Israel-Hamas war: In Balmy Tel Aviv, nervous civilians pack rifles for a trip to the bakery
The ‘Iron Dome’ defence has held firm against Gaza missiles. But on the streets of Israel’s commercial and cultural capital, people carry assault rifles in case of an attack.
Early-morning joggers plod along the seaside promenade. A man arranges plastic loungers in rows, a game of beach volleyball is under way - and the first bathers are venturing into the limpid shallows.
On the surface all looks normal in sunny Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial and cultural capital, whose balmy weather, pristine beaches and bustling restaurants are usually a Mediterranean tourism magnet. Now, though, the advertising blurb seems out of date. A distant rumble wafts across the sea, the thud of artillery in a war just over 65 kilometres away in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of people, many of them children, are reported to have been killed in the assault on Gaza, which followed the slaughter by Hamas fighters last month of 1,200 of Israel’s citizens - mostly civilians - in the most savage attack in its history.
One month on, there is not a tourist to be seen in Tel Aviv. Images of some of the 241 kidnapped Israelis, including women and children, are plastered on walls - as well as on beach lampposts.
“It makes me so sad to think of them, frightened, suffering,” said Leah Feldman, a teacher in a tracksuit and T-shirt drinking a cappuccino at a beachside cafe. “I hope we can negotiate their release.” As I paid for my coffee a waitress said: “I’m so glad to hear English being spoken. It makes me think it’s not the end of the world.” In a bakery nearby, a man in sneakers, shorts and a tank top carried an assault rifle over his shoulder as he paid with one hand for a croissant while holding his Bichon Frise’s lead with the other.
Men and women wielding weapons in civilian clothes have become a common sight, even in bars.
“Us army reservists are allowed to carry our guns because of the situation,” said Mikhail Mereryakov, 40, a lorry driver carrying a rifle as he walked along a street in shorts and flipflops with his wife and two children. “We need more people carrying weapons to keep us and our families safe.”
My introduction to Israel at war began at the airport when, having just stepped off a flight from London, passengers were greeted by a siren signalling incoming rockets. Police shouted “hurry!” as they led us to shelter behind a reinforced door. Muffled detonations sounded above as missiles fired at Ben Gurion airport were brought down by Israel’s interceptor system.
A Hasidic Jew standing next to me in black jacket, trousers and large hat began murmuring prayers. Two young Israeli women returning home from London hugged each other, crying. After a few minutes, the emergency was over. We went on to passport control.
In Tel Aviv, though, reminders of the conflict come daily, thanks to Home Front Command, a mobile app that sounds an alarm on the user’s phone signalling imminent “rocket and missile fire in your area”. You then have one-and-a-half minutes to get to a “protected room”.
The Gazan missiles have been largely ineffective, thanks to Israel’s Iron Dome defence, but they are adding to the trauma in the wake of the slaughter on October 7.
“It was the most Jews to die in a single day since the Holocaust,” said David Baruch, 60, a bank manager in his old army uniform after returning to duty in the national reserve. The military assault on Gaza was “not about revenge”, he added. “It’s about making sure what happened on October 7 never happens again.”
Nothing in the long-running conflict has had so traumatising an effect on Israelis. “There are kindergarten classes decimated,” said Shlomi Codish, 56, director of the Soroka Medical Centre in Be’er Sheva, southern Israel, where most of the injured were taken on October 7. “It’ll be years before we recover from this.”
“The entire country is affected, it’s national, collective trauma.â€
— Hans Kluge (@hans_kluge) November 2, 2023
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The CEO/Director General of @SorokaMed Center Dr Shlomi Codish’s description of the Hamas attacks’ aftermath in @Israel is one I heard over and over again from both government and civilian entities.
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Tal Hayom, 46, a lead operating theatre nurse, looked back with horror on the “hurricane” of some 600 patients brought in for treatment that day. “I can’t sleep, every night, the sights, sounds and smells come back to me,” she said.
Among some families of the dead, the kidnapped and injured, grief is turning to anger - not just against Hamas, but against Israel’s own government: for years, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, had presented himself as a guarantor of public security - “Mr Security” was the jingle of one of his many political campaigns. How could he have allowed such a calamitous enemy incursion? “A lot went wrong,” admitted Colonel Peter Lerner, international spokesman for the Israeli Defence Forces.
A protest camp has sprung up in one of Tel Aviv’s main squares near the defence ministry, where families have assembled while waiting for news. A long dining table has been set for dinner for 241. Family members share videos taken from security footage and GoPro cameras of dead Hamas fighters.
Ricardo Grichener Meitar, 56, took out his phone to show a video of his missing nephew, Omer Wenkert, 22, lying in the back of a Hamas pick-up truck as fighters punched him. “You can see he is still alive, I hope he can be returned to his family.”
Nearby was Alon Adar, 24, an electrical engineering student. He held up a photo of his grandmother Yafa, 85, saying: “They grabbed her out of her bed, she’s not very well, she needs medicine, she’s in a lot of pain.”
On Tuesday evening, when he and other family members held a vigil to mark the one-month anniversary of the kidnappings, a speaker complained that the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, had not displayed photographs of the missing, prompting cries of “shame” from the crowd.
The next day, another protest tent had sprouted outside parliament. Sitting under a tent near the Knesset gates was Jakov Godo, 75, whose son, Tom, 52, was shot dead in the Hamas assault. “I never agreed with this government and now we feel real anger against it,” he said.
Netanyahu was blamed for a policy of supporting Hamas to the detriment of the rival Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. He had allowed an inflow of funds to Hamas from Qatar in the hope of deepening division between the two administrations to prevent the emergence of a single Palestinian state.
“This plan blew up in his face,” said a former government official supporting the protesters.
In a square down the road from the Knesset, a West Bank settler with a kidnapped son was peddling an alternative narrative. The massacre on October 7 was a “gift from God”, said Kiriat Arba, as he stood with a rifle slung over his shoulder next to a poster saying: “Eliminate the terrorists. Clear the land. Full control.” The killing, Arba went on, had helped to “rally” the nation in the greater cause of reclaiming the Palestinian territories.
Teenage girls from a religious school sat listening as he explained why he was not concerned about the safety of his son: “When there’s war the individual has to be prepared to give himself up for the greater good.”
Such rhetoric terrifies the country’s liberal, secular elite. “I’m horrified by what happened,” said Tomer Ben Yosef, a Tel Aviv wine bar manager who also “aches” for Gaza’s civilians.
Eitan Amrami, a documentary developer, believes his country is blighted for years. “It is as though we’ve been engulfed by a cloud of volcanic ash which will bring years of darkness,” he said. “They won’t change our minds, we won’t change their minds,” he added, referring to Israel’s rival political camps. “There is no hope.” He is taking his wife and two small children to New York.
The Times
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