Ninety seconds

90 seconds is what we get.

That’s the amount of time from the moment the siren sounds until the expected first impact of the Iranian missiles.

And now we even get a bit more time, with the new advanced warning system.

It should be enough for most people right? You can conveniently get up, turn off the TV, grab a bottle of water, maybe even a bag of Bamba, and make your way to the safe room. If you are among the unlucky ones who need to go down a few flights of stairs to the building’s shelter, you may pass on that Bamba, and if you are even more unlucky, and you need to get to a public shelter, you may have to do this in a more brisk fashion. You may even feel the need to run. But you’ll get there.

But what if you’re in a wheelchair? What if it’s 2 a.m., you are in bed, and it takes you five-to-seven minutes just to transfer to your wheelchair? What do you do then? What if you live on the third floor of a building with a shelter that is 20 steps below street level with no elevator to the shelter?

As always, like it’s been throughout history, people with disabilities find themselves on the bottom of the food chain. It was like that in Covid, when governments around the world openly and publicly prioritized young healthy people in their emergency respirator algorithms, it’s like that when they only let you sit in a window seat on an airplane (so you are not in the way of rescuing healthy walking people), and it’s like that now, when this war, which is taking a huge toll on everyone, takes a substantially bigger toll on people with disabilities.

Way too many people with disabilities have fallen through the cracks and are not in proper shelters by the time the booms begin. On the surface, it’s understandable. With an existential threat that needs to be addressed right here and now, and with millions of people at home with their kids in this game of hypersonic roulette, who has time to think about us, those who can’t walk or can’t see, those who can’t hear or those who need to put on a prosthetic leg before they can jump out of bed in the middle of the night?

Once I heard about a friend of mine sleeping in her wheelchair in one of the not-too-many accessible shelters throughout Tel Aviv, I felt like I had heard it all. She is a mother of two, a high school teacher. And she’s sleeping sitting up in her wheelchair in a public shelter because that’s her best option for staying safe.

You may be thinking, war is brutal, people are dying, people are getting injured, people are losing their homes… Do you really think our resources should be diverted right now to focus on that small percentage of people with disabilities and whether or not they can get to a shelter in time?

Well, yes. I actually do think that. Because this is what this war is about.

Officially, this war is about preventing an evil regional superpower from getting their hands on nuclear weapons, and about making this world a safer place for our children, and the children of the world (yes, France, your children too). But in fact, it is about more than that – it’s about light fighting darkness, it’s about progress fighting the medieval, it’s about our values vs. theirs, and it’s about the world we want fighting for its right to exist against the world we don’t want.

And protecting people with disabilities is all of that – it represents the light, the progress and the values of the world we want. The one we are fighting for. And when there is a will there is a way.

We are not sure that the story is completely true, but legend has it that anthropologist Margaret Mead was once asked by a student what she thought was the earliest sign of a civilized society. To the student’s surprise, she didn’t mention the agricultural revolution, the formation of cities or legal and political systems. Instead, Mead replied that the first sign of civilization is what was found in a cave somewhere – a healed human femur; evidence that a person who had a severe injury was protected, fed, and taken care of until their bone healed. They weren’t left to be eaten by lions. Mead explained: Helping someone else through a difficult time is where civilization begins.

This war is not just a battle against tyranny; it is a fight for the values we cherish – namely, compassion, and dignity for all. As we fight for a safer world, protecting people with disabilities is a reflection of our commitment to these ideals. Otherwise, how are we different than the darkness that we’re fighting?