Daily life in Israel when missiles are striking across Israel.

By Peter Bailey

Israel’s many wars, the first of which started before the rebirth of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, has resulted in an extremely efficient and effective system of everything possible being done to ensure the safety of the civilian population at all times. There is a well-worn comment that while Israel’s enemies have spent fortunes on developing armies and weapons with which to attack Israel, Israel has spent the bulk of its defense spend on defensive capabilities and citizen safety. The evolution of how wars are waged has seen the use of offensive weapons such as rockets, missiles and drones becoming the weapons of choice with which to attack Israel. The country has thus been developing increasingly sophisticated anti rocket and missile defenses, while also concentrating on the erection and maintenance of communal and private residential safe areas of various types. 

I regularly found myself searching for shelter during the course of my daily travels as a result of the nature of my work for Beth Protea, a South African founded retirement home for seniors situated in Herzliya. I work with the Protea Home Care (PHC) division, which provides services to the elderly who reside independently in their own homes, but require assistance in managing various aspects of their lives. One of the services offered by PHC is the daily (Sunday to Thursday) delivery of well-prepared nutritious meals to clients, who, for various reasons are unable to prepare their own meals. These clients reside in an area which includes the cities of Herzliya, Raanana, Hod Hasharon, Kfar Saba, Tel Aviv, Ramat HaSharon and as far afield as Holon. The reality is that despite the emergency situation and missile attacks, meals have to be delivered and I am on the road four mornings a week. Recalling my experiences, might provide readers outside of Israel an idea of life governed by alerts announced on one’s cell phone, followed by the siren anywhere from one and a half to ten minutes later. Of course, if you are living in the north of the country, there may be no pre-siren alert and you may have less than 15 seconds to find safety before a missile strikes. Seeking safety quickly becomes the name of the game.  

There are communal or public bomb shelters available in well-advertised and sign posted areas of almost all civilian population areas, office blocks and many of the older apartment buildings. Referred to in Hebrew as a miklat (plural miklatim), which is a communal or public bomb shelter or safe area, with many underground parking areas beneath malls, other public buildings, railway and bus stations also being used for public safety purposes. The disadvantage of the miklatim is that many of them are situated in basements, with many accidents resulting from people having to rush down stairs to the safe area. Since 1951, Israel has been passing increasingly more effective laws regarding the construction and availability of safe areas. The word miklat comes from the biblically ordained cities of refuge (ערי מקלט), so the word miklat translates as a place of refuge.  

We then have the mamad, acronym for merchav mugan dirati, which means home safe area, with mamadim found in many apartments and free-standing homes. Legislation was passed in 1993, making it mandatory by law for all new homes, free standing or in apartment blocks, to have a mamad (safe room). This legislation was prompted by the 1991 Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the 1st Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm. The threat of chemicals or gas being released into the atmosphere by the exploding missiles resulted in the 1993 legislation, which also made provision for the proper sealing of all safe rooms.

The third category of safe room is the mamak, acronym  for merchav mugan komati, which means the safe area on each floor of an apartment or office complex. The building in which I reside has a mamak, which means that it’s a short, safe and convenient walk down the passage to safety. Many older and disabled people residing in older buildings with a basement miklat, rather than a mamak or mamad, often resort to sitting in the lobby area outside their apartments as they are unable to get to the safe area in time and in safety. This is not ideal, but offers a small degree of safety, as long as there are no windows, which can shatter and cause injuries in the event of a nearby blast or explosion. 

Finally, there is the migunit, which is a portable free standing safe area which can be placed in areas where there is no miklat. One of the reasons for this innovation is that business premises such as shops and restaurants are not allowed to be open for business during an emergency period, unless there is a nearby safe area for customers in the event of a missile alert. Necessity being the mother of invention, an answer to the problem was found. 

