Life Underground — One Month On

Passover underground. Is this the holiday of freedom? 

Not to sound too melodramatic, but here we are for the second time within a year, sheltering underground as our country is bombarded with ballistic missiles, cluster bombs, and killer drones. I am not going to weigh in here on who started what. It’s no secret that I am no fan of Israel’s current government. It seems that I’ve been marching around carrying ‘Stop the War’ signs for decades. And I seriously doubt that bombing Tehran will bring about regime change. You cannot bomb away an ideology. But I will say that if any regime deserves to be obliterated, it is the ruthless Islamic Republic of Iran.

Two years ago, I published a blog post titled “Pesach Underground.” It was about the Israeli hostages trapped in tunnels beneath Gaza. This year, all of Israel will observe Pesach underground, sheltering from ballistic missiles and drone attacks from Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Israeli seder meals will be held in safe rooms and bomb shelters. Well, at least that’s true for the Israelis who have the luxury of shelter. Only those of us lucky enough to have underground shelters or safe rooms will be able to celebrate. For millions of Israelis, including most of the Bedouin and Arab population who live in small villages, there is no safe haven.

According to the Institute for National Security Studies, as of March 2026, approximately 33% of Israelis — over 3 million people — lack access to a standard reinforced safe room or public shelter, with the situation disproportionately impacting Arab-majority towns, Bedouin communities, and people with disabilities. Studies indicate that over 60% of apartments lack private safe rooms, and public shelter infrastructure is often insufficient or inaccessible in many communities. [source: INSS.org.il] See also: https://www.shomrim.news/eng/shelter-failure

Never fear, though, there is at least one Israeli who has constant access to safe shelter. Prime Minister Netanyahu has a private bunker underneath each of his homes, as well as access to a private safe room in his office. Heaven forbid he should have to join the masses in the public shelter underneath the Parliament building. And he even travels with his own mobile bomb shelter! The ultimate in personal travel accessories, this shelter is strictly off limits to the riffraff. It’s for the PM and his personal entourage only. All of this while Netanyahu urges leaders of northern communities to try to prevent residents from leaving their homes in the face of relentless Hezbollah rocket fire 

I am one of the lucky ones. We city dwellers have access to underground spaces and public shelters in nearby schools and kindergartens. I do feel lucky to have a protected space to run to when the sirens sound. Our ‘safe space’ is an unused hall in the basement of the building next door, which had once been used as a gym. It is not an actual bomb shelter. There’s no steel door, no reinforced concrete. But it’s underground, which is the place to be when ballistic missiles and cluster bombs are headed your way. Unfortunately, my building with over 150 residents has no accessible bomb shelter, no safe rooms. Still, we have our basement, which is so much more than many of our fellow Israelis have. And here in the city, there are underground parking garages and basement shelters in many of the buildings we can duck into. My friends who live in small towns have nowhere to run to if a siren sounds when they’re out walking.

I used to take my daily morning walk in the nearby park. I’ve changed that routine for now. I have mapped out a new route for my daily walks, keeping to city streets, where I can reach a public shelter or underground parking garage within 2 minutes of any location. And even if I’ve strayed off the safe route, as soon as I open Google Maps on my phone, the first thing to appear is a list of bomb shelters in the area. This application update has turned that Google feature ‘café near me’ into a literal life-saver. The ‘shelter near me’ feature even includes Yelp-style customer reviews! “Good place, a lot of seats, working bathrooms, and easy to access.” “There’s a bar near the exit …”. A nearby bar sounds like a great way to wind down after the sprint to the shelter and the nerve-racking wait inside the crowded space as things go boom above our heads.

Meanwhile, in our underground bnb, the neighbors gather on and off throughout the day, whenever the sirens blare. We pick up conversations started during the previous air raid and interrupted as soon as we got the all-clear signal telling us we could leave the protected space. While American condo committees are concerned with enforcing rules for trash disposal and keeping down pet noise, we have building security committees charged with maintaining our safe space, keeping escape routes clear, and doing regular welfare checks on disabled and elderly residents. We are agitated, exhausted, on edge, and sleep-deprived. But somehow we are functioning.

Some of us are hesitant to try the dash down 12 flights of stairs in the middle of the night. So we sleep downstairs in our protected space. We bring thermoses of tea and soup to sip before we tuck ourselves into our sleeping bags. We chat, sharing our growing knowledge of precision-guided missiles, warhead payloads, and submunitions. It sounds poetic when one reads of “gleaming trails of bomblets in the night sky,” but the reality is that if you are not inside a bomb shelter, those bomblets are lethal.

My neighbors, Yaron and Ilana Moshe, were killed by one of those ‘bomblets’ because they could not reach their safe room in time. They lived just one block away from me. I walk by their bombed-out apartment almost every day. I thank my lucky stars that we have a basement to run to. And I just pray that our luck holds until this madness is over.

Passover, “hag herut” – the holiday of freedom. After about 2,000 years, we are back in our own land. The Jewish people have a sovereign, independent homeland again, after all those years of wandering. Passover, the festival of freedom, is here. But we are celebrating underground. Feels like we are anything but free.