“See you tomorrow—unless war breaks out,” I joked to an Israeli friend as we left a Tel Aviv café the day after I arrived.
Less than five hours later, at around 3 a.m. Israel Standard Time on July 13, air raid sirens ripped me from my sleep and sent me stumbling out of bed.
War had broken out.
Friends and family had questioned me enough about my decision to visit Israel, even before this recent escalation. A Jewish friend with a similar vacation window turned down my offer to come with, too worried about what his classmates at the University of Washington Business School might think.
My response was the same for all: when it’s least popular and least advisable to come to Israel, that’s when Israel needs its friends the most.
Upon arriving at my hotel, I was given a sheet of emergency response guidelines—a casual addition to the check-in process in Israel. Although I had not ignored them at the time, I hadn’t fully absorbed them either. Alarms blaring, I read them again and followed their instructions to head to the bunker two stories underground.
I stuffed my pockets with everything I thought I might need or couldn’t replace: passport, wallet, phone, and a portable charger. I slipped on athletic pants and sneakers, with the idea of protecting my legs and feet in case I needed to pick my way through the rubble of a downed building.
Thankfully, these particular alarms would turn out not to signify an attack, merely a warning. Israel had attacked Iran with the full power of the most capable air force in the Middle East.
The next few days were spent largely traversing between my room and the hotel’s bomb shelter, my eyes glued to my phone no matter where I was, alternating between refreshing the news and scrolling X, hoping for an update: of another Iranian missile battery destroyed, of another IRGC general relieved of his position—permanently.
New to this modern-day Battle of Britain in the skies above Tel Aviv was the pre-warning. Between launch and impact, we now had about 15 minutes, as opposed to the 90 seconds Tel Aviv residents had grown used to in previous bombardments from Lebanon or Gaza. This gave us extra time to get to bunkers, but also more time to ruminate on the coming danger as we waited for the sounds of impact. And for all the extra time, these weren’t the homemade or rudimentary missiles of a poorly trained terrorist group, but the end result of millions of dollars poured into an industrial ballistic missile program by an industrialized society. A direct hit, no matter where you sheltered, spelled death.
For those who haven’t been in an active war zone, “sounds” don’t quite do justice to the energy released in the explosion of a ballistic missile. When the impacts were close enough, you didn’t just hear them—you felt them resonate in your chest, like the finale of a fireworks show you snuck too close to as a kid. The building would groan in response, the earth would shake, and we shelter-dwellers would murmur softly to our neighbors and look around with eyes the size of half dollars.
After an attack, it wasn’t easy to get back to sleep. Adrenaline still pumping, I’d read tweets on X ranging from the informative (“Missile strike, Ramat Gan, one dead”) to the patently absurd (“Tel Aviv on fire, residents begging US embassy for evac”).
During the day, restaurants reopened. I’d risk a walk while the sun was out, my phone open to the Maps app with “bomb shelter” already typed in the search bar.
When I could, I met friends for lunch. They were universally calm—sanguine about the war, even when their own homes had been hit. Their confidence steadied and inspired me.
One friend had his whole building destroyed, his wife and newborn child saved by their apartment’s bomb shelter. He waved off my condolences when offered, saying, “My family is fine. Everything else can be replaced. This is war. What did you expect?”
Another friend told me how renovations on his bomb shelter had been completed the day before.
“My metal front door was bent in half, from the bottom to the top. The whole place was in ruins. I would be dead if I hadn’t had my shelter fixed.”
But inevitably, no matter who I spoke to, the conversation eventually came back around to me, and the question was asked: Why was I still in Israel?
By this point, most Americans had fled over the land border with Jordan, where their Judaica had been confiscated at customs, or taken the multi-hour journey by boat—some by rubber dinghy—to Cyprus, Jewish refugees from the Jewish homeland.
But I couldn’t bring myself to follow suit.
Like most Jews, I remember October 7th vividly. I suspect I always will. I remember the horror and another emotion that I wasn’t able to name until much later: guilt.
Guilt that I was sitting on my couch, friends around me, safe and secure, while the worst pogrom in a generation raged across southern Israel. And that, but for a stroke of luck to be born American, it could have been me.
Israelis are on the front lines of Jewish survival. Diaspora Jews have options—options to stick our heads in the sand, the option to vote for an antisemite for mayor of New York City. If Worst comes to worst, there is always Israel to bail us out.
Who bails out Israel?
On October 7, I couldn’t do anything but bear witness from the safety of the United States. During this 12-Day War, I could do something a little more. I could be there.
And then, on the 10th day of this battle with Iran, 625 days into the October 7 War, the best traditions of America, already on display in the form of U.S. servicemembers helping shoot down the Iranian missile onslaught, came through again in an awesome way and showed the world that we, as a nation, stood with Israel against evil.
I’m not sure I’ll ever feel I was there enough for Israel on October 7. But this time, when I could be here, I wanted my friends to know that I would be here. And I think I’ll be forever glad that I was.
What I’ll remember most from this war isn’t the sirens or the shelters—it’s the view from my hotel balcony. I’d seen Tel Aviv from that tenth floor before, but never like this: glittering, defiant, fragile, in the aftermath of another barrage.
And I thought of the ancient prophet who came to curse Israel and blessed it instead:
“How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.”
Evan May is a former Ranger-tabbed infantry officer who served with the 173rd Airborne. He currently works at a startup and lives in Manhattan.