The most satisfying feature of my experiences seeking safety during my travels has been the friendly and helpful attitude of people wherever and whenever I have been in need of a safe area. My first experience of this camaraderie and unconditional helpfulness was following a warning alert that the siren would be sounding in the next few minutes was in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bavli. Immediately after receiving the alert, I looked for a safe place to stop my car, and as I did so, a young lady knocked on the window and asked if I was in need of shelter, and if so to follow her, which I did. A few metres down the road was the entrance to a school, and I soon discovered that many schools in Tel Aviv, closed because of the emergency situation, had opened their miklatim to the public. I followed the crowd down into the basement where despite my protestations, somebody insisted I take their chair, which I did with gratitude. Total strangers were chatting with each and with my Hebrew not too wonderful, a few people spoke to me in English and I was really part of a wonderful socialising event. When the all clear sounded, off we all went, going our own way.

Another learning experience was just after leaving a residential building in Herzliya where I had delivered a meal when the alert sounded on my cell phone. I retraced my steps into the building and followed the signs to the basement miklat, where I joined a small group of adults and about 20 young children. I knew that the building had recently been renovated, which meant that each apartment had its own mamad, so I was somewhat taken aback at seeing so many kids and so few adults. I soon had the answer. The war situation meant that children were not at nursery schools or kindergartens as these were all closed, which meant that parents had to take time off work to care for their children. The very practical solution in this building was for two sets of parents to be with the youngsters while  other parents were free to go to work, with the ‘duty parents’ changing every two hours.   

Later that same day, I found myself in the Ramat Aviv suburb of Tel Aviv, when the alert sounded. It was already the fourth time that day. I saw a curbside parking bay available and parked the delivery van, and as I stood on the pavement looking around, a man standing at the entrance to a school beckoned to me. I went over to him and he invited me to join them in the school miklat, where I saw that there were mattresses along two walls of the safe area, but this time several adults were resting on the mattresses. My curiosity once again got the better of me and I asked the man who had originally beckoned me for more detail. It turned out he was the school principal, but with no pupils, he had opened the miklat to the public. The school was adjacent to a very old quarter of Ramat Aviv, with many of the nearby buildings lacking any form of safety for the residents, so they had been invited to sleep in the school miklat in case there were siren alerts during the night. I was offered coffee and a chair, while I marvelled  at the resourcefulness of the school principal and unsolicited care and  kindness shown to one and all while the sirens wailed. 

SIREN IN THE SUPERMARKET

While shopping with my wife during Pesach (Passover) at the local hypermarket, we had just finished paying for our trolley, when the alert sounded on our cell phones. I pushed the full trolley to the area designated as the safe area, and while somewhat concerned, was instructed to leave the trolley outside, together with many other trolleys. We were shepherded through a door only to discover that this led to a stairwell, which was full of people as the miklat was already overcrowded. So, there we stood for the next 20 minutes, waiting for the ‘all clear’. Probably one of my less enjoyable miklat stays, although I was delighted to find my trolley intact with all our paid for shopping just as we’d left it. So good to experience honesty of the highest degree in adversity.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

While on a delivery call in an area known as the Old North of Tel Aviv, not far from Hamedina Square (Kikar Hamedina), where there are many older buildings with no protection, the siren sounded. Where would I find safety here? While most residential building entrance doors in this area are usually locked with a code, I found that many doors were wide open with signs in Hebrew advising that a miklat was available. This was once again a wonderful example of the caring and sharing attitude of most Israelis. Although I’ve had many experiences seeking safety during this war, one particular miklat stay stands out. I was travelling on the highway near Hod HaSharon, having heard the alert warning that missiles from Iran were on their way and that the siren would be sounding in the next few minutes. I took the first off ramp and found myself outside the Sokolov Train Station, illegally parked in the no stopping zone right outside the station and jumped out the car as the siren went off. I was cutting it fine. The normally officious barrier guards who usually take no nonsense from anybody, were now holding the barriers open and ushering all and sundry into the station building. I was shepherded into a crowded small miklat behind the ticket office, which looked more like a staff coffee area than a miklat, but it had a proper bomb proof security door. I was touched at the total personality change of the security personnel, but it was nothing more than typical Israeli caring during times of adversity.

