JTA — Natalie Silverlieb’s go-bag looks a little different from the last time she ran to the bomb shelter with Iranian missiles incoming. Since last summer, she has had a baby, so she now has packed diapers and wipes alongside passports and water.

But apart from that, she hasn’t done much else to get ready for a possible war, even as US President Donald Trump has amassed his forces in the region and threatened to strike Iran, a move sure to trigger a counterattack on Israel.

“There’s no preparing,” Silverlieb said. “What does that even mean?”

“If anything, we probably should be preparing to get the hell out of the country,” the New Jersey native added.

Katie Silver, too, has made some tweaks since the war last summer. Now, she’s not stockpiling toilet paper or canned tuna — but she’s been buying art supplies to while away potential hours in the shelter.

Silver said she’s become “jaded” and not particularly bothered by the idea of another round of conflict with Iran, and she said she wouldn’t mind a few days off from her job as a pilates instructor. Still, she admitted that being alone during sirens is scary. This time, she said, she will make sure to be with friends, or even better, hunkering down in the bomb shelter with the “tall, dark, handsome Moroccan” who still eludes her, the one she has in the past pictured marrying “before a rocket lands on my head.”

As tensions around the possible war simmered this week, fear wasn’t her first response. “It’s rather exciting, isn’t it?” Silver said.

And the “Law and Order: SVU” actress Diane Neal, who moved from the United States to Israel in 2023 and now works as an “aliyah ambassador” promoting the move to others, said she was drawing on her experience across multiple disasters — earthquakes, hurricanes, 9/11 — to encourage Israelis not to run to bomb shelters in flip flops.

“My real things to suggest are the sturdiest shoes because you’re always walking over debris, some sort of light or headlamp… and then a sturdy pair of gloves, because you’ve got to get things out of the way,” she said. She also joked that she had imported a giant container of melatonin from Costco to hand out to neighbors in their shared shelter to help them relax despite the danger.

“There’s nothing worse than being around a bunch of stressed out people when there’s nothing you can do,” Neal said.

Beyond considering their shelter plans, some Israelis have been making plans to leave — to Europe, to the United States, even to Eilat — before flights are canceled again. Others are doing the opposite, scrapping trips abroad, afraid of getting stuck outside the country if the airspace closes.

For those with no plans to leave Israel, even getting out of its population centers, which sustained multiple direct hits........

© The Times of Israel