It was around midnight when the sirens began. I was already standing by the safe room door, barefoot, heart racing, waiting for our children and grandchildren to rush in. The boom of Iron Dome intercepts overhead. The hush of a city bracing for impact. The surreal silence that follows.

And then my phone rang.

MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images

Israeli air defence systems are activated to intercept Iranian missiles over the Israeli city of Tel Aviv early on June 18, 2025.

It was my son. He’s 21. A combat soldier. Stationed inside Khan Yunis. Gaza.

I answered quickly, thinking he must have a moment to breathe, a short window to tell me he’s OK.

But that’s not why he was calling.

“Abba,” he said, voice tight, “are you all right? Are you safe?”

There are moments in life that bend reality. That turn something you’ve always known, something that is meant to be unshakable, into something upside down. That phone call was one of them.

My son, deep in enemy territory, surrounded by rubble and ruin, called me to check on me. From Gaza to Tel Aviv, from the battlefield to the home front. The inversion was complete.

Because there is no front line in this war anymore. And no “back line” either.

That night, Iran launched over a hundred drones and missiles at Israel. They came from every direction, some we saw, many we didn’t. The sky was a lattice of fire and defense.

Just moments ago, as I write, a hospital in Beersheva was struck, a facility caring for some of the most vulnerable Israelis. In any other country, that sentence would be met with global outcry. But here, it’s just the latest dot in a map that keeps filling with craters.

And still, my son wanted to know if we were OK.

What do you say in that moment? When your boy, who should be worrying about his own life, is worried about yours? I told him yes. Of course I told him yes. I said we were fine. I made my voice calm. I said what he needed me to say.

Not because we weren’t safe at that moment, we were. But because I couldn’t give him the burden of our fear. He’s already carrying too much. All our sons are.

And this is what being a parent in Israel now looks like. We send our children into war. We try to hold the pieces of home together. We pretend to be stronger than we are so that they can keep going. We say you’re doing great, and don’t worry about us, and we’re proud, even when we’re shaking.

What does it do to the heart to reverse the roles like that? What does it mean to receive comfort from the ones we should be comforting?

It means nothing is where it’s meant to be anymore.

This war, this endless, layered war, has made the absurd ordinary. We are struck by missiles from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran. Our children fight in tunnels and hospitals. Our parents crouch in stairwells and safe rooms. Our enemies dress as civilians and hide among civilians. Our morality is used as a weapon against us.

And yet somehow, through it all, we keep living. We hold on.

There are days when I wonder what the world sees when it looks at us. Do they see the fear in our children’s eyes when the sirens wail? Do they see my mother lighting Shabbat candles with trembling hands? Do they see my son in Gaza, asking if I’m safe in Tel Aviv?

Do they see that we are a people trying to stay human in a world that keeps asking us not to be?

I don’t write this for pity. I write it because something broke open in me that night. Not from the fear. Not from the missiles. But from that call. From the love in my son’s voice. From the unbearable beauty of a boy on the front line, who still thinks first of his family.

That is the heart of this country. That is the truth I wish the world would see.

So yes, I told him we were OK. I said it softly, again and again. I held the phone like it was his hand. I didn’t cry until after we hung up.

And then I stood in the quiet, in a land that is not quiet, and I thanked God for a child who still calls home.

Because somehow, in this land, love still moves first, and that’s everything.

Jacob Schimmel is the father of three sons who have served in this war; he lives in Jerusalem, Israel.