The last miklat I want to talk about is really a case of saving the best for last. While doing a delivery in Ra’anana the siren went off and I immediately sought refuge in the miklat of the building I was in. I’d walked into the gold standard of miklatim. What a pleasant surprise to find a carpeted floor, very comfortable chairs including a few armchairs, and to top it all, a ping pong table.  That one must take the prize for the best appointed miklat I’ve been in. While living through a war with missiles dropping extremely dangerous cluster munitions on civilian areas, injuring some 8,000 people and killing 20, the residents of this building decided that if they had to spend many hours in the miklat, home comforts were important.

To bring home the danger and how daily life in Israel under fire reminds me of Russian roulette, a friend of mine was on her way to pay a shiva call (condolence visit) in Ramat Gan, an area she was unfamiliar with, when she received an alert on her phone.  With the clock ticking until the siren went, she ran into a nearby apartment complex and followed others down into the building’s miklat. She was lucky – some were not. The building she had randomly selected took a direct hit from one from one of the thirty or forty cluster bombs released by an Iranian ballistic missile, and Yaron and Ilana Moshe, a disabled couple in their seventies, were unable to reach safety in time and were killed.

The damage to the building was immense.

A neighbor later recounted how after hearing the powerful blast, he exited his safe room to find his own apartment severely damaged. Rushing to check on his neighbor’s apartment, he discovered their front door destroyed and a large hole in the ceiling and together another resident, they tried to clear debris at the entrance, fearing the couple were trapped inside. He later expressed to the media some relief that the victims’ grandchildren were not present at the time.

Such is daily life in Israel during this war with Iran.

Feature photo: Packed tight, people take cover as siren warns of incoming missiles fired from Iran, at a public bomb shelter in Jerusalem, June 15, 2025. (Photo: Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

About the writer:

Peter Bailey made Aliyah from South Africa with his wife Jeanne in 2013 in order to join their three sons and families who were already in Israel. He spent 35 years in the glass industry in South Africa while also being active in military veterans affairs, being National Chairman of The South African Jewish Ex Service League prior to making Aliyah. He completed his compulsory military training in South Africa in 1964 and was commissioned as an officer in 1965, retiring with the rank of major, after 19 years service in the SADF Citizen Force. While on active service on the Namibian Angolan border in 1976 he commanded 101 Task Force’s Counter Insurgency Operations  Training Centre. He has enjoyed a lifelong interest in military history and has conducted intensive research into the Jewish contribution to South Africa’s military history, writing many papers on the subject and giving relevant lectures across South Africa. He is the author of two published books, Street Names in Israel and Men of Valor, Israel’s Latter Day Heroes.  

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Those who see ‘safety through solidarity’ as the ‘lesson’ of the terror attack have internalized what classical Zionist thinkers called an ‘exile mindset’ — a near-religious sanctification of Jewish powerlessness.

By Zev Dever

(Courtesy of Davar where article was first published)

In the aftermath of the terrorist massacre in Sydney, much of the Jewish discourse has highlighted praise for the individual bravery of the hero Ahmed el-Ahmed, the unarmed Syrian immigrant who intervened in the attack. It frankly seems as though many progressive Jews are relieved to have this Muslim man as a counterexample to the terrorists who carried out the massacre. 

While el-Ahmed is certainly a hero, and the praise is well deserved, statements and posts from anti-Zionist Jewish groups, seem to take this praise a bit far, elevating the emphasis on el-Ahmed’s heroism to near parity with the massacre itself. This emphasis is taken to draw an interesting conclusion: again and again it is echoed that the lesson of this entire event, exemplified in el-Ahmed’s actions, is that “our safety lies in solidarity with others.”

It is truly striking how uniform this message is. It’s strange enough to highlight the identity of the hero and not the murderers, subtly transforming a Jewish tragedy into a morality tale about Muslims not being evil. To be fair, Jewish communities may understandably feel relief in highlighting the fact that many Muslims are good people. But to insist that this is the central and operative lesson is to deliberately obscure the essence of the story — namely a mass murder of Jews in the diaspora, following two years of rising antisemitism and public tolerance for Jew hatred.

