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(JNS) – There were the near-hourly threats from Iranian officials of an impending attack.
The omnipresent former Israeli generals and defense analysts were working overtime in the television news studios, where even in a news-saturated country the dizzying sequence of events of the last week was an anomaly.
Then came the word from the U.S.’s top diplomat Sunday evening that an Iranian attack on Israel was imminent, expected within the next 24-48 hours.
Israel was on pins and needles for the fifth straight day Monday amid the deep uncertainty and the wait, perhaps intentionally planned to wear it down by the powerful existential foe the Islamic Republic. This was not just one or more of Iran’s proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, which Israel is more accustomed to battling.
Even after the killing of Hezbollah’s top “military” commander in Lebanon in the wake of the massacre of 12 Druze children on their Golan Heights soccer field by a rocket fired by the Lebanese terror group, followed by the assassination of the Hamas leader in Iran last week, there was neither celebration nor joy in Israel, despite the national feeling of justice done.
A sense of realism had sunk in after nearly 10 months of war against Hamas in Gaza following the Oct. 7 massacre. The murder of an elderly man and woman as they walked in the park by their home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon Sunday morning—and the fifth birthday Monday of the second youngest of the 115 hostages still being held in captivity in the Strip—underscored the continuing threat far from the county’s borders and the unresolved situation nagging at Israel’s soul.
Yet while there was palpable anxiety over an Iranian attack, there was no panic.
There was no crowd of shoppers at supermarkets, scurrying for bottled water and toilet paper as in crises past; there was no mad rush for the airport to get out of the country, even at the height of summer vacation time when Israelis were already long anxious to take a breather from nearly a year of war.
In fact, tens of thousands of Israelis whose flights were canceled by foreign airlines were scurrying to get back home over the last several days, often paying exorbitant prices or having to travel to an alternate country, such as Cyprus or Greece, in an effort to find an available flight for the last leg of the journey.
De rigueur discussions
For old timers, the period reminded them of the weeks leading up to the 1967 Six-Day War, reigniting de rigueur discussions in the streets as in TV news studios—mirroring discussion among Israel’s leaders—on why Israel wasn’t carrying out a pre-emptive strike.
Israel’s parliament held a rare summer meeting Monday during its months-long summer recess, and the banal local news reports of clashes between ultra-Orthodox extremists and police outside an IDF induction center, which highlighted still simmering internal tensions belying the national mood and the external dangers.
Some Tel Aviv hotels, normally teeming with tourists over the summer vacation, advised guests to take a lower floor room.
Still, most Israelis, wearied by the longest conflict since the 1948-9 War of Independence, went about their chores, even as they pondered what would happen next and when, and tried to plan ahead.
Through the worry, there was a sense of determination not to let the enemy win, among both young and old, newcomers and veterans, Jews and non-Jews living together in Israel. Israeli flags fluttered on cars and bikes.
There was also some quintessential Israeli humor amid the somber national mood.
“Calories, shmalories. If there’s gonna be Armageddon, I may as well go all out on the chocolate ruggelach,” the popular Israeli social media influencer Arsen Ostrovsky posted on X Friday, with a photo of the famed Jewish pastry.
Amid the angst, there was also a palpable sense of togetherness, and faith that has kept the country together in perilous times past since the modern state was created in 1948.
“We trust the Creator of the Universe,” said Anat Hadad of Jerusalem. “While it is undoubtedly a trying time, this too shall pass.”
