I moved my family to Katzrin ten years ago because it seemed so much like the New Jersey suburb I grew up in. The Golan has ample rain and is cool enough that the streets are lined with trees and grass. With only 7,000 residents, it is a close-knit community.
Security concerns were a large part of our decision to move. The Golan is socially diverse, with Druze, Circassian, Bedouin, Jews, and Christians coexisting harmoniously. There are no Palestinians in the Golan, and there has never been a terrorist attack anywhere in the Golan.
We are less than ten miles from the border with Syria, and the houses were built out of bomb-shelter-grade reinforced concrete with meter-thick roofs to ensure the safety of the residents, underground shelters were set up every hundred and fifty meters. But the Assad regime has been embroiled in a costly civil war for 13 years and is no longer a credible threat to Israel. The shelters have not been opened since the last Lebanon war.
This changed on October 7. The shelters were unlocked, and my wife stocked up on bottled water and canned food. We packed go-bags, and sirens sounded a few times when drones were sent over from Iraq. Kiryat Shmona, about a half-hour drive to the west, was pounded several times a week, but Katzrin was spared. I insisted that we lived in the safest place in the world for Jews.
That ended about two weeks ago. I was getting ready to travel by bus to Jerusalem in the afternoon when the siren sounded. The app on my phone said to shelter in place, and by the time I finished reading the warning, rockets began falling around my city. It was concerning but not scary.
As soon as Shabbat ended, I checked the news. Iran had not attacked, so it was clearly another false alarm, empty threats from the Islamist regime. But as I was getting ready to go to bed, I received a WhatsApp message from a friend telling me to check the news. No sirens sounded, and the Color Red app remained silent, but Iran had launched a massive attack against Israel. I knew immediately that this was not an attack we could sleep through. We woke up my 11-year-old son and had him get dressed and sleep on the couch. The entire family gathered in the living room, fully dressed and with shoes nearby. We pulled out the go-bags and the medical kit and began to wait. The boys slept, but my wife and I waited. I had served in the IDF, been under fire, and experienced countless sirens. Nonetheless, I am not ashamed to say I was scared.
Several hundred drones were on their way, but it would take several hours to arrive. We had no choice but to settle in and wait for drones to rain down death on Israel. Then, reports of ICBMs began to appear. And drones from the Houthis in Yemen. And rockets in the south. And then we began to hear rockets to the west, much closer than Kiryat Shmona.
Finally, at 3:30 AM, I fell asleep on the floor in between my two sons. At 4:00, a siren woke me, and within a few seconds, the rockets began to explode nearby. There was no time to put on my shoes, let alone make it to the shelter. And the rockets got closer. Much closer. The enemy was walking them in. Katzrin is not a large town but the largest in the Golan. The region is full of army bases, but they were not being targeted. Whoever was firing knew where we were and was clearly aiming for a soft target.
The news reported 30 rockets falling around my city, and I believe it to be true. I felt every single one of those 30 rockets. I felt the shift from heavy booms to a more trebly explosion that lit up the nearby sky. I knew that it was almost close enough to blow out my windows.
The IAF is flying overhead non-stop today, and there are deep booms. They sound more like artillery than rockets, which I would find reassuring if I knew for sure.
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