Personal recollection of Israeli civil defense preparations during the 1991 Gulf War

The Israeli public’s concern over a possible Iraqi attack was growing by the day, in part because of the precautionary measures we’d taken. We had handed out gas masks to the whole country. Though I’d been concerned that might raise the prospect of a chemical attack, I still thought a chemical strike was highly unlikely. The government rightly decided that nor distributing the masks would betray a fundamental responsibility to the safety of our citizens. We’d also issued instructions about how to equip a room, usually the shelter included in nearly every Israeli home, as a cheder atum, or “sealed room” to keep gas from getting in. The Israeli media was full of speculation about the likely effects of a chemical attack. Many families had begun panic buying of food and other necessities to prepare for the possibility of days and nights in their sealed shelters. In my report for Dan, Misha and Shamir a few weeks before the war, I drew on systematic analysis by a team of experts in the Israeli air force and made my most specific estimate yet of the damage conventionally armed Scuds might cause. We had gone back into historical accounts of the closest equivalent: the Nazis’ use of V-1 and V-2 rockets against London in the Second World War. Given Saddam’s primary need to fight Americans, and the likelihood either they or we would take military action against the launchers, we concluded we’d be hit by roughly 40 missiles, and that, based on Britain’s wartime experience, up to 120 Israelis might lose their lives as a result. The first air-raid sirens wailed in Israel at about 2 a.m. on January 18, 1991, almost exactly 24 hours after the Americans began their bombing raids over Baghdad. I was home in Kochav Yair. Like other Israelis, we’d set up a sealed shelter. Though I felt a bit silly doing it, having assured the government Saddam was vanishingly unlikely to use chemical warheads, we woke up the kids and Nava took them inside. I put on my own gas mask. But when I ran out to my car, I removed my mask and put it on the passenger’s seat before heading in to the kirya. I wanted to get there quickly enough so that the bor, the underground command bunker, wouldn’t have to reopened when I arrived. I took a short-cut, through the West Bank town of Qalqilya. That was, to put it mildly, stupid. Although the intifada had become steadily less intense during the build-up to the war, it wasn’t completely over. Within seconds, my black sedan was being 234 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011705