When an alarm warning of a missile attack from Iran sounded Friday, Haim Teichholtz, the CEO of a high-tech company, and his partner entered the safe room of their apartment on the 27th floor of a modern Tel Aviv high-rise.
Soon after, there was a massive explosion.
“The whole building shook, much more than during an earthquake,” Mr. Teichholtz says. “It was unlike anything we’ve ever experienced. After a while, we calmed down, but then smoke started coming into the room, and we realized there was a fire in the building.”
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After 20 months of war in Gaza, Israelis had become somewhat accustomed to missile attacks. The barrage from Iran is causing more deaths and vastly more destruction in Israeli cities, but for now is raising both stress and resilience among civilians.
When they left the safe room, they found their apartment in chaos: shelves toppled, books strewn everywhere. Mr. Teichholtz grabbed his work bag, laptop, wallet, and car keys, and together they began descending the stairwell. Neighbors – some injured – were also making their way down, helping each other as they went.
“The fire alarm was blaring; the sprinklers had activated; pipes had burst,” he recounts.
As they descended, the damage worsened. “There was a 9/11 vibe,” he says.
They got stuck on the 13th floor but remembered a second stairwell, which eventually led them to awaiting rescue services. The whole ordeal took half an hour, he says.
“We know the drill”
Having endured some 20 months of war in Gaza, Israelis have become somewhat accustomed to missile attacks, Mr. Teichholtz says. Israel’s air defenses largely kept the country safe from missiles fired from the north, the south, and even Yemen.
“It’s horrible to say, but we know the drill by now,” he says. “But this was … something entirely different. When the adrenaline wore off, we realized how miraculous it was.” The 10th floor had taken a direct hit.
He and his partner are staying with her sister, and he’s searching for a place to live for at least the next six months. “Now we’re back to normal,” he says. “I’m already back at work.”
While Mr. Teichholtz is and has been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government and the civilian devastation in Gaza, he says the war with Iran “is justified” because Tehran posed a threat by racing toward a nuclear weapon. The broad consensus around the war will only strengthen Israelis, he adds.
Citing Iran’s nuclear program, Israel, which has been waging a multiborder war since Oct. 7, 2023, launched what it called a preemptive attack in the early hours Friday.
Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project
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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Israel has targeted leading Iranian officials and scientists, nuclear sites, missiles, launchers, and infrastructure. Iran has fired more than 370 ballistic missiles – as of early June 16. While most have been intercepted by Israel’s multitiered defense systems, 30 have struck, causing unprecedented damage to buildings and their surroundings in densely populated centers. Hundreds of Iranian drones have also been launched.
Since Friday, Israel says, 24 people have been killed and 592 wounded.
Iran’s missiles more powerful
Iran’s ballistic missiles carry a heavier warhead and fly much faster than the rockets shot from Gaza and Lebanon, said Uri Shacham, chief of staff at the Magen David Adom emergency service, briefing reporters Monday.
Although over 95% of the missiles are intercepted, he said, those that land do massive damage not only to buildings they hit, but to the whole street. When first responders reach the sites, he said, they find collapsed buildings, raging fires, and blast injuries in numbers far higher than Israel has seen in many years.
On Monday, Israeli military spokesperson Effie Defrin said Israel had achieved “full aerial superiority over Tehran’s skies,” but that the barrages from Iran “come at a heavy cost.”
“While we target military and nuclear capabilities intended to destroy the state of Israel, they fire at population centers with the aim of harming civilians,” he said. “We will eliminate this threat,” he added, warning that “Difficult days still lie ahead.”
Schools, offices, and entertainment facilities in Israel have shut down, with supermarkets and essential services still functioning.
In a quiet neighborhood of North Tel Aviv Monday, streets were largely empty. In a grassy area by a residential complex, parents sipped coffee while their children ran around in the sunshine. Others topped up supplies, knowing that more missiles would likely be on their way by nighttime.
Eitan Levy, who runs a neighborhood corner shop, was restocking the shelves with dairy products. On Friday, people stocked up on bottled water, toilet paper, eggs, milk, and pasta.
“Some items are missing because factories are working fewer hours and many workers are home,” he says. “But meantime, there are no real shortages.”
The war with Iran differs from what Israel has experienced until now, he says. “We are fighting another nation, not terror organizations.”
“Eventually, they will run out of missiles,” he adds. “We will be OK if the U.S. joins us to finish up the nuclear capabilities of Iran, and then, maybe, they will get to their knees.”
Rise and fall of stress and resilience
Both people’s stress levels and the population’s resilience are likely to have spiked since the start of the war with Iran, says Professor Bruria Adini, of Tel Aviv University’s emergency and disaster management department, basing her assessment on studies of Israelis over the past 20 months.
The bombs’ destructive power makes it “very logical and natural” that fear levels are higher than before. But societal resilience, or the ability to recover quickly from a crisis and even grow from it, will most probably also rise “because of the much more severe and much more existential threat from Iran.”
Yet both stress and resilience are likely to slide over time, she says.
Stress generally declines as “routinization of the new normal sets in,” Professor Adini says. Resilience is also likely to decrease as people start questioning policies and strategies and seeking answers.
What can boost resilience, however, is hope, she says, “the hope that there is going to be a better future.”
Pilates instructor Or Halevy, who is a reserve combat soldier in an artillery unit, says she is not more stressed than usual by the war with Iran. “We have been in this loop for so long that we have sort of normalized the situation.”
Nothing can be worse than what happened on Oct. 7, she explains, referring to the Hamas attack that precipitated the war in Gaza. “Here we are dealing with the threat of random missiles,” whereas then, people were dragged out of their homes, killed, burned, or abducted.
On the morning after Friday’s rocket attack, her father, who lives in Haifa, went surfing, Ms. Halevy recounts. She says that made her mother “hysterical,” even moreso than previous times.
That is probably because “there is much more uncertainty now, and the enemy is more threatening. We knew Hezbollah; this is different territory.”
