Yael Levontin says Iran’s attack on Israel Tuesday is unfortunately nothing new to Israelis.
“It’s still ongoing,” Levontin said. “It just feels very unnerving.”
Levontin was born and raised in Israel and currently lives just outside of Jerusalem. Along with the Jewish National Fund USA, she and her team are working to support the needs of the students of Alexander Muss High School in Israel, which was founded by the South Florida community.
She and her family have lived on edge for months. On Tuesday, she took out her phone and recorded the missiles flying over her home.
“It was nonstop, just an hour of nonstop sirens then you hear the boom and the room shakes a little bit,” Levontin said. “The noise is very strong, the boom you hear it, you hear the interceptions, the explosions.”
Because it was not the first time, she and her family knew what to do.
“Immediately I get my kids, we go upstairs to our safe room, close the door and we’re just waiting,” Levontin said.
The State Department says Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel Tuesday. Israel says its air defenses took out most of the incoming missiles. The U.S. also helped shoot them down. The Israeli military says it wasn’t aware of anyone dying from the attack, but there was damage, including an elementary school that was hit during the strike.
Iran carried out its attack after Israel invaded Lebanon this week and launched an airstrike that killed the leader of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
Back in April, Levontin also lived through Iran’s retaliatory attack against Israel. She says Tuesday’s strike was even bigger.
“The amount of rockets, you look up and it’s blowing up all over the place,” Levontin said.
Levontin, like so many others in Israel, isn’t sure what the future holds, but she’s trying to remain hopeful.
“I do know at the end of the day, good will beat out evil,” Levontin said.
On Tuesday, the Consulate General of Israel in Miami held a news conference to address the attack.
“It’s time that Iran is held accountable not only based on the damage that has been done because we managed to defend ourselves but what they’ve done for the possibility of inflicting much greater damage,” Maor Elbaz-Starinsky said. “This attack is only the last one of a long range of attacks out of six or seven that we’ve been dealing with the last year.”
