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Well, since its joint attack with the U.S. on Saturday, Israel has faced a wave of
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drone and missile attacks from Iran, and has also come under fire from Iranian proxy
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Hezbollah and Lebanon.
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Producer Carl Bostik spoke with Israelis in Tel Aviv today, and Nick Schifrin brings
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Today in Tel Aviv, Shakha Zaevi and her daughter's neighborhood park is no longer a safe haven.
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Behind them, their apartment, windows, blackened, and gutted by an Iranian missile.
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Our house got hit, the window was in the kids' room, fell.
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Today is the first day that she and one and a half year old guy had returned since last
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weekend's attack, so she hugged her daughter just a little tighter.
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I don't know what we're going to do.
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Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel.
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The deadly fireworks and the sirens are constant.
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Toddler's understand and inherit their parents' fear.
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So Zaevi tried to turn her daughter's frown upside down.
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So every time there is a siren going on, she would start repeating it.
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We were trying to do it at home with smiles and musical kind of way.
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So she won't be scared.
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So we would run through the shelter, laughing and singing, trying to make it more.
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Gaia at one and a half years old knows when it's time to go to the shelter.
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The city is filled with broken windows.
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Some cleaned up by 18-year-old Israeli-American Ron Schifroni.
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He's a volunteer who'd delayed college in the States after growing up here in Israel.
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We kind of grew up on this mentality in Israel where we always got to help each other,
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no matter what happens, and like we're ready for every scenario.
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If any, whether it's a rocket or October 7th, we're just all we grow up
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is the values of going and helping out each other.
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He cleans up inside people's damaged apartments.
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He wants to serve in the military, but didn't think he'd end up in the middle of war
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in the country of his birth.
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It's really devastating that, I mean, it's my home country, it's my home after all.
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So I really, I want to leave him peace.
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But Israel is not at peace, and for every damaged house is a displaced family.
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Trying to turn a hotel into a makeshift home,
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Shannin Roth greets her grandmother Dorika Israeli.
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84-year-old Israeli is older than the state of Israel,
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but she knows this is a different type of war.
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Here the wars don't end, and this war is a bit harder than the previous ones.
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Roth has translated for PBS NewsHour and was translating for her grandmother
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when interrupted by this city's shattering soundtrack.
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Yeah, we need to go.
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This is their routine made normal since October the 7th.
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They walk away to a nearby shelter and to an uncertain future.
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The sirens are all to routine outside Shiba Hospital.
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As is outgoing missile defense,
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hunting incoming Iranian missiles.
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And in these times of war, this passageway doesn't only lead to a shelter,
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because three stories down through reinforced doors
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is a fully functioning hospital that has 2,000 beds and three operating rooms
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and has operated almost constantly since last summer's war with Iran.
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Almost all the activity of Shiba and other hospitals went now underground
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due to the different ammunition that we are getting from Iran.
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Dr. Yoel Har Evan is a vice president at this hospital
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with thousands of visitors every day,
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and staff that must cope with their own displacements
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and find their own moments of peace.
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We don't have time to play.
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We need to be ready within a few hours and start moving our patient
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from the upper floors to the basements.
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That shift also apparent in Dizengoff, the city's largest mall
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where behind the reinforced door four floors down
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is now the city's largest shelter.
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4,000 people rushed here just last night,
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including 12-year-old Eden, 10-year-old Lev,
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and their father, Jeffrey Lubota.
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We do actually live not far from our bomb shelter,
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but it means no sleep through the night.
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Up all the time running outside to the bomb shelter
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and it's crowded, cramped, lots of dogs.
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So here we can just remain, sleep through the night,
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have space, and during the day there's a mall above us,
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little shopping, little food collecting,
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a little humor helps, and the kids are happy,
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they don't have to go to school.
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But for many here, beneath that facade is pain.
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I think as a nation, we've got collective trauma.
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I think it's like something that's kind of on the whole we all have.
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Sienna, who declined to give her last name,
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admits she doesn't know when she will feel safe again,
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living above ground.
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Yeah, I'm processing the possibility.
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I might be a four week or two, I might be a four few months.
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Who knows, like how time goes on.
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She and everyone here try to bring some color to the concrete.
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We learn how to get on with it,
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but this is not how every day should look.
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We're just trying to find the best in an absolutely horrendous situation.
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The end of the day, people are dying,
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people's homes are getting destroyed.
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And that means it is not easy as the country wages war.
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Some of its residents are driven underground.
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For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Nick Schifrin.