People look at a crater in the ground in the aftermath of a missile strike fired from Iran on June 17 in Herzliya, Israel. Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images
Senior Columnist
Rob Eshman
June 17, 2025
I was talking on the phone to my Israeli brother-in-law about the war with Iran when he said he had to put me on hold.
“No problem,” I said, and the phone went silent.
And stayed silent.
David had been driving from Modiin, a city between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, back to his home on Kibbutz Mishmar HaNegev, which is about 12 miles from the border with Gaza.
David moved to Israel in 1977, and has lived there since. He and his wife Etti, whose family was forced to leave Iraq after Israel’s founding, have three daughters and six grandchildren. He’s a grounded, sensible guy with a ready laugh and the family knack for telling a good story. So he’s always the first Israeli I turn to when the country is in crisis.
“David?” I asked. “David?”
I realized there was no connection. I texted, “Call me,” then waited.
About 20 minutes later, David called back.
“There was a missile attack,” he said. “I had to get out of the car in Kiryat Gat and get to a shelter. What were we talking about?”
‘Everybody is so tired’
The night before we talked, sirens woke David at 12:30 a.m., and again at 3:30 a.m., to give him time to get to the bomb shelter about 25 yards from his home on the kibbutz. Stairs lead down about two stories beneath the earth, to a concrete cubicle where he sat and waited with some neighbors.
“It’s not a five-star hotel,” he said. “It’s fine.”
While Etti is staying with the grandchildren near Jerusalem, David’s visits to the shelter have quickly become a routine. After 15 minutes, there’s an all-clear notice, and he gets out and tries to go back to sleep.
“Everybody is so tired,” he said. “Parents, children, we’re all exhausted.”
The kibbutz is about an hour away from a prime target, Israel’s nuclear installation at Dimona. But, David said, the Iranian missiles have notoriously poor aim. Two days earlier, one hit in a field in the Negev, plowing a hole 60 feet wide and 15 feet deep.
Hamas rockets, which rained down regularly around David’s kibbutz until Israel entered Gaza following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, carry around 50-75 kilograms of explosives. The Iranian missiles carry between 400 and 750 kilos.
“The Iranian missiles are much, much more powerful than what Hamas or Hezbollah used,” David said.
Those missiles — and the prospect that, someday soon, they could come equipped with a nuclear weapon — explain why most Israelis are united in support of this war.
“Oh, my God,” David said, “it’s total unity from left to right. The feeling is that it just had to be done, and this was the right time to do it. There’s no choice.”
A renewed sense of solidarity
In the days after the Oct. 7 attack, David, who lost many friends to the Hamas invasion, expressed unadulterated anger at Israel’s leadership for letting the massacre happen, and not responding fast enough when it was underway.
He was far from alone. But, still, the country came together in the aftermath of the massacre, rallying to fight in Gaza and rebuild. David, an agricultural economist who heads the Israel Association of Field Crop Growers, said the country’s agriculture has rebounded, in some cases surpassing pre-Oct. 7 production.
But the initial sense of unity frayed, as old and new divisions surfaced — over drafting the Haredim; the government’s attitude toward the hostages; a sense that the war in Gaza lacked direction; and the government’s renewed proposals to overhaul the judiciary.
Now, the solidarity has returned.
In years past, rockets battered regions outside the country’s center, and people sought refuge with friends and strangers in Tel Aviv. Now as Iranian missiles target Tel Aviv and the heavily populated region around it, people there are getting support from Israelis in the periphery.
Last Friday, David’s wife Etti joined with some other kibbutz members to cook dinner for 60 soldiers sent down to guard the borders.
“They didn’t have a Shabbat meal, so they got together, and Etti cooked up a storm for them,” David said.
Lingering fury over Gaza
The success of Israel’s attack on Iran has left David grateful and awestruck — but also confounded and uncertain.
“How could it be that the IDF and the Mossad are able to do these unbelievable military maneuvers in Lebanon, in Syria and now in Iran, and we’re still stuck in Gaza?” he asked. “I mean, how can that happen? It’s just a total catastrophe.”
While Israel is so far supportive of the Iranian operation, David said, that support won’t absolve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of blame for Oct. 7.
“Bibi always takes credit,” he said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “He never takes blame. The army’s performance has been remarkable, and I think that would be true whether it was Bibi or somebody else.”
“The guy has to stand trial,” he added. “The guy has been prime minister for too long.”
Israel, David pointed out, hasn’t really been crisis-free since 2020.
It began with the COVID-19 pandemic. Next came five elections in two years, the turmoil of the Russia-Ukraine war, the massive street protests over Netanyahu’s judiciary reform, Oct. 7 and the aftermath, and now Iran.
“It affects everybody, and some of the effects we won’t know for years,” he said.
What’s the end game?
What happens now is an open, and concerning, question. David’s family, scattered across Israel, are all contending with the effects of the new conflict. He worries for his grandchildren, living near Jerusalem and now dealing with the stress of regular sirens.
If the United States doesn’t get involved, David said, he can’t imagine that Israel has figured out its own way to attack Iran’s main nuclear installation at Fordow. Without meaningfully damaging that facility, Israel’s strikes are unlikely to put a conclusive stop to Iran’s nuclear activity.
But neither can David imagine the war dragging on. Regional experience shows that such an outcome could be unthinkably deadly. Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s lasted eight years and cost a million lives, a fact that gives David chills.
“I don’t know what the end game is, and I hope that they have it figured out,” David said of the government, “because there’s no way we can have a war of attrition with Iran, right?”
