma from October 7th, and from the 12-Day War, was how caught-off-guard and unprepared we were. On October 7th 2023 and June 13th 2025, my instinct was to panic and flee, which we did. I didn’t understand what was unfolding or how much worse it could get, and in my state of stress, decided the best course of action was to get the hell out of there. But this war, it’s different. I had plenty of time to prepare myself, and that made all the difference for my state of mind. It’s why we’re still home.

I’ve been living in Israel for 17 years, and I can’t remember the last time when war drums beat so loudly that you could cut the tension with a knife, as we’ve felt here the last two months. All anyone has been talking about, since January, was when we would finally take on Iran. It wasn’t a question of if – but when. People here in Israel talked about it as a fact of inevitability; there was no other scenario that could realistically unfold at this point in history. We were all waiting. Every Friday night for the last two months, the Home Front Command spokesperson would come on during primetime news to tell the public that there was no change in the security guidelines (something they don’t do in peaceful times).

I remember in the days leading up to February 28th, that I was listening to a podcast episode entitled ‘Waiting’. The entire episode, this is what the hosts were discussing: how the whole country was idling in waiting mode. And then, to cap it off, US Ambassador Huckabee sent out an email on February 27th telling his embassy staff: “If you want to leave Israel, do so TODAY.” Once I saw that email, I knew it was time to put fresh sheets on the mattresses in the safe room. And when we finished eating Shabbat dinner that Friday night the 27th, the headline on the nightly news was: “War with Iran expected to break out at any moment.” So yeah – I felt about as prepared as I could get.

In a way, we as a country have been waiting for Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion ever since October 7th. Because October 7th 2023 wasn’t merely a war between Israel and Hamas – it was the first day of the Israel-Iran War. It took time for many to understand that, but it soon became clear. Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi – the entire ring of fire around Israel – all originated from the same address. If you follow the money, the training, the directives – it was always Iran, from the beginning. This war was always a matter of time. As long as Iran continued its reign of terror around the globe, arming and funding terror proxies, we had no guaranteed way to prevent future October 7ths, not to mention the countless other bloody terrorist attacks on their hands (and not just against Jews). I can’t speak for people abroad, but I can say that most Israelis I know have understood this for a very long time.

Yes, it kinda-sorta helps to cut off a tentacle from the octopus, but another tentacle will just grow in its place – if you want to truly put a stop to this, you have to decapitate the head of the octopus.

This is why I admire the American military so much. I admire them for refusing to kick the can down the road to yet another predecessor, as so many previous US Presidents have done; rather, they are taking on the mission face-first, cleaning up this mess and throwing out the garbage once and for all. No more procrastination, no more shirking responsibility, no more wishful thinking and naïve negotiation. As an American, I feel proud of them for taking matters into their own hands, being clear-eyed to this reality we are facing – and by we, I mean literally the entire world. We are all at risk of the terror network run by this evil regime, and thousands of Americans have already been killed, kidnapped, and maimed over the years at Iranian hands. It’s beyond overdue that the global community puts a stop to this.

Before I went to sleep the night of February 27th, I spoke with my older sister who lives in New York. I told her that I was nervous to go to sleep; that I was anxious to be awoken at 3 a.m. by the extreme alerts from my phone, just as we were the night that the 12-Day War broke out. But at the same time, I just didn’t have the energy or will to run away again, as we did on October 7th and last June. “This is a sign of your strengthened resilience,” my sister said. “It’s the unknown that sends you into panic and fight or flight mode. But now it’s not entirely unknown, you’ve been through this a few times already. That past experience fortifies your resilience.”

What she said made sense. But it was more than that – by staying home this time, it felt like part of my emotional healing process. My own tiny, miniscule act of fighting back, of justice, of vengeance, of agency. Staying in our home. Iran has been wreaking havoc against the Western world since 1979, but for me personally, this turmoil began affecting our lives beginning October 7th. It has been one straight line of dominoes that has led directly to this specific moment in time. All the sporadic drizzle of rockets and sirens over the past few years have led to this downpour storm. And the Israeli people, as exhausted of war as we all are, understand that we need to see this through to the end.

I don’t know how this will all play out. I don’t know what kind of victory we may or may not reach. Whether this will bring down the regime in 2026, or a future date. Whether the enriched uranium will make it safely to American hands, or whether the Iranian people will ever know freedom and human rights again. It’s all too soon to say. But I believe that what matters is that we are TRYING. We are trying to make things better, to make a change for the better, for greater peace in the Middle East. Because the status quo clearly wasn’t working. I take my hat off to the Americans and Israelis who are working to bring about this change—and if anyone in the West has any doubt about the righteousness of this cause, all they need do is watch the videos of Iranians celebrating and cheering and dancing in the streets, blessing Israel, waving the Israeli flag, even singing the anthem Hatikva. After all the anti-Israel protests across Europe the last two years, did you ever imagine we would now see the streets of London filled with Iranians waving the Israeli flag? Did you ever think you would see a country blessing and praising another country for bombing them?! Has that ever happened before in history? What more needs to be said?

