Israelis take shelter as Iran and Hezbollah launch attacks: 'Here, the wars don't end'

0:00Well, since its joint attack with the U.S. on Saturday, Israel has faced a wave of drone and missile attacks from Iran, and has also come under fire from Iranian proxy Hezbollah and Lebanon. Producer Carl Bostik spoke with Israelis in Tel Aviv today, and Nick Schifrin brings us their stories. Today in Tel Aviv, Shakha Zaevi and her daughter's neighborhood park is no longer a safe haven. Behind them, their apartment, windows, blackened, and gutted by an Iranian missile. Our house got hit, the window was in the kids' room, fell. Today is the first day that she and one and a half year old guy had returned since last weekend's attack, so she hugged her daughter just a little tighter. It's really sad. Really sad. I don't know what we're going to do. Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel. The deadly fireworks and the sirens are constant. Toddler's understand and inherit their parents' fear.

1:03So Zaevi tried to turn her daughter's frown upside down. So every time there is a siren going on, she would start repeating it. We were trying to do it at home with smiles and musical kind of way. So she won't be scared. So we would run through the shelter, laughing and singing, trying to make it more. Not as scary. Gaia at one and a half years old knows when it's time to go to the shelter. The city is filled with broken windows. Some cleaned up by 18-year-old Israeli-American Ron Schifroni. He's a volunteer who'd delayed college in the States after growing up here in Israel. We kind of grew up on this mentality in Israel where we always got to help each other, no matter what happens, and like we're ready for every scenario. If any, whether it's a rocket or October 7th, we're just all we grow up is the values of going and helping out each other. He cleans up inside people's damaged apartments.

2:03He wants to serve in the military, but didn't think he'd end up in the middle of war in the country of his birth. It's really devastating that, I mean, it's my home country, it's my home after all. So I really, I want to leave him peace. But Israel is not at peace, and for every damaged house is a displaced family. Trying to turn a hotel into a makeshift home, Shannin Roth greets her grandmother Dorika Israeli. 84-year-old Israeli is older than the state of Israel, but she knows this is a different type of war. Here the wars don't end, and this war is a bit harder than the previous ones. Roth has translated for PBS NewsHour and was translating for her grandmother when interrupted by this city's shattering soundtrack. Yeah, we need to go. This is their routine made normal since October the 7th. They walk away to a nearby shelter and to an uncertain future.

3:06The sirens are all to routine outside Shiba Hospital. As is outgoing missile defense, hunting incoming Iranian missiles. And in these times of war, this passageway doesn't only lead to a shelter, because three stories down through reinforced doors is a fully functioning hospital that has 2,000 beds and three operating rooms and has operated almost constantly since last summer's war with Iran. Almost all the activity of Shiba and other hospitals went now underground due to the different ammunition that we are getting from Iran. Dr. Yoel Har Evan is a vice president at this hospital with thousands of visitors every day, and staff that must cope with their own displacements and find their own moments of peace. We don't have time to play. We need to be ready within a few hours and start moving our patient from the upper floors to the basements. That shift also apparent in Dizengoff, the city's largest mall

4:09where behind the reinforced door four floors down is now the city's largest shelter. 4,000 people rushed here just last night, including 12-year-old Eden, 10-year-old Lev, and their father, Jeffrey Lubota. We do actually live not far from our bomb shelter, but it means no sleep through the night. Up all the time running outside to the bomb shelter and it's crowded, cramped, lots of dogs. So here we can just remain, sleep through the night, have space, and during the day there's a mall above us, little shopping, little food collecting, a little humor helps, and the kids are happy, they don't have to go to school. But for many here, beneath that facade is pain. I think as a nation, we've got collective trauma. I think it's like something that's kind of on the whole we all have. Sienna, who declined to give her last name, admits she doesn't know when she will feel safe again, living above ground. Yeah, I'm processing the possibility. I might be a four week or two, I might be a four few months.

5:10Who knows, like how time goes on. She and everyone here try to bring some color to the concrete. We learn how to get on with it, but this is not how every day should look. We're just trying to find the best in an absolutely horrendous situation. The end of the day, people are dying, people's homes are getting destroyed. And that means it is not easy as the country wages war. Some of its residents are driven underground. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Nick Schifrin.