Dread of night: SA olim run for cover

When a ballistic missile exploded just metres from her Tel Aviv apartment in the early hours of Monday, 16 June, Cape Town-born Marissa Sarfatti thought it was the end.

It took search-and-rescue teams 30 excruciating minutes to rescue Sarfatti, her two friends, and her neighbour as they huddled in her apartment’s mamad, Israel’s reinforced safe room. Though the missile didn’t strike her apartment directly, the blast gouged out her home, scattering her belongings like confetti and blowing out windows. The missile impact shattered windows in neighbouring streets, with debris scattered across streets and rooftops. Residents in nearby buildings reported walls shaking and glass raining down inside their apartments.

“When we finally emerged, the reality hit hard,” she told the SA Jewish Report. “My apartment was basically shredded. Nothing can prepare you for this.”

Israel launched pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, ballistic missile factories, and military capabilities last Friday morning, 13 June, in an historic campaign dubbed “Operation Rising Lion”, with the objective of removing the “existential threat” of the Iranian nuclear programme.

Sarfatti moved to Israel 11 years ago. Like many South African olim, she had become used to the rhythm of sirens and shelter drills. But this was different.

“Even Israelis who’ve lived through wars are reeling from this level of stress,” she said.

By chance, she had read a viral message the day before written by a search-and-rescue responder outlining how to survive a missile barrage. It advised taking sirens seriously; never sheltering in a random hallway believing that you will be safe; and preparing a ‘go bag’ with documents, chargers, cash, and clothes for a couple of days. She decided to pack one.

When the missile barrage struck, the noise was indescribable.

“It sounded like jets flying overhead followed by explosions that shook the building leftwards then back. We said tehillim, sang calming songs, but we had no idea the rest of my apartment had blown out.”

After the blasts, her shock turned to dread: where were her three beloved cats – Lulu, Simba, and Felix? After some time, “in a miracle”, all three were found by emergency crews and neighbours combing through the debris.

“You never think it’ll happen to you, until it does,” she said. “But the solidarity, the way people come together here, my friends and complete strangers, that’s what keeps you going.”

Johannesburg-born cousins and flatmates Jesse and Jonny Goldblatt of Tel Aviv, were having Shabbat dinner at Jesse’s sister a few neighbourhoods away last Friday. When the sirens wailed, they dashed to the shelter. Moments later, bombs thundered overhead. Then Jonny’s phone buzzed with an alert saying that their apartment had been hit.

Panic set in. Jesse’s dog, Felix, was still inside.

“He’s like my son,” said Jesse.

They jumped on their scooters, flying at 50km/h through the streets of Tel Aviv, praying they’d find him. When they arrived, chaos greeted them. Their 40-storey building had been struck. “There were flames, fire trucks, rescue workers, shattered glass everywhere,” said Jesse.

“There was no power, no lifts, and rescue workers wouldn’t let us in,” said Jonny. “We had to duck into bomb shelters as more sirens alerted us of approaching missiles.”

Jesse, who made aliya from Johannesburg with Felix in August 2023, was beside himself. “I’ve been through worse in my life, but this was one of the top five worst moments,” he said.

They waited for what seemed like hours. “Eventually, I spotted a search-and-rescue worker carrying a very wet Felix in her arms,” Jesse recalls. “It was pure joy. I’ve never been more grateful.”

Felix was dazed and soaked, but alive.

Their apartment, spared destruction, was above the worst-hit floors. Hundreds have been evacuated from the two adjoining towers.

In Ra’anana, Johannesburg-born Pam Defries faces middle of the night barrages with her six-year-old twins. “You just grab them and dash to the communal miklat (shelter) and hope for the best,” she said.

Having made aliya in June 2024, she’s known war, but not like this. “Sometimes it’s at 03:00. You drag your sleeping children out of bed, and while in the shelter, you hear the deafening booms. You just sit there and hope it wasn’t someone you know.”

Now, her twins sleep on mattresses in her bedroom. During the day? You try to live normally, but then the dread of night comes.”

Nicole Diamond-Levenstein, who made aliya 16 years ago, said, “You become a robot. If you actually internalised what’s happening, that you might end up under rubble, you’d never stand up again.”

She keeps a shelter bag and her rescue poodle from Ukraine – “my little dog of war”. “He starts barking when the sirens go off. Everyone in the shelter loves him.”

“It’s scary, but you feel looked after. The army, the Home Front Command, it’s all in place,” she said. “Prayer and believing there’s a plan helps.”

Dovi Levine (not his real name), 25, who made aliya when he was seven, was called up to reserve duty at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital. He thought he’d be standing guard. Not so, his job was to help move one-day old babies into the shelter. “Some of the women had just given birth,” he said.

In Herzliya, Neil Meyerowitz, who made aliya in 2020, puts his sons, five and three, to sleep on mattresses on the floor in the apartment’s mamad. “Luckily we have one,” he said. “Two nights ago, I was sure we’d be hit. The interceptors were so close, the booms shook our apartment. My wife and I lay on the boys as they slept.”

In Beit Shemesh, Dr Stacey Leibowitz said her fear and uncertainty sitting in the mamad for hours, not knowing if they will be hit or when it’s safe to come out, is overwhelming. Watching explosions on the news adds to the stress. Sharing the space with her neighbours means there is little privacy, but it also brings a sense of camaraderie.

“Everyone’s plans are on hold,” she said. “There’s a feeling of life being suspended, not too different from the COVID-19 pandemic. Knowing people who’ve been hit makes it much more real. You get to see the fireworks. It’s not an abstract danger.”

More than 3 800 people have been displaced. Dozens of buildings in major cities have been damaged. Iran has responded to Israel’s incursion with more than 400 missiles and hundreds of drones. Twenty-four people have been killed in Israel, more than 800 wounded.

South African caterer Lisa Starr finds strength in Israeli resilience. On Facebook she posted:

“Just as it was starting to get dark, I ventured out to one of the bigger supermarkets. Do you know that game show where contestants are given a shopping cart and can keep whatever they can grab within a tightly timed window? That’s exactly how it felt – rushing before the new-normal night-time sirens began.

“And now, we head to bed knowing we’ll likely gather, bleary-eyed, in the shelter at least once or twice in the hours ahead. And that’s OK. Because here, even amidst the chaos, life insists on being lived.”

For these South African olim, the missiles are more than weapons. They are a deafening reminder of how quickly life unravels, and how, somehow, it must go on.