In Israel, Life Happens in the Brief Intervals Between Missile Sirens and Wars - Opinion
1. During the first nights of the war I had a hard time falling back asleep after an air-raid siren. The next day I would wander around with bloodshot eyes, groggy. But after less than a week I got used to it and learned how to doze right off a minute after getting back into bed. Development of that skill marked the transition to a new – temporary and war-motivated – mode of existence. Again it turns out you can get used to anything. I made a note to myself that I had become like the Huns of yore: a people of tough warriors who got used to sleeping on horseback.
2. One evening last week, I was in Dizengof Center when there was a siren. I went down to the bomb shelter in the underground parking lot and was astounded to see the bizarre world that emerges there every time there is such an alarm: In one corner a Pilates class was underway, on another side couples were playing ping-pong, and in a third section people were singing karaoke. The scary thing was that life in that shelter was a lot more dynamic and vibrant than above-ground. People had become habituated to subterranean life and had learned, intermittently, to enjoy it, even to thrive in it.
3. What does it mean to get used to a situation like this? Life is taking place during the breaks between the air-raid sirens, which are getting shorter and shorter. And on the macro level, during the breaks between the wars – which are also getting shorter and shorter.
4. The problem is that I make the same mistake every time. Every time there's a cease-fire, I believe that things will stay this way, that the war won't resume. I find it difficult to believe that people could ever prefer to return to a situation of war, for whatever reason. But the war returned. The same thing happened to me in the first Gaza war cease-fire, in December 2023; in the second cease-fire, in January 2025; and then in the third cease-fire, last October. Between the wars there are cease-fires, but you have to be careful not to take them too seriously. As their name (in Hebrew) implies, they are only pauses, almost like recess between classes at school.
5. The regular situation around here is one of fire. The regular situation is war. The present war reveals the truth about this place, and that truth is war. That is the intolerable realization I've come to. Let it be said to my credit that I am certainly not alone in clinging to the belief that this will be the last time these things happen. Everyone who allowed themselves to start something new in the past half-year obviously didn't believe that as early as spring, Israel would initiate another war. I look at the calendar. On today's date it says: "Workshop." Something I was supposed to participate in. Now it seems funny to me. How naive it is to even think of planning anything with the sword already hanging over one's head. But most of us have been swept up in that naivete.
6. In any event, it seems to me that many people now grasp that some sort of switch is needed. Over and over I hear this question: "Is this how it's going to be now? A war with Iran every year?" There's a good chance the answer is in the affirmative. If in the last decade there was a war in the Gaza Strip every two years or so, now it will be like that with Iran or with Hezbollah or with both of them. That's how it will be from now on: "rounds"of warfare. The Iranians will dig in, the Israelis will launch operations, and so on and so forth, until the bitter end.
7. Our relationship with the entity called Israel resembles romantic ties with an abusive man. In situations like that there are outbursts of physical or other violence, but between them there are letups, and even pleasant moments. No less than the moments of terror, the problem with that type of relationship is the moments of delusional normality. They are precisely what makes it possible for the situation to persist indefinitely. After all, if the curses and blows of the abuser were to continue without a pause, it wouldn't last. What maintains the destructive architecture is precisely the smiles in between.
8. Smiles like that exist in relations with Israel, too. On a few pleasant days in pre-war February I said to myself: Where in the world is there weather like this? I came across a fine book that was just published. I saw an exhibition at the museum, discovered a new place to get Georgian pastry. During the last months of 2025 and the start of 2026, there were multiple moments like that. Tel Aviv, in particular, is a place that provides that kind of illusion of normality. But it's an illusion to steer clear of: In order to change something in life, you have to stop clinging to such consolation and come to grips with reality.
9. We are in the hands of deranged, violent people. They are making us miserable, but at the same time perpetrating even greater crimes. We are inflicting the greatest disaster on other people. Citing a different allegory, our life resembles the plot of a film in the style of Clint Eastwood's "A Perfect World," in which the protagonist, a boy, is kidnapped by a fugitive from the law who goes on committing robberies. Except that in our case there's nothing the least bit amusing about it.
10. I remember another experience from a few months ago. I was on the train to the airport, on the way to a flight to Athens. A woman who sat next to me started talking to me. When there was an announcement that the next stop was the airport, I told her I had to get off. She asked me why, and I said I was going abroad. At this point something in her changed. "What in the world? What is there for you abroad?" she scolded, and started to urge me to change my mind. "There is no place more beautiful than Israel, there isn't, in the whole world there is no place like this!" Her eyes sparkled strangely. She all but grabbed me in order to stop me from getting off the train. It was weird. But am I myself not a version of some sort of that bizarre woman?
11. King Leonidas of Sparta commanded his soldiers to eat breakfast as though they could expect to have dinner in the underworld. Now we are all like those soldiers.