This is it. I’m going to die.
That’s what I was saying, over and over again while crouched under bushes on the side of a highway near Tel Aviv. I was on a video call with my mum, tears streaming down my face. She did her best to calm me from thousands of miles away, but it’s hard to be rational when missiles are flying overhead.
I later learned that I had survived the worst barrage of missiles Israel has faced since its inception. Over 80 percent of them 181 fired were intercepted by the Iron Dome.
In the days leading up to this moment, I sensed the tension escalating. After the assassination of Nasrallah, I braced for retaliation. Yet, in true Israeli fashion, I tried to carry on with my life. I had an appointment in Tel Aviv and planned to see a show that evening, but it was cancelled due to the imminent attack by Iran.
As darkness fell, I found myself in Hostage Square, a sombre space set up after 7 October 7, filled with tributes to the victims of terror and those kidnapped to Gaza. It was eerily quiet, with only a few others wandering about, lost in thought.
A grey-haired woman wearing a black and red emblazoned ‘Bring Them Home’ t-shirt pointed to the sky, her expression shifting from concern to dread. “Look,” she said in Hebrew, drawing my attention to a small red cloud sitting ominously in the sky. She explained that she’s from the north, near Lebanon, and recognises this as a clear sign of incoming danger.
Her words chilled me and I hurried to catch my bus home.
Just ten minutes later, my phone lit up with the news of a deadly attack in Jaffa -gruesome stabbings and shootings that left at least six dead. The perpetrators were radicalised terrorists from Hebron. I glanced around the bus; everyone was glued to their screens, whispers of horror mixing with the laughter of two children nearby, blissfully unaware of the chaos unfolding.
As I updated my Instagram story about the attack, my screen froze. Suddenly, an alert blared from the Home Command app, warning us of incoming missiles. The siren’s wail sliced through the air, a piercing haunting sound that’s now etched into my very being. As the bus came to a halt, we all stumbled off, seeking shelter behind a nearby bus stop.
The same children now clung to their mother, panic in their eyes as they asked in high-pitched voices if those bright streaks in the sky were really rockets. She shushed them, hugging them to her protectively.
Once the threat passed, we resumed our journey. I called my mum to update her, but just a couple of stops later, our phones vibrated again – another alert. This time, we sought refuge under a concrete bridge. The atmosphere grew tense, missiles coming thick and fast. Some Israelis nearby who saw me crying clucked sympathetically, telling me it will all be okay.
My panic grew as I witnessed two rockets landing in the near distance, the loud boom of the explosions lighting the sky and reverberating through the ground, shaking us. The Israelis began screaming along with me. I sat on the cold ground and dimly, through my AirPods I heard my mum saying tehillim (psalms) for my safety. I prayed along, my lips moving numbly and silently.
A third alert. This time, we were on a highway and there was nowhere to run to. Some stayed by the bus shelter as before but I made a split-second decision to run towards the side of the highway and launch myself into the bushes as cover.
All the while, I’m babbling incoherently to my mum, telling her over and over again that I think this is it.
A guy sitting near me wraps his arms around me tightly as dozens of missiles dance towards us. An Orthodox man calls out urgently for us all to say ‘tefillat ha Derech’ (the prayer for travellers) if we haven’t said it yet. Somehow I type it into google on my phone and say it over and over again. All the while the kind stranger speaks to me soothingly in broken English. He says he’s Russian and doesn’t know Hebrew. But he’s also a target, just like I am, simply for being Jewish and existing in our indigenous homeland.
