If this is what they do with ballistic missiles, imagine what they would aim for with a nuclear bomb
June 19, 2025 10:48
Big boom. Love you x.
That’s what I texted my mum and boyfriend at 4:15am on Monday morning.
A moment earlier, voices had risen in panic inside the shelter I was in in central Tel Aviv. An argument broke out over the metal door. One woman was screaming for it to be closed; others hesitated, worried about stragglers still racing against the 90-second countdown to impact that follows every air raid siren in Israel.
The shelter was about the size of a suburban garage and was one level underground. Early in the night, I’d seen at most fifty people inside. During the later siren, there were more than 70 of us crammed in.
Just as well. The blast hit 50 metres away.
The room recoiled, physically, from the impact. People leaning against the walls were shoved inward. A crash, sudden and sharp. A flash of white light – I think. There were shouts in Hebrew. People surged toward the centre of the room, looking around as if the explosion might have left a mark.
Children clung to parents. The elderly and disabled were helped. Dogs sheltering with their owners barked at each other. An American man loudly declared: “I know what we must do. Let us pray.” No one joined him.
We waited.
One person watched doorbell camera footage from their nearby apartment and saw flames.
The shelter the previous night, residents from surrounding buildings gathered for relative safety (Photo: J Prinsley)[Missing Credit]
Usually, there’s an impatience to leave the shelter and people peel off before the official “all clear” comes. Not this time; everyone waited for the Home Front Command alert.
When we finally emerged into the building above, we saw doors blown off their hinges and the ceiling collapsed. We still didn’t know how close the impact had been.
It was the glass that gave it away, glittering across the pavement like a layer of black ice. I was wearing slippers and worried about my feet.
The streets were silent. I looked up the road. Smoke was thick. The smell of burning plastic hung in the air.
Others began emerging from their shelters, cautious. Emergency services arrived, sirens wailing – not air raid sirens, but ambulances. Medics rushed in; Magen David Adom was setting up stretchers; search and rescue teams were sprinting toward the scene.
People stumbled around half-dressed, holding dogs, babies. I saw a man with blood running down his face.
A medic with a megaphone spoke in Hebrew – he was telling the injured to come forward.
A man with a megaphone tells the injured to come forward (Photo: J Prinsley)[Missing Credit]
Pride flags still flickered in the wind. A reminder of the celebration of love that was canceled in wake of the war.
Everywhere had been affected: a print shop, a bakery, a photography store, a gallery, a bar I’d been at the night before, a clothing outlet, a Jewish community centre, a sex shop. All devastated. I noticed the Tel Aviv light rail construction. That long-delayed project would probably take even longer now.
One man, carrying a King Charles Spaniel and wearing a motorcycle helmet, wheeled a small suitcase through the scene. His apartment had gone too. We turned back home.
Residents flee devastated apartment buildings, clutching dogs and some of their belongings (Photo: J Prinsley)[Missing Credit]
I was staying with family in a pre-state one story house close to the beach. From the courtyard, it looked intact, but inside: wreckage. Glass covered the mattress where, just minutes earlier, my boyfriend’s dad had been sleeping.
He had never gone to the shelter before these recent sirens. Even on Thursday night, we hadn’t moved when the sirens went off.
I remembered the neighbour. He hadn’t joined us in the shelter. I banged on his door – no response. I peered through his window, lit only by my iPhone torch. I could just see the edge of the sofa and I imagined him lying out of sight, glass in his head.
A woman wearing just a blanket carries her dog to safety (Photo: J Prinsley)[Missing Credit]
Inside, we inspected the damage – the bathroom ceiling had caved in and windows were shattered; a fine grit covered everything. In the bedroom, where I had been sleeping just a little while earlier, my suitcase was dusted with debris and rubble had filled my backpack.
With the noise of the search-and-rescue teams working up the block, we began clearing up, picking glass from the bedsheets, shaking out the mattress, sweating. By sunrise, it looked better.
My boyfriend’s dad filled in a request with the municipality for the insurance, then he headed off to work. He seems incredulous when I suggest he take the day off. Life here doesn’t ever pause for long.
Feeling filthy, with my pink pyjamas caked in soot, I tried brushing my teeth. I gagged. My toothbrush was covered in dust. I rinsed and spat again and again.
Search and rescue teams run past an impacted camera shop, with a Pride flag still flying for the cancelled celebrations (Photo: J Prinsley)[Missing Credit]
I stepped outside to find a new toothbrush. Our street was cordoned off. Reporters were arriving, an ambulance was parked outside the house. Surrounding the site the site of the blast, residents sat by bags, clutching the few belongings they’d salvaged from wrecked apartments. Several blocks had been devastated by the missile; I realised how lucky we had been.
The air smelled of whisky. An off-licence had been smashed in by the impact and bottles had exploded, leaving booze soaking into the shop floor. Tanqueray, Bombay and Hendricks gin were still stocked on the back shelves, untouched.
Reading this back on a flight out of Istanbul – evacuated via Jordan and Turkey, 30 hours door to door – I feel two emotions: guilt and relief.
I walked to the beach for air. Black flags lined the shore, warning against swimming – I wasn’t sure if they were for the waves or the war.
Eventually, I went home and showered, tried to rinse away the dust. I listened for sirens, ready to head back into the shelter half clothed. The sound of jets made me flinch. Everything did.
Later, to our relief, the neighbour reappeared – he had stayed elsewhere in the city and was fine.
We learned that the missile had landed in a nearby car park, the only open space in a 500-metre radius. Not a single person was killed.
This pre-state house is still standing on one of the city’s oldest streets – one of the last low buildings in a neighbourhood now crowded with towers. It is a small miracle in a war that has already claimed so much.
A Jewish community centre that caters to the many Americans in Israel was also impacted (Photo: J Prinsley)[Missing Credit]
Reading this back on a flight out of Istanbul – evacuated via Jordan and Turkey, 30 hours door to door – I feel two emotions: guilt and relief.
Mostly, I am struck by the detail that gets lost in the noise: Israel aims for military sites, Iran targets civilians.
Point this out and, inevitably, someone will respond: “But Israel does the same.”
My boyfriend’s dad spent last night in Holon, a break from the shattered glass of Tel Aviv. Near there, too, a missile struck, and Ramat Gan. Another hit a hospital in Beersheba. There are no terror tunnels beneath Beersheba Medical Centre.
Israelis survive these attacks not because they are better protected by fate, but because they are better protected by civil society. Defence is built into the infrastructure: warning sirens, bomb shelters, reinforced stairwells. Imperfect – there are shameful gaps in Arab towns and villages – but in Tel Aviv, our shelter held Jews and Arabs, tourists and locals, shoulder to shoulder. All seeking the same thing: safety.
Iran has built no such system for its people. Nor has Hamas in Gaza. Because saving lives is not their priority, it seems. Sacrificing them – to optics, to ideology – is. This is the asymmetry that matters.
Several apartment buildings were destroyed by the blast (Photo: J Prinsley)[Missing Credit]
And yet, it is Israel that is blamed for the suffering and the unequal toll. As if the existence of shelters in the Jewish State is the true crime.
The Iranian regime targets civilians, but Israeli civil society saves them. It is no wonder Israel wants to defend itself against a nuclear-armed Iran. If this is what they do with ballistic missiles, imagine what they would aim for with a nuclear bomb.