On Rosh Hashana, many Israelis longed for a return to normalcy after a year of escalating wars for the country.
Traditionally, Jews around the world usher in the new year, known as Rosh Hashana, by dipping apples in honey in the hope of sweet times ahead, but that celebration was muted among many Israelis who gathered for the holiday on Wednesday evening amid escalating conflicts along the country’s borders and beyond.
A day after a wave of missiles from Iran on Israel forced people into bomb shelters and safe rooms and set the Middle East further on edge, and just hours before the holiday began at sunset, Israelis learned that eight soldiers were killed on Wednesday in fighting with Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, a heavy daily toll.
Israel’s expanding war hung over the holiday, making many long for their old routines. “We just want a normal year,” said Sigalit Orr, a tech consultant who lives in Hod Hasharon, a densely populated Tel Aviv suburb where more than 100 homes were damaged by Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued a short, grim video message just before the holiday began, expressing his condolences to the families of the fallen Israeli soldiers, but also warning that the conflict was far from over. “We are in the middle of a tough war against Iran’s axis of evil, which seeks to destroy us,” he said. “This will not happen.”
On Tuesday night, Iran launched about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in what it said was retaliation for assassinations of top leaders of its proxy groups, including those of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in July, widely attributed to Israel, and of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike near Beirut on Friday.
Addressing the nation, Mr. Netanyahu vowed that Israel would return about 70 living hostages still being held in Gaza nearly a year after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that sparked a devastating war in the enclave. He also promised to return the more than 60,000 residents of northern Israel displaced from their homes after Hezbollah, in solidarity with Hamas, began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, sparking what has become another war.
