My minuscule Hebrew vocabulary is expanding with words like MAMAD, a designated safe space in a home during an attack, and miklat, a public underground bomb shelter. As we await the , I marvel at all the safety measures I have before me: sirens that will let me know an attack is coming, a safe room in my apartment, underground bomb shelters on nearly every other street corner, and the Iron Dome, Israel's defense system that shoots down rockets before they hit their target. When I consider all these measures, I feel a great deal of reassurance.
Though not foolproof, I have layers of protection, whether I'm home in Tel Aviv or working in Jerusalem. The discussion of the Iran threat often circles back to the previous attack in April. Iran sent over 300 missiles and drones to Israel, and as Israelis often put it, nothing happened.
A common meme going around in Israeli circles was a post saying, "This could have been an email," laughing at Iran for failing to do any damage. But there was damage. A Bedouin girl was injured by shrapnel after a rocket hit her home in al-Fur'ah.
Months later, she is still in a hospital recovering. The Bedouins are an Arab-Muslim minority in Israel that live mainly in the Negev Desert, or up north near the Lebanon border. They are semi-nomadic people and often live in tents or in other types of temporary shelters, much as they have since 6,000 BCE in various Middle Eastern locations.
Though there are only 80,000 Bedouins still living in the desert and .