JAFFA, Israel — It was after 2 a.m. by the time I finally fell asleep, after yet another siren sent us scrambling to the safe room in our Jaffa apartment, which has transitioned — at least for this iteration of war — into a kind of Japanese-style tatami bed, sprawling mattresses wall-to-wall. Three hours later, I woke up inexplicably and saw the door was open. One of the kids was missing.
Bleary-eyed, I went searching and found my middle son curled up asleep on my bed. I carried him back and pulled the heavy handle shut again. I’d barely drifted back to sleep when another siren sounded, followed by the scariest moment of my life.
It was the loudest boom I have ever heard. The safe room door blasted open. The house trembled. Outside, something smashed. For a split second, I wondered if my heart might literally stop.
The building’s WhatsApp group lit up in a frenzy. First checking who’s safe. Then what’s shattered.
My neighbours’ windows had blown in. Down in the courtyard, wooden shutters lay in heaps. Lights had popped out of their sockets, hanging limp like snapped tendons.
Our porch doors had come off their railings. Some of the bedroom windows were broken. But we were fine. Thank God.
My husband and I activated our emergency protocol with the boys — a cartoon on a tablet and an overly sweet yogurt for each. Then I went to report from the scene of the impact, not two dozen meters away. Somehow, my daughter was still in her tatami bed, sleeping through it all.
Many Israelis have turned their safe rooms into family beds while Israel faces threats from Iran, 19, June 2025. (Deborah Danan)
Maybe she’s used to it. There are often criminal incidents nearby, grenades, gunfire. In December, a Houthi missile that slipped through Israeli air defences struck a playground a few hundred meters from our home.
But this morning’s impact was something else. Despite initial reports, it wasn’t a direct hit. The Iron Dome had intercepted the missile unusually low, which is what caused the damage. Later, we learned that Iran had fired a cluster bomb — one that breaks apart into many smaller projectiles — for the first time. A mini-missile appears to have fallen near us as well.
When I reached the main road, every kind of emergency service was there: ambulances, border police, municipal workers. Glass was everywhere. Shopfronts had caved in.
One local, Bilal, told me both his house and his store were hit. They’re half a mile apart. “Half of Jaffa sustained damage,” he said. That might have been an exaggeration, but it wasn’t entirely off.
A storefront in Jaffa stands exposed after the blast from an Iranian missile broke its front window, 19 June, 2025. (Deborah Danan)
I found a man leaning on a motorbike, tattooed from his knuckles to his neck, surveying the wreckage of three stores — fashion, perfume, and makeup — all blown open. He introduced himself as Rashad, the owner. Even his home in Bat Yam had rattled from the impact, he said. That city had just endured a deadly strike over the weekend.
The perfume shop was the only one with a metal grate. Its glass was still smashed. This was the second time its front had shattered — the first time was a drive-by shooting three months ago. A bullet meant for someone on a scooter missed and hit the store instead.
I asked Rashad what he planned to do about the other two shops, which had no metal grate and now stood completely exposed to the street. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll just leave it. Everyone’s having a hard time. Maybe I’ll let people take what they want,” he quipped.
Amid shards of glass, some people sat at a coffee shop, dazed, sipping coffee. A sudden siren-like noise made me jump up in panic. It turned out to be a woman watching a clip of the strike on her phone. She came over and hugged me.
The cafe owner said his wife was at home crying. “With Hamas rockets, I used to just continue with my day and walk around outside. But with Iran? I always go to the shelter. Those missiles are no joke.”
Israel Tax Authorities workers take information about damages following an Iranian missile strike in Jaffa, adjacent to Tel Aviv, 19 June, 2025. (Deborah Danan)
Tax Authority workers were going around taking down information. They couldn’t take mine, apparently. I rent, and only owners can file a claim about damages.
Before long, police, medics and journalists were pulling out, and the red police tape came down. The street returned to its usual chaos: motorcycles flying past, kids on electric scooters. A message popped up in my building’s WhatsApp group, a surveyor had arrived to assess damage.
As I walked home, the updates kept coming — many of them in that now-familiar category of wartime miracles: what could have been, but wasn’t. No one reported a single injury in Jaffa. A piece of missile had landed next to the senior citizens’ home around the corner — the same one that had been evacuated days earlier.
Then a video from Beersheba: Soroka Hospital had taken a direct hit at the same time as Jaffa. The missile struck a ward that had been vacated just a day earlier.
I ran into my upstairs neighbour walking his elderly dog. He’s a psychologist, so I took the opportunity to ask how much I should tell the kids about what had happened. He gave the usual therapist answer – use their language, leave space for questions – and then added, “Israeli kids are incredibly resilient. Just look at what Bamba did for them.”
Not that it mattered – by the time I got back to the building, the kids were buzzing, swapping stories about which apartment had it worst. We began another day.
