The building of bomb shelters is big business in Israel. The noise of their construction is common in most Israeli neighborhoods. Despite the tenuous quiet Israel is currently experiencing, residents continue building them, retrofitting rooms or even entire buildings with towers of shelters. Each connects to a home, affording the residents the extra room for which most Israelis use them.
In-home shelters are valued for obvious reasons: Nobody wants to run to a basement shelter at 3 a.m. worried about what they’re wearing while rousing the kids, the dog and any guests to run to safety just seconds before impact. An in-home shelter within the apartment changes everything.
Friends of mine who had to run to a basement shelter were jealous of those able to simply sleep in their shelters during the month-plus daily bombing from Iran earlier this year. Some live in older buildings, requiring a dash to neighbors or community shelters in the seconds before a threatening ICBM is confirmed.
Miguniot, small reinforced concrete shelters that have been common for decades near the Gaza border, now spring up like mushrooms after a soaking forest rain. These were the shelters involved in the now-infamous and tragic story of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the 23-year-old dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who lost an arm to a Hamas grenade while standing in a roadside bomb shelter with more than a dozen others after fleeing the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023. He was kidnapped to Gaza and held for 328 days before being murdered by Hamas.
Jews pray for peace, but at the same time prepare for war. Experience is a harsh teacher.
It is natural to consider, then, how the people on the other side of this conflict prepare, especially regarding what they build.
Rearming is a clear priority for the nations in the region, including Israel. It is also, unsurprisingly, the priority of terror groups.
As war drags on, the offensive capabilities of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis have been seriously degraded to one extent or another, though not extinguished. Their leadership continues to invest in the means of destruction at ongoing risk to their own civilians and Israelis. Iran’s ballistic-missile program has received at least a thousand tons of chemicals required for solid rocket propellants from China.
Weapons continue to reach Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Hamas, which signed a disarmament agreement, is actively accumulating more weapons.
It is often mentioned that during Israel’s response to Oct. 7, Hamas used its extensive tunnel system—longer than London’s Tube—for its fighters, not Gaza’s children. Hamas’s priority during Israel’s most severe attacks was to protect its fighters, equipment and, amazingly, Israeli hostages. The value of children in Gaza was not as high as the value of those hostages.
The war may pause, but neither the hate nor the machinery behind it will. That is why Israel continues to build shelters for its children. If only the terrorists dedicated to Israel’s destruction could have the same concern for their children. In the meantime, what we build is protection; what they build is quite different.
One wishes that these new shelters would become storage spaces or home offices, but experience tells us otherwise.
