Another day, another missile alert: Israelis sheltering at the Herbert Samuel Hotel miklat. The writer and his wife take refuge there, but their dog, Max, won’t leave home. (photo by Gil Zohar)
Those who think history doesn’t repeat itself may wish to WhatsApp my 97-year-old mother, Joyce, to discuss how millions of Londoners like herself sheltered in the British capital’s Tube stations during the Blitz and later in the Second World War. The Luftwaffe bombings traumatized her and her two younger sisters, Anita and Renee. Today, the same “rain” of terror is falling across Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem.
In Tel Aviv and in the neighbouring cities of Ramat Gan and Bnei Brak, nine underground stops on the Red Line of the Light Rail are open 24/7 as public bomb shelters, including on Shabbat, when there is no transportation service. Some denizens of Greater Tel Aviv have taken to sleeping on the station platforms overnight rather than returning home after each all-clear alert.
At the time of writing, the Red Line is not operating. Commuters from Jerusalem to central Israel have been temporarily required to change trains at Ben Gurion Airport before continuing to Tel Aviv.
Not surprisingly in a country where kvetching is the national sport, some people have complained that not all the underground stations have been opened to serve as protected spaces. The Ministry of Transportation has published a list of stations deemed safe, which the frantic hordes may freely enter when the missile alert screams.
The Carlebach station – named after Esriel Gotthelf Carlebach (1908-1956), the Leipzig, Germany-born pioneering journalist, founding editor of the daily Maariv, and cousin of Berlin-born troubadour Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach – has not been opened, as it is not considered suitable as a secure shelter for engineering reasons.
In the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Yerushalmis are also taking cover underground. While all the stops on Jerusalem’s single tram line are on the surface, the Navon Train Station – which is 90 metres below street level and was designed to function as a nuclear bomb shelter – is now serving its secondary purpose apart from transportation.
Home Front Command (HFC) and Ministry of Defence officials have praised the Israeli public for its resilience in quickly reaching a safe place to shelter when the siren goes off.
Israel updated its national building code in 1992 following the Gulf War the previous year, when Saddam Hussein rained Scud missiles down on Tel Aviv and Haifa from Iraq. Previously, zoning laws had required condominium apartment buildings to incorporate a basement bomb shelter, but the threat of heavier-than-air poison gas attacks made those shelters potential death traps. Thus, gas masks were distributed, and every apartment in new residential buildings is now required to have a reinforced and sealed security room, called a mamad in Hebrew. Typically, these are a bedroom protected with extra thick concrete and equipped with a steel door and heavy shutters. A wet towel placed by the door makes for a reasonably airtight seal. Some newer buildings have been designed so that the area around the elevator shaft and stairs serves as a protected miklat (shelter) for the entire floor. It’s a uniquely Israeli way of getting to know one’s neighbours.
The number of fatalities has been miraculously low in the night-and-day barrages from Iran and Lebanon since the current war started on Feb. 28. At press time, 28 people – including two soldiers – had been killed in the hundreds of missile and drone attacks targeting civilian regions in the Jewish state. More than 400 ballistic missiles had been launched. No information has been released on the number of drones fired.
Nine Israelis were killed and more than 40 injured in Beit Shemesh on March 1 when an Iranian missile hit a residential neighbourhood, destroying a synagogue and collapsing the adjoining bomb shelter. The shelter was in a pre-1991 building that had been retrofitted.
A Thai agricultural worker in central Israel and four Palestinian women in a beauty salon in the village of Beit Awwa, southwest of Hebron, were killed on March 18 by debris from an Iranian missile. Barrages employing cluster munitions have hit multiple locations – including near my home in downtown Jerusalem. More than 100 residents in Dimona and Arad were wounded in missile strikes on those two southern cities March 21; most were not in bomb shelters, according to an HFC investigation.
Train service has been interrupted at Tel Aviv’s Savidor station and in Holon, where, as well, several buses were damaged. Military censorship prohibits publishing the addresses of hits.
On March 15, Israel Railways reopened the train stations in Hod HaSharon-Sokolov, Bnei Brak, Rishon LeZion HaRishonim and Dimona, which had been shut down when the war began. Full service resumed on the lines from Herzliya to Ofakim, and Herzliya to Jerusalem. While the latter stops at Ben Gurion Airport, service at the international air hub remains greatly reduced. Some travelers are choosing to take a bus to Amman, Jordan, or Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to fly abroad. The situation remains fluid.
For my wife and me, four overseas guests at our Pesach seder have had to say “Next Year in Jerusalem” because their flights have been canceled. We live in a charming stone building in the city centre, which was built in 1886 and has neither a miklat nor a mamad. When the siren sounds, we head to the Herbert Samuel Hotel across the street. There, the synagogue two floors below ground level doubles as the reinforced space. Last Friday, as the Sabbath approached and the air raid alert rang, a guest was playing the violin, serenading those present with the strains of “Shalom Aleichem.”
And what of our dog Max? The poor mutt refuses to leave his comfort zone – our unprotected apartment. With every second meaning the potential difference between life and death, we leave him to lie on the sofa and howl at the sirens.
Gil Zohar is a journalist and tour guide who lives in Jerusalem.