What, practically, does it mean to insist that “Jewish safety lies in solidarity with others“?

– That Jews require non-Jewish saviors?

– That Jewish safety depends on staying on the good side of surrounding communities?

– That the correct response to mass violence is not protection or deterrence, but reaffirmation of ideological commitments?

When pressed, “safety through solidarity” might offer moral reassurance, but it offers no operational guidance. 

Most plausibly, the practical lesson of this axiom may be that we should invest in encouraging moderate discourse and education against extremism. That idea I might buy into, but I find it hard to believe that the very groups pushing the message of “safety through solidarity” will.

Are we to believe that anti-Zionist Jewish groups will now focus on amplifying moderate Muslim and Palestinian voices? Will they stop parroting extremists, or even condemn those espousing extremism?

Of course not. There will be no self-reckoning.

I acknowledge that Jews do indeed need partners outside the faith, and the aim of this piece is not to denigrate solidarity as such, an important enterprise regardless of whether it benefits one’s safety. El-Ahmed’s bravery indeed made clear the value and importance of solidarity. But I am interested in the psychological phenomenon that leads some Jews to read the Bondi Beach massacre as a lesson in the importance of solidarity. Why do some Jews see the massacre as a sign that Jews ought to demonstrate more solidarity towards other groups?

THE SHTETL ROOTS OF “SAFTY THROUGH SOLIDARITY”

Even if such a logic is sincere, even if it is instrumental as a strategy to seek security, it is a mentality that delegates safety to external goodwill rather than Jewish agency. This psychological phenomenon is actually much older than any current popularized version of the theory of the intersectionality of oppressions. The Jewish roots of this thinking are actually something that the Zionist movement more than a century ago knew to classify and condemn. Zionist thinkers would characterize this way of thinking as a form of exile mindset, known in Hebrew as galutiyut.

In classical Zionist critique, exile mindset was not merely the fact of Jewish vulnerability or Jewish dispersion across the globe. It was a psychological and moral orientation, a deeply held and practiced belief that the Jews are not and cannot be masters of their own fate — that Jewish existence must be predicated on the goodwill of others, or failing that, on divine providence. Zionist thinkers condemned the world of the shtetl as a place where Jewish powerlessness was not only accepted but sanctified.

To compare today’s progressive, secular anti-Zionist Jews to God-fearing shtetl peasants may sound anachronistic. But the resemblance is structural, not stylistic. What has changed is the theology, not the logic. It is absolutely classic exile mindset recycled for the (post-)modern age.

In the classic theological expression, Jews are meant to accept as fact their impotence. They are meant to devote themselves to piety rather than anger the ruling powers by resisting or rising up as a nation. It was explicitly forbidden for Jews to seek self-redemption in this framework. Instead, Jews were guided to seek closeness to divinity: an all-pervasive truth that is inherently and profoundly good, and which underpins all existence and events, even those that are bad. At the same time the Jewish believer is guided by a rather vague vision of a perfect world after death or after the coming of the messiah.

The majority of radical leftists today are not classically religious, but they are in a very real messianic sense — driven, often obsessively, by a vision of a perfect and unrealized world to come which they are convinced must influence all current actions. To act against this idea is even framed as secularized sin or as it is often put being “on the wrong side of history“. Their God is, much like the old one, an all-pervasive truth which is universal and good and which underpins all things and events, even the bad ones (like the Bondi massacre). 

To their credit, this all-pervasive truth many leftists believe in is genuinely good: it is a universal humanism, a belief in the sanctity and value of human life. Their heaven, utopia, is a liberated, just, post-oppressive world to come. Sometimes it is pure anarchism or an end to money, property, and exploitation. In other words, leftist eschatology promises, yet again, a vague vision of a perfect world to come after the advent of universal truth. The coming of the next world follows the death of this world, which is in the meantime almost irredeemably marred by ignorance and sin.

