It’s an image that haunts many people across Israel. A corner of Beit Shemesh flattened by an Iranian missile; A synagogue was destroyed; People were killed when they sought refuge in bomb shelters.
If proof was needed that war, even this war, is not just about air defenses and surgical strikes, this is it. A gruesome scene of sudden death.
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When we arrived at the place, we were repeatedly told that it was just a place where people lived, prayed and taught. No military base, no hardware, no government office.
“Why is this a target,” said one man. “There is no excuse.”
What we saw when we arrived was a chaotic effect. What we heard was a horror story.
Dozens of residents went to bomb shelters after receiving an alert on their phones and then hearing air raid sirens. It’s a type of behavior that is at once disturbing and normal.
Thanks to past conflicts, including the 12-day war just eight months ago, Israelis are accustomed to receiving such warnings.
The shelter was to be their sanctuary. Instead, it became a grave in a moment.
Consequences of a strike in Beit Shemesh, Israel. Image: AP
The missile somehow missed Israels exceptional air defense.
“Nothing is 100 percent effective,” an Israeli military officer told me. “We can’t stop every missile. We can try, but we know we’re going to get one eventually.”
And it did so devastatingly. We saw huge excavators being brought in to try to clear the debris and search and rescue teams working out how to find survivors. There were soldiers, emergency workers, local residents, police and politicians.
We spoke to one of them, Amichai Eliyahu, Israel’s minister of open culture. He was surveying the devastation, his head shaking. This, he said, is the embodiment of why Israel must fight Iran.
“What did these people here do to them? What did these children do to harm them?” He told me.
“They have never done anything bad to Iran, we don’t even share a border with Iran. It was done for no reason, except pure hatred for hate’s sake. So I ask everyone in the world who defends them, who are you defending? Monsters, monsters who want to kill us.”
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An aerial view of the scene in Beit Shemesh. Image: Reuters
Lt. Col. Yochai Manoff was more reserved as he spoke atop a mountain overlooking the scene. He is a company commander in Israel’s National Rescue Unit and is accustomed to difficult situations and traumatic problems.
However, it was difficult for him to accept this.
“Just for reference, this is one missile that hit several buildings and affected several lives,” he told me. “Think of the amount of missiles going from Iran to Israel in the last two days. The damage could be immense.”
Could have been, but wasn’t. Israel puts so much stock in its air defense systems that its citizens can sometimes seem complacent, they have so much confidence in military technology.
But this is proof that nothing works perfectly all the time.
Each time a missile gets through the defense systems that guard Israel’s airspace, and sometimes they hit with terrifying impact. This corner of Beit Shemesh bore grim testimony to that.
