I’m writing this sitting at the table in our backyard, accompanied by the call of turtle doves, which I still find very soothing, and the more energised twitter of some smaller unidentified songbird, which not so much. The flower beds are one grand splash of reds and purples as what Google Lens informs me are our impatiens are in flamboyant colour, to which my phone’s camera does not do justice. The coffee by my right hand is full-flavoured and still hot. In short, this is a morning when it is good to be alive.

This overwhelming feeling is immensely enhanced by the fact that it is also an enormous relief to be alive, since being alive this morning was, from the vantage point of last night, by no means a given. We went to bed with the news that the Home Front had issued new instructions, suspending all educational activity for 48 hours and restricting gatherings to 1000 people. It’s true that neither of these restrictions affects us directly; our children are over school age and we weren’t, in fact, planning to attend any rock concerts this evening.

However, knowing that tens of Air Force planes had scrambled, and that the whole country was on full alert for an attack of some sort from Iran, was somewhat sobering. Learning later that drones and missiles were on their way from Iran didn’t help, even though the estimated arrival time suggested that the Iranians were using a delivery system developed by Israel’s Post Office.

The night passed, as you presumably know, accompanied by considerable pyrotechnics. Even the skies over our sleepy backwater were illuminated by the streaks and flashes of interceptions of missiles. Even our windowpanes were rattled by the explosions marking the successful elimination of yet another threat.

Not that I was aware of any of this at the time, of course. No: I slept soundly through it all. Not much chance of a missile attack waking me. I am, after all, the husband whose wife barely managed to wake him when she went into labour in the middle of the night 40 years ago.

Bernice, however, watched the entire show over Jerusalem from a front bedroom window. She assures me that it seemed as though the shrapnel was falling in the football field half a kilometre away, rather than over the hill in Jerusalem, eight miles away. By the time I woke up for a bathroom break at 3:50, all of the fun and games were over.  

Waking up this morning to discover that we had not been blown away in our beds was a particular relief for me, for a reason that I will now explain.

Every weekday, my day begins with cutting up fruit for a fruit salad that Bernice enjoys with oats, seeds and yoghourt and I eat with granola and yoghourt. On Shabbat morning, however, I have a piece of cake with my cup of tea before shul, and Bernice just has a cup of tea.

I used up the last of our thick oats last week (about 1200 grams) to make a large amount of granola. (Oats, since they are washed as part of the processing before being offered for sale, are chametz gamur – absolute leaven – and cannot be ‘sold’ for Pesach, but must be disposed of.)

This Shabbat, Esther, Maayan and Raphael came to us on Friday for dinner and stayed overnight. I know they enjoy fruit salad. I therefore decided to cut up a large bowl of fruit for the girls, which had the added bonus of encouraging them to help me out with the granola. In the end, they also took some granola home, so now I have just the right amount to finish before Pesach.

In the event, they only ate about half of the fruit salad. (I have discovered that there is more Polish mother in me than I ever previously suspected. When I make fruit salad every day for Bernice and myself, I make just the right amount. When I am making for the kids, I make about twice as much as necessary.) What this meant was that I did not have to chop up more fruit this morning.

Before we went to bed last night, Bernice remarked that she hoped we wouldn’t be blown to smithereens last night, because it would be a terrible waste of the fruit salad. So, yes: it was an even greater relief to wake up this morning.

The Home Front is urging us not to be complacent, and assuring us that the threat is far from over. My personal feeling (as I write this on Sunday morning) is that Iran has rattled its sabre sufficiently to satisfy its sense of honour, delight its supporters at home, and assuage its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. In meeting Iran’s challenge, Israel has retaliated sufficiently to assuage its own critics, while not risking alienating allies. Further action by Iran directly or by Israel directly against Iran is in nobody’s tactical interest.

Of course, if I am proven wrong by events between now (11:25 on Sunday morning) and publication time (9:00 on Tuesday morning) either I or this paragraph will have been deleted by the time you read the blog, so I risk my reputation as a pundit very little by writing this.

I think I may stop here, although I am well under my target length of 1500 words. The fact is that this kind of plucky British humour is only sustainable for so long.

This humour is playing out against a fundamentally unchanged but constantly deteriorating situation of 134 abductees (of whom probably fewer than 100 are currently alive). It is playing out against a ‘negotiation’ process which I still believe is a farce, since nothing that Israel can offer Hamas in return for the release of the hostages is as valuable to Hamas as the destructive effect, on Israel’s morale, internal cohesion and national spirit, of not returning the hostages. It is playing out against a war where Israel cannot completely eliminate Hamas and cannot stop trying to. It is playing out against a political situation where every day that Bibi does not announce his decision to step down further diminishes his standing, tarnishes his reputation and damages the country.

It is also playing out against a countdown to Yom Hazikaron immediately followed by Yom Ha’atzma’ut. This juxtaposition of the Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen leading into Independence Day creates every year a tension that for some is very difficult, but for the majority of the population has a particularly Israeli and Jewish poignancy. There are things worth dying for. We mourn and commemorate the dead, while also recognising and celebrating the meaning of their death, what they died for.

This year, I cannot fully visualise how that transition will be achieved. The very uniqueness of that pivoting structure makes it a potential focus for all of the frustrations, the feeling that the state deserted the people on October 7. Far from being the moment when the country comes together, the moment when Yom Hazikaron becomes Yom Ha’atzma’ut may this year be the moment when the country falls apart.

Miri Regev, the government minister responsible for planning the official transition ceremony from Yom Hazikaron to Yom Ha’atzma’ut, has announced that this year’s ceremony, always attended by thousands, will be recorded in advance, with no attendant audience. There is no doubt in my mind that this decision arises not from external security fears, but rather from fears that hostage family members or other anti-Government protestors will disrupt the ceremony. These fears do not seem to me unrealistic, although I find them profoundly disturbing.

My instinct was right. I should have stopped four paragraphs ago. Sorry!