The topic today is bomb shelters.
I arrived in Israel a few days, maybe a week after the most recent war with Iran started. Consequently, I spent lots of time in bomb shelters. And spending time in bomb shelters at night is just awful. There’s no way around it. You wake up, you try to get dressed, you walk to the bomb shelter in the right time. People in the north have less time. I’m in Tel Aviv, so there’s more time. At nighttime it’s terrible and then when you get back from the bomb shelter it’s hard to fall asleep. Hear explosions houses get destroyed—lives.
But I do want to also point out something positive. I know the whole thing is terrible and I wish it never happened. I wish wars would stop. Within that, here’s an observation. I have nothing good to say about bomb shelters at night. But during the day, sometimes I would be walking around the city and there would be an alarm and I’d have to find some shelter. Sometimes there’s a public shelter, sometimes it’s an underground parking lot. And sometimes people would invite me to their shelters. There was a house and people would run into houses and say “Hey, come join us.”
Those meetings with people in their shelters were wonderful. It’s not exactly somebody inviting you to their living room because it’s a shelter for a building. It’s not a living room. But it’s very intimate. I mean, people are inviting strangers to come into their shelters. People had lots of practice with these shelters. There were tables and chairs, and one shelter even had a television.
It’s a stressful time. There’s a general alarm that tells you to get close to a shelter. Then if a missile is really coming to your area, they tell you now go to the shelter. You have 60 to 90 seconds. You run to the shelter—stress, adrenaline, you come in, you’re in a small place with lots of people. And then you wait. And you wait. Will we hear something? Will we not? Will a building get bombed? Will shrapnel fall? Will they fall here? Ther’s stress getting in and stress within that. And it creates lots of camaraderie.
I met lots of wonderful people. The discussions are useful and meaningful. People don’t talk about politics because it’s heated and complex, but it was an unexpected feeling of connection to go into shelters of people’s homes and experience these stressful moments together.
We’ve been in a ceasefire for a while. I hope this war—and all wars—will end soon. But I did meet some wonderful people. I love the feeling of connection, under stress with people. And some of them I think I’ll meet again. Okay, that’s an attempt to find something good in an awful situation.
