This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
On June 17, Mark Labaton was sheltering in his apartment’s safe room after receiving a safety alert when an Iranian ballistic missile slammed into a parking lot half a mile away from his home in Herzliya, Israel.
“It was really close. You could feel the house shaking,” said Labaton, 16, on the day of the attack. “It was a moment of shock,” Labaton said, adding that it was the second time in his life that a missile landed so close. The first one came last October after an Iranian barrage fired at Israel.
“When the house starts trembling and you are all scared, afraid the next one will be the one to hit you, you’re just praying to God that it won’t be you,” said Labaton.
Though Labaton had “been getting used to the sirens around here since the war in Gaza,” the escalation in the Iran-Israel conflict earlier this month surprised him. When the Iran-Israel conflict first broke out, he felt “stressed” and “concerned” for his cousins in the military.
When Iran began retaliating for Israel’s attacks on its nuclear sites and other infrastructure, he “mostly” worried “about the bombs falling around” his home and of those of his peers in Iran. “I’ve been wondering how the kids in Tehran are managing, because if I’m so scared with an Iron Dome, I wonder how they’re feeling at night,” he said.
Labaton is one of the many Israeli teens whose lives have been upended first by the Israel-Hamas war and now by the hostilities between Iran and Israel. Before Tuesday’s ceasefire, these teens had been forced to spend long nights in bomb shelters as Iran fired waves of missiles and drones at Israeli population centers. While Israelis living in buildings built after the 1990 Gulf War have access to shelters within their houses, many do not, relying on public bomb shelters or staying with relatives during times of war.
The escalation extended the school year for a week for 7th to 10th graders, but the online classes they were taking were often interrupted by sirens and attacks.
Labaton, who only got three hours of sleep due to Iranian attacks, struggles to stay awake during Zoom sessions.
Matan, a 17-year-old whose family immigrated from Spain to Netanya two years ago, worried that the disruption of exams could have especially damaging effects on current high school seniors, whose exam results influence the units into which they are drafted in the Israel Defense Forces.
With school canceled for most upperclassmen, Matan spent his time hosting Zoom meetings for the youth movement for which he volunteers.
Matan asked that JTA use this name both so he could speak candidly and so he could emphasize his Israeli identity. His father, trying “desperately” to reach them, was stuck in Spain when Israel struck Iran. Matan, a Hebrew speaker “with an Israeli mindset,” translates Israeli press reports for his mother. He also explains the significance of things like the military operation’s Hebrew name, “Rising Lion,” a biblical reference that is also linked to a historical Iranian flag.
When the conflict with Iran began, Matan and his mother were worried and uncertain. Matan helped his mother organize their safe room, bringing in a bed and enough food to last 72 hours. “At night, the sirens started,” he said.
David Zaydman, left, and his family’s bomb shelter in Herzliya, Israel, June 23, 2025. (David Zaydman).
Matan said, recalling multiple sirens that night. In the morning, he and his mother “understood that that was our new reality.”
In the early morning of June 16, Matan learned that a ballistic missile had struck Haifa, where his brother lives. Unable to contact him, he feared the worst. He found out later that his brother was safe.
The war’s effect on his younger sibling shook David Zaydman, 16, of Herzliya. “When we were in the bomb shelter for the first bombing of the war,” his younger sister, 11, “was completely terrified, to a new level,” he said. “Her entire body was literally shaking through fear and that is not hyperbole. She was fully shaking.”
“Looking at her in that situation,” he said, “was probably the worst thing I’ve had to deal with in this entire war so far.”
For Zaydman, in Herzliya, 19 months of war have “desensitized” him, he said. “The fact” is “that me and most Israelis have literally gone through this so many times that it just doesn’t feel serious anymore.”
Rachel Schwartz, a 17-year-old from Ramat Magshimim in the Golan Heights, has also worried about her family. Her uncle is serving in the reserves; his brother, Amishar Ben David, was killed in Gaza last year, and Schwartz’s brother was just drafted into the IDF. Her cousins, lacking a bomb shelter, moved into her house, sleeping in her safe room.
Meanwhile, her youngest sibling, 5, began mimicking the sounds of the air-raid siren when playing with other children from the moshav. She tried to entertain the children, whose preschool closed because of the war, organizing activities for them and cooking. If the children are unhappy, she said, “What are soldiers getting killed for?”
Despite the challenges, Schwartz said it’s important to stay positive. “We need to remember it’s good and not speak just about what’s hard,” she said. She doesn’t want soldiers to die in vain.
Netanya’s Matan similarly feels confident in Israel’s success in both wars. “If the Iranian regime falls,” he said, “the world will be a better place; 80 million people will be free to do whatever they want.” Women will “be free to show their hair in public. We’ll be free to live a free life and a happier life and a better life. Azakot” — alerts and air-raid sirens — “will stop being a reality.”
As Matan’s conversation with the JTA ended, he received an alert. Matan hung up and, yet again, went to his bomb shelter.
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