For 12 entire days, the Iranian regime wantonly targeted Israel’s civilians with ballistic missiles and even cluster bombs.
By Rachel Avraham
As of Wednesday morning, Israel and Iran have agreed to cease fire, following the cease-fire violations that occurred on Tuesday. The Times of Israel reported that the Mossad hailed Israel’s “historic” operation against Iran, declaring that the longstanding Iranian threat was significantly neutralized thanks to the 12-day aerial campaign.
“These are historic days for the people of Israel. The Iranian threat, which has endangered our security for decades, has been significantly neutralized,” the intelligence agency said in a statement, hailing its cooperation with the IDF and accompanying American support for the surprise offensive. “Israel, thanks to this entire security apparatus, today feels like a different country, a safer country, a braver country that is prepared for the future,” said Mossad chief David Barnea in a video accompanying the written statement.
However, while most Israelis are jubilant about Israel’s accomplishments in Iran, we are still devastated by the huge toll that the 12-day Iran war has taken on the State of Israel. For 12 entire days, the Iranian regime wantonly targeted Israel’s civilians with ballistic missiles and even cluster bombs. 28 people were killed, of which one was an off-duty soldier and the rest were civilians. Thousands of others were wounded. An even larger number of people lost their homes. For the relatives of the slain, the wounded and the Israelis who lost their homes, the struggle is only now just beginning and the devastating consequences of the war are far from over.
Following the 12-day Iran war, Israeli academia is in mourning. Six Ben Gurion University research laboratories were destroyed and nine others were damaged by the impact of an Iranian missile that struck the Soroka University Medical Center campus on June 19, the educational institution says in a postwar update, the Times of Israel reported. According to the report, the damage to the six destroyed laboratories “wiped out years of work on diverse research projects in medicine and biology,” the university says.
The Times of Israel reported that classrooms, teaching laboratories, and the dissection room of the Faculty of Health Sciences were also significantly impacted, along with 30 buildings on the main Marcus Family Campus. According to the report, the homes of 50 BGU faculty or staff members and 48 students were damaged, with 25 of the former and 41 of the latter having to evacuate. On Facebook, Ben-Gurion University itself painted an even grimmer picture: “BGU students, faculty, and staff are enduring 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗲𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘂𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀, displacement, and destruction. Recently, another Iranian missile landed in Beer-Sheva, taking the lives of 4 innocent victims. Close to 100 faculty members and students’ homes were damaged so far, an additional 66 were evacuated from their homes, and 70% of buildings and dormitories on the Marcus Family Campus have sustained damage.”
For me personally, the attack upon Ben-Gurion University and Soroka Hospital was deeply traumatic. For my BA, I did a one year study abroad at Ben-Gurion University. After I finished my BA, I did my first masters degree at Ben-Gurion University. I met my late husband there, when he was working at Soroka Hospital for his first college internship. For five years, I lived in the dorms of Ben-Gurion University. I do not even know if the place that I used to call home for five years of my life is still standing or not. I do not know if the classrooms where I studied Middle Eastern Studies for my first master’s degree sustained damage or not.
And Ben-Gurion University was not the only campus hit. Additionally, it was reported that one of the Iranian missiles fell near the campus of Tel Aviv University. According to a Facebook post published by Tel Aviv University, “secondary damage occurred – mainly shattered glass – in several buildings and dormitories. Fortunately, none of our students, faculty, or staff were harmed.”
This came after it was reported that an Iranian missile struck the Weizmann Institute of Science, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the State of Israel. While nobody was killed, the attack destroyed two buildings — a life science building and an empty building that was still under construction. Dozens more were damaged. Some 45 labs were wrecked.
“It was a war zone,” Tzahor, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute, told The Times of Israel over the phone. “Everything in our beautiful institute was covered in glass and pieces of metal.” Tzahor’s lab, which included 22 years of work, scientific samples, including thousands of heart tissue from both animals and patients, DNA and RNA samples, and more, were gone. My family when they were in Israel did a tour of the Weizmann Institute of Science. They asked me if the lovely gardens that they saw on the campus of Weizmann Institute survived the Iranian missile attack. I don’t know what to tell them.
Aside from attacking Soroka Hospital, Ben-Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, and the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Iranians also targeted a Chabad kindergarten with cluster bombs. The video documentation of children’s toys and the children’s pet cat inside the Chabad kindergarten being blown up by cluster bombs still haunts me to this day. Other targets included the Bursa Financial District in Ramat Gan, an oil refinery in Haifa, a power station in Southern Israel, an old age home, and of course, countless apartment buildings and homes. Indeed, numerous homes in Bat Yam, Rishon LeTzion, Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Beersheba and other places lay in ruins.
