Iran is winning the fear war against Israel. We can’t let them
The Only Thing We Have to Fear… Is Fear Itself: On the Israeli Homefront in the Iran War
“The only thing we have to fear is… fear itself.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933
In the darkest days of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered this famous warning not just against economic ruin but against the psychological toll that panic and uncertainty can take on a nation. Nearly a century later, that message echoes across the streets, phones, and bomb shelters of Israel as we face down a very different threat—an unprecedented war with Iran.
This past week, Israel experienced its first direct missile attacks from the Islamic Republic. For the first time in modern history, Iranian warheads, not just their proxies, soared toward the Jewish state. The world headlines screamed of escalation, and rightly so. The threat is real: over 400 missiles, hundreds of injuries, and tragically 24 lives lost. But in the aftermath on the Israeli homefront another battle is being waged. It is a battle not for territory or political leverage, but for psychological survival.
The emotional pendulum has swung sharply in Jerusalem, a city already weathered by sirens from Iranian-backed Houthi missile launches and Gaza rocket fire. WhatsApp groups and Facebook forums buzz with fear: debates rage over the different levels of protected rooms and whether to sleep in bomb shelters or trust “protected rooms” inside apartments. Some families have abandoned their beds to spread out mattresses in cramped, shared safe rooms, afraid of the midnight sirens that have already shattered sleep across the country.
Ironically, while some tremble behind sealed doors, others stand outside filming the red skies and Iron Dome interceptions as if at a firework display. Francis Scott Key wrote in 1814, “the rocket’s red glare, the bomb bursting in the air.” They are either naive, in denial, or overcompensating to show bravery, as if the war is cinematic, not ballistic. One common factor unites these opposing responses: the management and communication of fear drives them both.
Meanwhile, airports are in chaos. Tourists, many of them Americans, Canadians, Australians, or Europeans, are desperate to escape a country at war and have scrambled to find flights out. With Ben Gurion closed for days and now operating on a limited schedule, some travelers are paying exorbitant sums to cross through Jordan or Egypt, or even booking last-minute berths on cruise ships that are ferrying evacuees to Cyprus. Travel WhatsApp groups are filled with panicked messages, flight cancellations, and hurried logistical plans.
Despite the ongoing chaos, planes are still arriving. Repatriation flights from across the globe are bringing thousands of Israelis home each day. In a stunning reversal of wartime logic, Jews abroad are choosing to return to a nation under fire rather than remain on the perceived safety of foreign shores. For them, being in Israel during sirens and war is not just defiance but belonging.
It is this paradox that defines the Israeli front today: people running toward danger while others flee it. One side is fueled by fear, while the other is fueled by faith. One side is seeking distance, while the other is drawing closer.
Of course, security warnings save lives. Naturally, we should exercise caution. But there is a growing sense that the public conversation fueled by social media, round-the-clock alerts, and worst-case-scenario messaging has blurred the line between preparedness and paralysis. Fear has a contagious nature and is rapidly spreading.
This isn’t the first time in history that governments or institutions have used fear to maintain control or demonstrate vigilance. In post-9/11 America, color-coded threat levels blanketed news channels, airports, and government buildings. The constant drumbeat of “red alert” culture led to policies that sometimes outpaced reason, including mass surveillance, the Patriot Act, and the Iraq War.
During the Cold War, schoolchildren hid under desks during nuclear drills that provided more symbolic comfort than real protection. Today’s directives of lying on the ground and covering one’s head with their hands are the closest to the old nuclear protection advice in a new nuclear age. Fear of Soviet attack shaped not only American defense policy but also its very identity. And in more recent years, during the COVID-19 pandemic, fear—both justified and inflated—was a dominant force across the globe, with long-term consequences on mental health and trust in institutions.
Israel is not immune to these cycles. The trauma of October 7th—when Hamas launched its brutal surprise attack is still fresh. It makes sense that Israelis are on edge. But when the messaging becomes fear-driven rather than resilience-driven, the homefront can crumble under the weight of its own anxiety.
We need to be vigilant without becoming victims of our own imaginations. We must maintain a delicate balance between preparedness and panic. Fear, when weaponized or unrestrained, becomes a force more destabilizing than any missile. It divides communities, erodes trust, and feeds into the goals of our enemies—who seek not only to harm our bodies but to paralyze our spirit.
FDR’s words, though forged in a different time and place, are instructive. We must not let fear dictate how we live, sleep, pray, or connect with one another. Israel has weathered worse. We will endure this, too—but only if we temper our fear with perspective and our caution with courage.
Let us not sleep on bomb shelter floors unless truly necessary. Let us not broadcast missile interceptions as entertainment. Let us listen to the sirens, but not be ruled by them. And let us recognize that the planes arriving with Israelis coming home tell a deeper story than the planes departing.
The strength of the Israeli homefront has always been our ability to adapt, to live, and to hope even amid uncertainty.
Let us hold fast to that strength—and remember: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.