Found: Iron Dome, Iron Will
As a steadily increasing number of rockets explode mid-air over Tel Aviv, as sirens blare as regularly as alarm clocks each morning, as phrases like “possible Lebanese involvement” and “attempted suicide bombing” fill the home page of Ha’aretz, a video circulates YouTube.
It’s a short sketch, made by amateurs, called “Sh*t Tel Avivians Say During a Rocket Attack.” The SNL-style parody shows blasé urban dwellers responding to siren alarms by checking Twitter and going back to sleep, preparing to enter apartment bomb shelters by putting on make-up, trying to remember their never-before seen neighbors’ names, and generally treating rocket attacks with the sort of bored annoyance I treat the loud construction work on Tel Aviv University’s campus.
The video ends with a Tel Aviv resident lying facedown on the concrete—he’s not protecting himself from a bomb, just trying to reserve a notoriously elusive city parking space.
It’s the first thing that makes me smile after the sirens go off on Tuesday evening. Before that, the evening passes in a blurred series of realizations. The realization that these noises are not simple warnings to yield the right of way to an ambulance. The realization that the Americans huddled in a group aren’t wondering whether they should leave for the play we’re supposed to see that night, but whether they should leave the country. The realization that this is happening, that I am here.
We watch the video huddled in the dorm-room designated as the bomb shelter for the third floor—there’s one on each. Someone has made pad Thai and we scoop it from the pan hastily, not really tasting it. Everyone has at least one text message or voice-call from home asking “Are you okay?,” and no one is quite sure how to truthfully answer it.
But the video makes us laugh. And outside, unbeknownst to us at the time, blasé Tel Avivians are not sitting huddled around Pad Thai. They are having absurdly late dinners in outdoor restaurants. They are watching FIFA games at sports bars. They are dressing for a night at the club. Some, of course, still linger on the beach. They are doing all of the things Tel Avivians always do, though they are also ready to stop doing those things and head to the nearest bomb shelter in less than two minutes, should another round of sirens go off. They are prepared but not panicked.
Here’s some other sh*t Israelis say during a rocket attack:
“Was that a bomb?”—A Jaffa shopkeeper, in the flat, unconcerned tone one might use to ask “Was that my bus?” when she really wants an excuse to be late to work, anyway.
“The number one rule is, no matter how bad it seems, don’t fart in the bomb shelter”—an Israeli security guard, making a group of hyperventilating Americans laugh.
“We’re going to go over the exact security protocol again. And if there’s anything you need to talk about, if you ever feel unsafe at any time, you can come to us.”— with varied phrasing, every Israeli with us this week, no matter how irrational we are and how busy they are.
Nothing—a young Tel Avivian woman, only recently released from her army service, called back to the reserves.
The Iron Dome is the most effective missile shield in the world. It’s effective against aircraft up to an altitude of 32,800 ft. and can intercept rockets fired from 70 kilometers away. When it stops a missile in mid-air, you don’t usually see anything. Sometimes, though, you hear a boom in the distance, feel a vibration on the way to the shelter. And you know that once again, you have been protected. With it above you, you feel safe.
But there is another protective shield here, preventing the rockets from penetrating. It seems that Tel Avivians have internalized the Iron Dome in a way, so that rockets fired from a distance cannot keep them from the beaches and the bars. So that they can say stupid sh*t and worry about parking spaces but not terrorism. So that they can stay strong enough to react logically and responsibly, so that they can stay strong enough to comfort those of us born without inner shields.
And you know that a strategy based on causing terror could never really succeed here. With them around you, you feel safe.
Israel: Found 