Shoshi Arbuz received the alert on her phone just minutes before the explosion. Along with her four children, her husband and their dog, they had just enough time to get down to the shelter beneath their small four-story building – a room just a few square meters in the basement, furnished with plastic chairs and a reinforced door. When the Iranian missile struck less than 100 meters away just after 7 am on Thursday morning in Holon, a southern suburb of Tel Aviv, the ground shook in the basement-turned-shelter. “Everything went black, the shelter filled with dust,” said the 40-year-old municipal employee. The building across the street, which took a direct hit, was partially destroyed. About 30 people were rescued from it, including two who were critically injured, according to the city’s chief fire officer.
The blast destroyed the inside of the family apartment, as well as dozens of others around the impact site. In her partially-destroyed living room, Arbuz repeated that she didn’t “want war,” but nevertheless firmly supported the Netanyahu government’s decision to launch a surprise attack on Iran on June 13, because of the nuclear threat. “Iran wants to destroy us. I understand that if we hadn’t attacked, they would have,” she explained, echoing the public’s deep-seated fears about the dangers posed by the Iranian regime.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies regarding the hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip since the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack have caused months of anger and incomprehension, the bombing of targets in Iran has, at least for now, been met with wide approval: More than 80% of Jewish Israelis support the strikes, according to a recent poll conducted for the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).
You have 76.89% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
