— Feature, Musings —06.21.2025 11:30 AM
What is it like in Israel right now? Mark Berlin tells us.
What’s it like living in Israel, right now?
When this writer was there last month, there were lots of sirens and alerts, but not much in the way of anxiety. Even when a Houthi ballistic missile penetrated the Iron Dome and landed right beside Terminal Three at the country’s main airport – where my partner happened to be, along with dozens of Canadian kids – nobody seemed to lose their cool. They swept up the shrapnel and the dirt, and flights continued.
These days, it’s different. There’s lots of anxiety, now.
On June 13 – one day after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) censured Iran for continuing to enrich uranium that could be used in the dictatorship’s covert nuclear weapons program – Israel acted. It had no choice. It commenced bombing Iranian military and nuclear facilities.
Iran, meanwhile, responded by targeting Israeli civilians: hospitals, schools and apartment buildings, in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Rishon Lezion, Bat Yam and Rehovot in central Israel, and Haifa and Tamra in the North. Everywhere, really. And Iran continues to target civilians.
So what is that like?
Mark Berlin is an Ottawa lawyer (and, full disclosure, a longtime friend). He was invited to Israel for a mission by its Foreign Ministry to meet with the country’s thriving LGBTQ community, and to celebrate Pride month. Then war broke out. Says Berlin, now back home in Ottawa: “It was otherworldly. It was like something I’ve never experienced before.”
For Berlin, that’s no small thing. He worked in Ramallah in the West Bank for a decade, during the first and second Intifadas. He’s worked in war-torn Sudan. I know him to be brave and determined man.
After visiting the site of the Nova Music Festival and some of the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023 – when thousands of Jews and non-Jews were murdered, wounded, raped and kidnapped by the terror group – Berlin and his delegation went to Tel Aviv to join in Pride celebrations. And that’s when Hell broke out.
Says he: “The sh*t hit the fan, and we were in a war zone… When the alarms go off, you have one minute, 30 seconds to get to the shelter. And so you scramble to it. And the first day, we thought, okay, it’s gonna be once a night. Then it was twice a night.” And then, he said, it started to happen multiple times, every night – and then during the day, too. It hasn’t stopped.
“It was unrelenting,” he says. “We were getting two, three hours of sleep at best, in 45 minute chunks.” They’d sleep on the concrete floor in their hotel’s parking garage, which they’d been told was reinforced and the best protection against Iran’s barrage.
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Israel, like you said, had no choice. They, we, can’t allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. But it’s Trump, remember, who tore up the deal that prevented their assent to obtaining nuclear weapons / he tore it up and look at what we have now.
I am supportive of Israel’s right to exist. I believe October 7 was one of the most gruesome terrorist attacks in history. And I agree that Iran is a regime who supports terrorists.
That said, the trope of Iran being on the brink of nuclear weapons has been used an excuse for all manner of nonsense for 30+ years. It is the updated version of the (non-) WMDs that got the West into such trouble in the 1990s.
And while I agree Iran has hit numerous civilian sites in Israel – and should be condemned for it – let’s not forget what Israel did in Gaza. Every time they hit a civilian site, Netanyahu claimed there were Hamas terrorists lurking inside. What garbage.
This war, like many wars before it, is a convenient excuse for politicians (like Netanyahu and Trump) to distract the population from their own shortcomings as leaders.
Warren,
That’s what I love about conventional wisdom and groupthink. They are almost always wrong. The fact is that Iran already has crude deliverable warheads. Like Curious said, Trump tore up the JCPOA and that allowed Tehran to build its weapons.
The Liar-In-ChiefTM has finally let the other shoe drop: Netanyahu says this will be a lengthy war with Iran. No kidding. Why? Because this has little to do with an Iranian nuclear arsenal and far more to do with regime change by hook or by crook. Supposedly, the B2 bunker busters will “solve” the warhead problem. Regime change is Bibi’s only Stay out of jail card. He and Sara are counting on it. As for an Iranian arsenal, all Trump had to do was transfer the bomb to Saudi Arabia, but he was far too stupid to do that. Nuclear parity saves lives, but seemingly not in American foreign and defence policy…
Are you saying you want the Crown Prince to have a nuclear bomb?
Gilbert,
My contention is that Iran already has crude but deliverable nuclear missiles. If I’m right, Yes. There’s no way that Israel or the United States would admit publicly that Iran already has the bomb.