In Tel Aviv, the sky does not sleep. It writhes above heads like an old serpent preparing to strike. Sirens wail, but they offer no safety, no comfort. The city, once proud of its modernity—its towers piercing the clouds, its so-called impenetrable Iron Dome—now gasps every minute, trembling like a child who has lost his mother beneath the rubble. How easily a "smart city" becomes a heap of panic when a new, unfamiliar sound roars in its skies.

Running to shelters has become a national sport. Eyes shut only to be haunted by nightmares in Farsi. The laughter of Gaza’s children, once silenced by gunpowder, now returns to knock on Tel Aviv’s doors in the form of missiles. Oh, the irony of justice when it arrives late! Tel Aviv, which celebrated for years atop the corpses of children, now pleads for a “humanitarian pause” with a voice shaking from shock.

Where does a city flee when it believes itself invincible? Every square meter is threatened; even the sea feels like an enemy ready to spit mines. Tel Aviv tries to outsmart fear, smiling through news broadcasts with an expression dried of meaning, while behind the cameras, eyes flicker with a primal terror they’ve never known. Perhaps now it feels a sting—just a sting—of the hellfire it poured so freely over Gaza.

Oh, Tel Aviv, if Tehran’s rockets have jolted you from your rosy dream, remember: Gaza has no Iron Dome, no concrete shelters—only cardboard homes and a faith that cannot be bombed. The terror that visits you today is nothing but a delayed invoice, a drop in the flood you unleashed on Gaza for years. And perhaps, just perhaps, you are beginning to learn that blood is not water… even if it’s spilled off-screen, far from Western eyes.