Outside the pockmarked façade of a bakery near Haifa, Ouriel Hattab donned tefillin on Sunday and prayed for the safety of his younger brother Eliran, an infantry soldier stationed on Israel’s northern border.
Only two days earlier, Hattab, 21, had arrived in Israel from France aboard the last civilian flight from Paris before Israeli airspace was closed following the outbreak of war with Iran on June 13. Making aliyah—Hebrew for Jewish immigration to Israel—had long been on his mind, especially after Eliran made the move last year. But in recent weeks, “it started feeling urgent,” Hattab told JNS. “I’m so glad I made it on time.”
Hattab, a trained physiotherapist who came to help wounded IDF soldiers, spoke outside Birkat Moshe Bakery, whose building still bears the scars of a direct hit from a Hezbollah rocket last October.
Though newly arrived, Hattab’s determination reflects the broader Israeli mood since the June 13 escalation of what had been a simmering conflict since Oct. 7, 2023. It’s especially emblematic of residents of the Haifa Bay area, often called a “rocket magnet” due to its strategic and symbolic importance.
Just a day earlier, an Iranian ballistic missile fired by Iran struck the nearby BAZAN oil refinery, causing damage. The next day, another rocket hit BAZAN in Haifa, killing three of the at least 24 people who have been killed to date by Iran’s missile onslaught. The second missile attack incapacitated the refinery, authorities said.
“I’d never experienced war before,” said Hattab, who moved to the Haifa area to live near his brother and cousins. But his years in the Jewish community security unit in Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris, kicked in. He helped guide others into a local shelter when the sirens went off.
Public life across Israel slowed dramatically after June 13, when the Israel Defense Forces Homefront Command banned gatherings, shut down malls and moved schools and non-essential work online. Still, signs of resilience are everywhere.
One such place is Shablool, a record shop in Kiryat Yam, a city neighboring Haifa. Owner Ronen Binyamin, 51, kept the store open thanks to a nearby bomb shelter, reachable within 11 seconds of a siren, he told JNS. “People still come. They need to escape the news—not just the rockets,” he said. He opened Shablool in October 2023, just as Hezbollah joined the conflict in support of Hamas following the latter’s Oct. 7, 2025 invasion of southern Israel.
Shablool (the name means “snail” in Hebrew) sits on Jerusalem Avenue, a major thoroughfare lined with apartment buildings.
Further down the road, two shawarma eateries remain open, though with fewer tables to comply with restrictions. Shoshi Tamima, the owner of one of them, Shawarma Birkat Hashem (God’s Blessing Shawarma), said she’s scared—especially of the powerful Iranian rockets—but keeps serving. “If people aren’t too scared to eat, who are we to stop making food?” she asked.
As elsewhere, Israel’s missile defense systems have prevented most of the missiles from reaching Haifa, a city that houses Israel’s largest port, an international airport, two top universities, high-tech offices and the headquarters of the Rafael and Elbit defense firms. But the rockets that do get through leave a mark, even on locals used to Hezbollah’s fire.
Between October 2023 and November 2024, when the truce with Hezbollah went into effect, the terrorist group launched at least 215 rockets at Haifa and its northern suburbs—the Krayot. Only Kiryat Shmona, closer to Lebanon, absorbed more fire, according to Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.
But since June 13, Iran’s more powerful arsenal of drones, missiles and rockets has killed at least 24 people in Israel, including eight people in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv on Sunday, with a ninth woman missing. Three were killed on Friday, 13 overnight Saturday and eight early on Monday.
Iran has fired at Israel more than 400 projectiles, including at least 100 targeting Haifa alone, according to the Institute. More than 1,000 Israelis were wounded and 2,700 were evacuated in Israel. Damages to property so far are at least $544 million, the Institute said.
It’s Tehran’s direct response to Israel’s rolling campaign—hundreds of airstrikes, covert operations and sabotage missions that, according to reports, have neutralized key Iranian military and nuclear targets, killing hundreds, including top commanders and scientists.
Back at the bakery, a local, Ran Avner Tzarfati stopped to chat with Ouriel. Tzarfati came to the area to buy medical marijuana at a local pharmacy for his chronic back pain, but the pharmacy was closed. He volunteered to serve in the reserves but was rejected for his back problems, so he helps people don tefillin.
Using the little French he knows from home (his Morocco-born parents spoke it when they wanted the kids to not understand), he encouraged Ouriel and asked how he could assist the new immigrant.
Shortly thereafter, an alarm siren blared. Ouriel headed to a shelter, where he helped open and close the heavy door each time someone rushed in. Children horsed around on the mattress of a karate club, surrounded by the diverse population of the Haifa suburban area: Sephardic Jews like Tzarfati and many Russian-speaking immigrants with their dogs, some of them fresh arrivals who fled the war in Ukraine, as well as Ethiopian Jews and some Arabs.
After the alarm passed, Ouriel considered his plans and next steps outside the shelter. He hopes to join the IDF—ideally the Paratroopers Brigade—but first wants to help the wounded using his training as a physiotherapist specializing in prosthetics.
He brought with him from France $200,000 worth of electric and mechanical prosthetics. He restored the devices, which a government clinic had thrown out, during his training and plans to donate them to injured soldiers. He also carries a prototype for an electric palm he hopes to further develop in Israel.
Despite the rockets, Hattab says his deepest concerns are for his brother on the front and his parents in Sarcelles. His father is recovering from a severe car accident. His mother, back in France with his teenage sister, calls him anxiously whenever she hears about incoming rockets. But the shelter where he enters has no reception, and “she gets worried sick” when he doesn’t answer.
He wants his whole family to join him in Israel. “Jews have no future there,” he said of France. In December, he and a friend were assaulted by three Arab men in Besançon after removing anti-Israel stickers. It was the last in a string of violent encounters. After years of studying self-defense, he was recently arrested for carrying a knife for protection in France. He was locked up for 24 hours, during which he decided to become more religious.
“The war is scary,” he said, “but it’s a different kind of fear than living undercover as a Jew in France. Here, I’m free. I put on tefillin in the street. My fears now aren’t about me. They’re about my family, Israel and the Jewish people—and that’s a far more meaningful kind of worry.”