Following a night of rocket strikes on Dimona and Arad that left dozens injured, the immediate public discourse reverted to familiar territory: Were they in a safe room? Did they make it in time? Did they follow the instructions? Within moments, instead of asking how we found ourselves, yet again in this reality, the habitual public trial of civilians begins. According to updated reports, approximately 115 people were injured in Arad and 60 in Dimona.
It is always easiest to blame the victim. It is always easiest to check who entered the shelter and who didn’t, who acted “correctly” and who acted “incorrectly.”
This is a convenient narrative because it diverts attention from the parties truly responsible. It shifts the burden of accountability from the leaders to the citizens—from those who created the reality to those forced to survive it.
But this is not the core issue. The unasked question is different: Was this war necessary? Did we have to be brought to the brink once more, back to a night where citizens in Dimona, Arad, and elsewhere flee to shelters, back to the images of destruction, fear, battered bodies, and scarred souls?
Instead of casting blame on the victims, we must turn our gaze toward those who brought this ruin upon us: the power-drunk and callous leaders who continually lead us back to this exact reality. A reality where civilian life becomes a survival course, where children learn to calculate the time until impact, and where families constantly check for the nearest safe room, as if this is a reasonable way of life.
The Illusion of Equal Protection Yet, even here, not everyone shares the same starting point. The discourse around “obeying instructions” assumes we all have equal access to protection, but this is a false premise.
Those hit hardest are often those without a safe room or nearby shelter. They live in older homes, marginalized communities, the periphery, and the under-resourced Arab villages in the Negev lacking essential infrastructure. They live in places the state underinvested in from the start. Even within Israel proper, protection is unequal: some live mere steps from a standard shelter, while others must improvise survival under neglected conditions. The elderly, people with disabilities, low-income families, and residents of unrecognized or neglected Arab villages all pay a heavier price for this exact same policy.
This reality is even more extreme in the West Bank. There, in many areas, alarms are not activated at all for the Palestinian population. The airspace above them is frequently treated as an “open area,” meaning interceptions rarely occur. This is not merely a security abandonment; it is a political and moral hierarchy of human life. Some receive warnings, some receive protection, and others are not even included in the alert radius. This, too, is a result of policy, not fate.
The Hidden Psychological Toll The cost of this reality is not solely measured by the number of casualties or by who managed to reach safety in time. It exacts a deep, cumulative psychological toll, engraved into both body and mind. Anxiety, agoraphobia, insomnia, constant hypervigilance, the fear of leaving children or being left alone, and a fundamental lack of security—all these become part of daily life. The losses are not just of lives, homes, and property, but of a sense of safety, trust in the world, and the simple ability to live without jumping at every loud noise.
This toll is especially heavy on children. A girl waking up in terror to a siren, a boy learning to sprint from his bed to a safe room, children continuously living amidst panic, explosions, terrified parents, and a shaking environment—they are not simply “developing resilience.” They carry mental scars that may accompany them for years, shaping their worldview, their sense of security, and their ability to breathe freely, concentrate, play, and dream. These wounds are not always visible, but they are incredibly real.
The Danger of the “Emotional Safe Room” This is exactly where another, equally dangerous mechanism operates: the attempt to force us all into an emotional and cognitive safe room. Not just a physical shelter, but a closed-off mental and political space where we are expected to endlessly focus on “resilience,” “coping,” “standing strong,” and the capacity to absorb more and more, rather than looking at the root of the reality and asking how to stop it. This language presents itself as caring and empowering, but in practice, it can become a tool for normalization—not of life, but of living under fire.
Thus, we are asked to adapt instead of resist. To manage our anxiety instead of demanding change. To cultivate resilience instead of fighting a reality that shatters the very possibility of a safe, equal, and free life. This emotional and cognitive safe room is designed to keep us focused on survival rather than political questions; on sprinting to a shelter rather than holding accountable those who forced this life upon us; on breathing techniques and calming exercises rather than a resolute demand to end the destruction, escalation, and abandonment.
No, this is not a reasonable way of life. It is not a decree of fate. It is a political reality. the outcome of policies and human choices by a leadership that prioritizes power, revenge, and destruction over preserving life. And the public is once again asked to get used to it: listen to the guidelines, run in time, and avoid asking questions that are too big.
Asking the Big Questions Yet the big questions are the ones that truly matter. Not just whether there was a safe room, but why a safe room is needed again. Not just whether the citizens behaved correctly, but whether the leaders who plunged them into this situation can continue acting as if they bear no responsibility. Not just how to survive the night, but how to refuse a life where such a night is considered normal.
Resistance to this reality begins with rejecting the language that blames the victims. It starts with the demand to discuss not only self-defense, but the very conditions that make such defense a daily necessity. It also starts with the refusal to be locked inside that emotional and cognitive safe room, which teaches us to contain every disaster as if our only role is to endure. Because as long as we only ask who entered the shelter, and not who created the reality forcing us to live this way, we will continue to miss the point entirely.
It is time to say it plainly: the problem is not who was in the safe room. The problem is who brought us back to a situation where citizens in Dimona, Arad, the Negev, the periphery, and the West Bank must choose between a few seconds of sprinting and life itself. The problem is also the immense psychological toll this reality extracts, and the way we are expected to accept it as a given. And the problem is the resignation to this reality—as if there is no one responsible, as if there is no alternative, as if we are doomed to live forever from one siren to the next.
We must not accept this. We must not get used to it. We must not agree to turn anxiety into a routine, trauma into public language, and “resilience” into a substitute for resistance. And we must stop blaming those harmed by the ruin, instead of those who manufacture it.