War came back. Only for a day – but for weary Israelis, it was one day too many.
Iran’s missile barrages that began again on Sunday sent Israeli families back into shelters and triggered nationwide school closures, intensifying widespread exhaustion.
But there was also anger at US President Donald Trump’s push to stop the latest exchange of fire, which many saw as premature.
Sunday’s late-night Home Front Command order left little room for ambiguity. Schools and kindergartens were told to close, with no exceptions, and older pupils preparing for their matriculation exams, known in Hebrew as bagruyot, saw those tests cancelled as well.
Workplaces, however, were allowed to remain open if a protected space was nearby, leaving parents with the well-worn wartime puzzle of how to work while their children were stuck at home.
The school closures quickly gave way to another wartime ritual many parents dread – remote learning. Dalit Erez, from Jaffa, said she was barely awake when she took her three children to a shelter down the road after an early morning siren, only to find herself back in the familiar Zoom scramble a short while later. “They didn't waste a second to put us through that hell again, huh?” she said.
On a WhatsApp group for British immigrants in Israel, Mark Moore summed up the mood more bluntly. “I hate Zoom school more than the IRGC,” he wrote, referring to Iran’s revolutionary guards.
In another local parents’ group, Lotan Sher, a father of four, greeted the return to school closures with sarcasm. “At last, we’re back to routine,” he wrote. “That whole period when I was going to work like a normal person and the kids were in school almost finished me off. Finally, I can breathe again.”
Anger was also directed at the government for not being better prepared after the previous round of fighting with Iran. Journalist and author Amir Tibon called the handling of the school closures “disgraceful,” writing on X that officials had “once again resorted to the easiest option: burdening parents and punishing children”.
The disruption was also felt by Israelis trying to get in or out of the country amid cancelled flights. Yael Daniel, who was visiting her ageing mother in London with one daughter while her other children remained in Israel with her husband, said she was desperate not to be stuck abroad during the missile fire. “It’s awful leaving your kids with sirens. It’s absolutely horrible.”
After Wizz Air cancelled her flight, she said she paid about £1,000 for a one-way ticket home. “Israel is hard in general. Endless war and not being able to even visit family in peace makes it impossible.”
By Monday afternoon, US President Donald Trump was signalling another attempt to stop the fighting, writing on Truth Social that “Both sides, Israel and Iran, are looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE!” and that final negotiations on “Peace” were proceeding, “subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way” from either side.
The message was met with the same mix of weary jokes and cynical observations that has characterised nearly three years of war.
One cartoon circulating online shows Trump as a matronly kindergarten teacher standing between two children representing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Trump wags his finger at the two leaders, warning that he does not want to hear “one more boom today,” while the chastened children blame each other and insist: “He started it.”
A cartoon doing the rounds on social media in Israel shows Trump as an infant teacher telling off the Israeli and Iranian leaders (Photo: Instagram)[Missing Credit]
In the British immigrants’ WhatsApp group, Moore’s read was darker. The uncertainty was mentally draining, he said, especially for parents and children, and likened Trump’s mixed messages to “being in an abusive relationship with a malignant narcissist who gaslights you into thinking you’re wrong for defending yourself.” Israelis, Moore said, would welcome peace, or “a single, definitive war to end the war,” but neither seemed possible.
“It’s Schrödinger’s war,” he added.
The concern that Washington was constraining Israel was already widespread before the latest exchange of fire. A May survey by the Israel Democracy Institute found that just over half of Israelis believed the US administration had more influence over Israel’s defence decisions than the Israeli government, while most Jewish Israelis – 64 per cent – said ending the Iran war under the terms then being discussed would not serve Israel’s security interests.
Trump also told the Financial Times in an interview after Iran fired its opening salvo on Sunday night that Netanyahu “won’t have any choice” but to accept a US-Iran deal and said, “I call the shots. I call all the shots.”
According to Israel’s Channel 12 News, Trump warned Netanyahu that Israel could “end up alone” if the war continued to escalate.
Netanyahu, for his part, warned publicly that Israel would strike Tehran again if the missiles continued. “If that terror regime makes the mistake of attacking us again, we will respond with force,” he said in a televised message.
Gil, who declined to give his last name, said he hoped the war would end in a way that could lead to “a generation of peace,” invoking the post-war relationship between the US and Japan.
“Honestly, the endless back and forth about ceasefires, pauses, and deals has become exhausting,” he said. “Lasting peace comes from ending a war, not from endlessly pausing it.”
The criticism also came from Israelis who have long viewed Trump as an ally, among them David Sassoon, an artillery reservist on the Gaza border whose 900th day of service coincided with the latest flare-up. Trump’s push to stop the fighting, Sassoon said, left him feeling the president had “thrown Israel under the bus.”
Arguing that Netanyahu understood Iran differently from Trump, Sassoon said the US president believed Tehran could be coaxed into another temporary deal, while Netanyahu understood that “these are Shiite fanatics” who think not in years but “in the thousands of years.”
He pointed to the March US-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure, after which Israelis were back in shelters within months. Any pause that left the regime intact, he argued, would only set up the next round.
“If we don’t finish this war it will come back much harder and much worse for our kids,” he said. “Nothing less than toppling the regime will do. Trump has shown he hasn’t got the stomach to actually win. Iran will claim victory.”
By the time Daniel reached the gate for her flight home, she was still unsure whether she had been right to cut her London visit short and pay the extra fare. The same thing had happened during the first Iran war last June, when delays in booking left her stranded. “I’m so traumatised by not booking straight away and then being stuck,” she said. “You need to make a decision there and then, and you never know what’s gonna happen with this country. It’s impossible.”
Moore was among those convinced the latest round would be short-lived, predicting Trump would not allow it to carry on until the World Cup kickoff in Mexico City on Thursday.
“From settler to jihadi, the whole world unites to watch the beautiful game,” he quipped.
The day after the last missile alert, Moore’s prediction was, at least for the moment, holding up.
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