Inside Israels intimidating Iron Dome is a nation simply fighting for survival
“Watch the sky tonight.”The ominous words appeared on my phone somewhere over the eastern Mediterranean.After 10 hours in the air from New York, I was scrolling for developments in the Middle East during the final stretch of a flight bound for Tel Aviv when I came across the breaking news warning from an Iranian official.Hours earlier, Israel had struck Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, a Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon’s southern suburbs.Tehran was promising retaliation.“We will give a decisive and painful response to the Zionist regime’s attack on the suburbs.
This rabid dog must be disciplined and put in its place.Watch the sky of the occupied territories tonight,” Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman for Iran parliament’s foreign policy and national security committee, wrote on X.Despite being in the targeted airspace at the time, the threat felt distant.
Abstract.Then the plane landed.Passengers applauded as the wheels touched down at Ben-Gurion Airport.It was a familiar scene to anyone who has flown.
Families reunited.Suitcases rolled through arrivals.
Taxi drivers waited outside.That normalcy is one of the first things that strikes an outsider arriving in Israel during wartime – even during a particularly volatile period.Beyond the terminals, cars moved steadily along the highways.Tennis courts were occupied under floodlights.
People queued outside pizza shops without an apparent care in the world.The Mediterranean stretched peacefully into the darkness.And yet everywhere you look there were signs pointing toward protected areas, marked by the silhouette of a figure running toward a bomb shelter.Life and war do not exist on opposite sides of the world here.They exist side-by-side.Before I’d even made it from the airport to a hotel, the illusion of distance quickly evaporated.“Iran just launched an attack right now,” my panicked taxi driver told me after taking a call from his wife and switching on the radio.His face dropped as he listened.“We ho...