Ultimately, the most meaningful message (for me personally) in this war, is seeing that we are not alone. Ever since October 7th, it’s how I’ve felt. Watching so many around the world cheer the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Ripping down our hostage posters. The horrific spike in antisemitic violence in places we never imagined. How we are consistently held to a double standard, and ostracized and accused of malicious lies and taken to international criminal courts. Too many people in the West have confused who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, and all of it has just made me feel so, sadly, alone. As a community, I mean. The age-old question once again rears its ugly head: Why does the whole world hate the Jews? Why is it always the Jewish community standing alone and apart, dependent on itself alone for survival? It’s been a long two and a half years, feeling increasingly isolated from the global community… and then came the morning of February 28, 2026.

It changed everything for me, psychologically. I woke up early (for my standards on a Saturday) around 7 a.m. I was certain that when I looked at my phone, I would see a big bold headline: US ATTACKS IRAN, or something to that effect. And when I touched my phone at that hour and saw nothing, I didn’t understand – how could this be? Huckabee made it so clear yesterday! (Naturally, I went back to sleep.) And then around 8:30 a.m., the extreme alert blared from every direction and I bolted awake, almost smiling – aha!

We ran to turn on our TV, and there was the great, beautiful red white and blue: The United States of America, fighting shoulder to shoulder by our side, in our shared holy mission. Together! Going after the evil Iranian regime! Such a glorious sight to behold; a moment in history that I will never forget. Here sailed the biggest, most powerful carrier groups in the Mediterranean Sea right by our shores, journeyed all the way from the land of my birth, in the holy land to protect us and keep us safe. We weren’t alone. It’s one thing to tell someone they’re not alone, and another thing altogether to show them. The sight of the Americans right here, by our side, fighting for the good and the just, brought me to tears. If ever there was a time I was prouder to be American than I was at that moment – a moment I waited two and a half years for – I couldn’t say what was.

Needless to say – February 28th was not an easy day. We hardly left our shelter from the morning until night. Even on October 7th we didn’t experience so many nonstop missile sirens. Our kids were not happy campers. One of them wanted pasta, but in order to make pasta, you need to boil a pot of water and keep it boiling for 10 minutes or so. But the bombardment was so persistent, we didn’t have 10 minutes free from the shelter – so I had to get creative. I put the raw pasta and water in a bowl in the microwave, and the next time we had a break between sirens, I dashed to the microwave and happily discovered that the pasta was soft.

How do you explain to a six-year-old why they can’t leave the room for an entire day? Even with board games and snacks – and Tik Tok songs to drown out the sirens and explosions – children know that something isn’t right. The booms of the bombs is quite possibly the most terrible sound known to humankind. No matter how many times you hear it, it never gets a little bit less unpleasant. Keeping kids happy during all of this, without a regular routine and yet the expectation to participate in Zoom school, is the hardest part. It was one thing during COVID lockdown to have Zoom school, because back then we were sleeping at night; these days, more than half the families in Israel are up multiple times a night running to shelter during sirens, and still expected to show up to Zoom class the next morning. And work from home, of course. It’s too much.

And then there’s the hostages. With every siren, I imagine Eli Sharabi and Noa Argamani and Rom Braslavski and Romi Gonen and Evyatar David and Arbel Yahoud and all the others, scrambling to shelter not so far from where I sit at this moment. Some of them only just returned to us on October 13th, a few short months ago. Each time they have to run from a missile, it’s a reminder that October 7th isn’t truly over – we are still fighting this war, for them and everything they went through, for all their pain and all their loss, so that we can put an end to this chapter of history Gd willing. This is their justice; this is their vengeance. This is another step in their journey, and I pray another step in their healing. The Israel-Iran War started with them being captured and taken into the darkest dungeons of human evil – and we are finally cleaning it out at the source. I hope this gives them hope.

Because who would have thought – back when Qatar and Turkey were hosting Hamas’s evil terrorist leaders during so-called ‘hostage negotiations’, when they were acting on behalf of Iran’s direct interests – that in only a short period of time they themselves would be the targets of missiles from Iran?! Did we ever imagine such a scenario? The poetic justice is simply gorgeous.

Did we ever imagine that Syria and Iraq, from which countless attacks have been launched toward Israel, would now be targets of the IRGC? Or that we would see the sparkling towers of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Riyadh under fire from their Persian neighbors? Or Bahrain or Kuwait or Jordan? The rules of the gameboard are changing already, by the minute – if nothing else, this war has shifted regional dynamics and alliances in a positive direction simply by making it clear, as can possibly be, who is the real enemy. Did Sinwar ever imagine, in his wildest worst-case scenario, that his choice to launch October 7th would lead to such a domino effect as this? And yet it all makes perfect sense, the straight line from October 7th to February 27th – one event naturally resulted in the other, and you simply cannot untangle the two.

But really, this isn’t about Israel. When I see the Iranian bombs falling on their Arab neighbors – it reminds me of how often throughout history the Jewish people have been the canary in the coal mine. So – many – times. And yet the West still doesn’t get it. Those who begin by persecuting the Jews will naturally move on to persecute other groups – and ultimately, will be vanquished. It’s always true: when a society turns against the Jews, it’s a signal of its own inner ill health. There are countless examples of this in the history books, and Iran took it one too many steps too far. That’s why America is leading this fight: because finally we have leadership that is looking at the whole picture. So it’s not that I’m happy to see explosions in luxury towers in the Emirates – but it does make me feel less alone. Maybe, now, finally: someone will listen to us.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)