And not just Jewish Israelis are suffering. Among the Israelis killed was a 40-year-old Christian Arab school teacher in Northern Israel and her two daughters, one of whom was a 20-year-old studying law at the University of Haifa and one who was just a 13 years old child. At the University of Haifa, where I am presently working on my second master’s degree, I could have passed by the 20-year-old missile attack victim in the hallway prior to her death, for we studied in the same building, which is a spooky thought. My fate just as easily could have been hers. A classmate of mine knows the entire Christian Arab family that was struck by an Iranian missile and appeared in class visibly shaken.
While the Iranian regime claims to be Muslim, this did not stop them from targeting two historic Ottoman Turkish mosques in Haifa with the imams praying Friday prayers inside with ballistic missiles. One of the most horrific things a person can do to someone else is to attack a religious figure while they are praying, and this is precisely what the Iranians did to the Muslim community leaders in Haifa.
I don’t understand why the entire Muslim world is not outraged by the attack on two Ottoman Turkish mosques, with the imams praying inside. Turkey, who idealizes the Ottoman heritage greatly, should have issued an official condemnation. The attack on these two mosques show that nothing is sacred to the Iranian regime and Erdogan’s lack of condemnation highlights his lack of sincerity when it comes to the preservation of Ottoman Turkish heritage.
Like many Israelis, I am visibly shaken by the 12-day Iran war. In the beginning of the war, I was using bomb sirens to crack jokes about the mullahs in Tehran. But by the end of the war, after witnessing so much death and destruction, and getting deprived of a proper night’s sleep due to multiple bomb sirens during the night at 1am, 3am, 4am and 5am, I was just a zombie in the bomb shelter, barely able to move.
Towards the end of the war, I moved a mattress to the bomb shelter and just slept there during the bomb sirens, even though it was a tiny room packed with over thirty people without air conditioning, without wi-fi, without coffee, without tea, and without a bathroom. In fact, if it was not for me, my neighbors would not have even had cups to pour a glass of water in the end, as we ran out and the manager of our building failed to buy new ones. When the war started and we were there just for twenty minutes, it was tolerable. But on the last day of the war, we were stuck there for three hours, living under those conditions and that was unbearable. And if the Iranians had struck our building, we would have been trapped in those unhospitable conditions even longer, awaiting rescue crews to pull us out of the rubble.
Since the massive destruction in Bat Yam, I was living in fear throughout Operation Rising Lion. Sometimes, the bomb sirens sounded when I was playing with my children in the park and I had to scramble to bring three children to a bomb shelter, which was a very hard thing to do. Every time there was a bomb siren, I brought a small bag with my computer, my American passport, my Israeli passport, my wallet and my other most valuable belongings with me. I told myself, even if the Iranians destroy my home, at the very least they won’t destroy my livelihood because I still have my computer and can write articles from whatever shelter the Israeli government places me in. Compared to the countless Israelis who lost their homes and livelihood with nothing more than the clothes on their back, and are relying on charity for their next meals, I am very lucky. Both my home and my livelihood survived the war, and my security bag that I brought with me to the bomb shelter was nothing more than a precaution.
However, when I sit alone, I sometimes imagine bomb sirens, as I find it hard to believe in my psyche that the war really is over. All of the destruction that happened in the country has left its mark on me, especially what happened at Ben-Gurion University, which gives me shivers down my spine. The massive losses Israel experienced during the war haunt me in my sleep. There is no running away from the psychological cost of Operation Rising Lion. While Israel might have targeted the Iranian regime with great courage and tenacity like a lion, the king of the jungle, the lion’s den was left vulnerable and helpless, thus leaving the lionesses and her children weeping over their fate.
While the Israeli government claims it could have been worse, the truth of the matter is that the average Israeli was not used to being at the receiving end of Iranian ballistic missiles and cluster bomb attacks, which made everything the Houthis did to Israel look like child’s play. Indeed, when the Houthis attacked Israel last Chanukkah, an Israeli made a cartoon titled “the Houthis who stole Chanukkah” and the cartoonist dressed up the Houthis as the grinch who stole Christmas with a keffiyeh. But following the 12-day Iran war, it is hard to do something similar for the mullahs, as the destruction was so vast and so devastating that the satirists at least for now have gone silent and this is the greatest tragedy of all.
Photo from Americans For Ben-Gurion University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9tazAkzVU
