There is a great expression in colloquial Hebrew that defies translation into other languages. It goes like this: “These are bedtime stories that we tell ourselves.” Though the image comes to mind of parents putting their children to bed and reading them an illustrated book, the expression has nothing to do with parenting and certainly not with children. Rather than evoking a warm family scene, it describes a reality in which those families, led to believe that a major threat has disappeared, instead find themselves putting their children to bed in bomb shelters.
Certainly, the most terrifying bedtime story we told ourselves was in the years before October 7. We repeated the same myth that Hamas was deterred, focused on developing Gaza, and had no intention of attacking. 1,200 Israelis were killed on October 7, soldiers and civilians, and 800 since then. But the storytelling didn’t end there. Following the brilliant pager and walkie-talkie operations, the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, and the IDF’s successful sweep of southern Lebanon in the fall of 2024, we told ourselves that Hezbollah was finished. Now we know how far from finished Hezbollah is. It is still capable of pounding northern and central Israel with hundreds of rockets. Had the story been even remotely true, the army would not be preparing as it is now for a major ground incursion into south Lebanon.
About Iran, in particular, there was no shortage of the stories we told ourselves. The regime’s leadership was cracking, their missile arsenals were almost exhausted, and the Iranian people were ready to rise up and reclaim their freedom. Not exactly true and, in some critical cases, not remotely true. Writing this article on the 16th day of the war, I had to run repeatedly to my safe room.
Though politicians may blame the generals and the General Staff of the government, no branch of Israel’s government has a monopoly over storytelling. Nor is the phenomenon new. Remember how Yasser Arafat, in signing the 1993 Oslo Accords, had definitively sworn off terror? Remember how the IDF’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 was going to transform that country into a pacified neighbor? And remember how the disengagement from Gaza in 2005 would usher in an era of Middle East peace!
Though these and other stories caused incalculable harm, one can hardly blame our leaders for telling them. Just like children who need to feel safely tucked into bed at night, people—and Israelis especially—need hope. But together with our army’s truly historic achievements, the most important outcome of this war must be the end of bedtime stories. Tonight, we can read them to our children in the bomb shelters, but we must never again allow them to put us, their parents, to sleep.
This article originally appeared in Hebrew in Ynet on March 17, 2026.
I had similar thoughts, without the inspiration of continual war and bomb shelter essays. The time I spent in Israel a very long time ago was peaceful, although my cousin in Nahariya showed me his gun hidden beneath his underwear and told me he had to go to work. Ge said if a terrorist came in, shoot him. I had never shot a gun then. It was disturbing to say the least.
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