ROMANTICIZING POWERLESSNESS

Within this drama, the Jews are assigned a unique role, the same one as in the old shtetl construction: the righteous victim. Morally pure, historically oppressed, exemplary in their suffering. Devoted to their truth, with moral purity replacing religious piety. This is a modernization of the classic exile mindset, the same old sanctification of powerlessness as a self-justifying moral identity. 

Like many other Jews, anti-Zionists take pride in the inheritance of an oppressed people, invoking Jewish participation in past struggles for justice. Anti-Zionist Jews go further than most. They express deep discomfort, even open resentment at the fact that Jews now possess real power. Perhaps even a remorse over the fact that Jews have largely achieved assimilation in America, forcing them to play a slightly different role than the ideal victim. Now, their role seems to be that of privileged — or worse, oppressive — whites.

This resentment is often framed as anger at oppression done “in our name” by Zionism, but functionally, it is rage at the loss of moral position. Zionism is intolerable to these Jewish anti-Zionists not only because it wields power badly, but because it wields power at all. The fact that it wields that power against enemies shatters the sacred identity of the Jew as powerless, innocent, and dependent. 

Thus, exile becomes not merely a condition but a vocation. This acceptance of — and even consecration of — the status of exile provides meaning, coherence, and urgency to the universal humanist mission and the role the Jew can play in it. That is, as long as Jews renounce collective self-assertion and vocally reject Jewish power, especially military power, regardless of context. This psychological stance characterizes pathological anti-Zionism as something distinct from even the harshest critique of Israeli actions, which can itself be a deeply Zionist act.

In the end, the core of exile mindset remains the same: the exile-bound anti-Zionist Jew would rather sacrifice their collective and sometimes even their individual existence in this life for the sake of purity. This mindset may rationalize its position in theological or ideological terms, but in essence it is indeed, as anti-Zionists admit, a plea for safety. Now as then, that plea for safety is premised upon trying as much as possible not to anger the non-Jewish and even antisemitic society that surrounds.

This helps explain the reaction to Sydney. Faced with the massacre of Jews by Islamic extremists, these groups instinctively center the Muslim rescuer. They downplay the killers. They warn about the potential of backlash against Muslims. Even while many non-Jewish anti-Zionists are busy blaming Zionists for the massacre, Jewish anti-Zionists repeat “safety through solidarity” as a kind of incantation. 

This is not accidental. It is faith in the face of events that challenge it.

Like the old theology of exile, this ideology does not require empirical testing. It does not ask whether solidarity has, in fact, kept Jews safe amid rising antisemitism. It does not ask what actually prevents violence tonight, tomorrow, for the rest of the 8 nights and for years to come.

This is why these groups can look at a massacre of Jews and conclude that the lesson is less Jewish self-defense and more Jewish dependence. Less agency, more faith. Less mastery over fate, more trust in the moral arc of history to bend only towards justice.

To Israelis, living in a society whose ethos was founded on the negation of exile and exile mentality, this logic is incomprehensible. Ironically, even many heirs of traditional exile mindset in the diaspora have also abandoned it. Chabad, often on the front lines of antisemitic violence, as in this tragic case, embraces collective Jewish self-assertion and practical security. 

Only anti-Zionist Jews still sanctify weakness. Only they insist that Jewish survival must be conditional, provisional, and morally earned. Only they repeat, in modern language, the old demand that Jews place their lives in the hands of others for the sake of purity. Exile mindset is the retreat of people determined that their role is to be helpless victims, and who are actually more comfortable in that role.

That is what “safety through solidarity” means in practice.

*Feature picture: Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is an American Jewish anti-Zionist and far left-wing advocacy organization. It is critical of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. The group was formed in 1996, and as of 2024 had grown to over 32,000 active dues-paying members. Its chapters at Columbia and George Washington universities were suspended in 2024. (Wikipedia)

About the writer:
Zev Dever is a Jewish educator originally from the US who has worked with Australian Jewish groups in Israel for several years.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).