During the festival of Chanukah this year, a special candle-lighting ceremony took place at a Ramat Gan elementary school devastated by a Houthi ballistic missile attack in December.

The mayor of Ramat Gan, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, whose daughter is a student at the elementary school, said during the Chanukah ceremony that the initial devastation of the school was difficult to see. 

“I arrived in my pajamas after 2:36 in the morning to find out what actually happened,” Mr. Shama-Hacohen said during the ceremony held at the site of the school on the first night of the Chanukah holiday. “There was dust in the air from the explosion, shrapnel, and pieces of concrete everywhere. People were trying to figure out how to save the animals in the school’s petting zoo.” 

“The children of this school are heroes. Since the attack, I have been checking in on all the students, from first to eighth grade, to see how they are doing in their new classes,” the mayor said of the 512 students who have temporarily relocated to other schools in the area.

“It is unpleasant to have your home destroyed. This school was a second home. But there will be a better home, a better school built here in the future,” he promised.  

The Houthi rebels, who control northwestern Yemen, have been targeting Israel with long-range ballistic missiles and drones since October 7, 2023, following the Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis. The main part of the multi-story school building at Ramat Efal, a neighborhood of Ramat Gan, collapsed on December 19 after a Houthi rocket warhead struck the empty building in the middle of night. The Ramat Gan municipality noted that the school’s bomb shelter remained intact.  

According to the IDF, the Iranian-backed Houthis have fired about 400 ballistic missiles and explosive-laden drones at Israel, the majority of which have been intercepted. The past month has seen a rise in Houthi missiles targeting one of Israel’s most densely populated regions, the Tel Aviv district. 

In December alone, the Houthis have fired at least ten ballistic missiles and drones at the Jewish state, of which three were not intercepted by Israel’s defense systems and hit civilian areas, including a playground and residential building. No casualties were reported. 

Millions of Israelis have been forced to adapt to an almost daily and nightly routine of sirens and missiles across cities in central Israel.

A married mother of four children who lives close to the devastated elementary school, Shireen Haghighat Kfir, said she finds herself jumping up at any kind of loud noise. “We’ve been experiencing sirens and explosions almost every night or in the early hours of the morning, usually around 2 or 3 a.m. It’s hard for the kids to fall back asleep after the siren,” she said.  

Her children have been sleeping in the family’s bomb shelter for a while now. “It’s much safer this way,” the mother explained. 

The elementary school is about five minutes by car from Ms. Kfir’s apartment and on the night it was hit she said she heard a large explosion. “It felt like everything shook,” she said. “It was very scary. We pressed against the bombshelter’s wall opposite of the window, just hoping for the best.”

The Kfir family lives on the top floor of a high-rise apartment building. “It just feels that we are that much more exposed to the rockets, being on the top floor,” she said. 

“We are so lucky that the attack on the school happened at night and not during the day,” Ms. Kfir continued. “There are apartment buildings in the neighborhood, and a hospital nearby.”

“I don’t know how people in cities like Sderot lived this way for years,” she commented. “These missiles are traumatizing my kids and myself.”

Others, like an alumna of the Ramat Efal Elementary School, Hila Biton, are in shock from the attack. “I just couldn’t believe that this wonderful school could be destroyed,” she told The New York Sun. “I couldn’t even recognize the school that my brothers and I once attended. It was all debris.”  

“I remembered how we believed as children learning in this school that there would one day be peace in the Middle East,” she said. “We had such high hopes then.”

Yet for Shireen Haghighat Kfir, whose parents immigrated to Israel from Iran just before the Iranian Revolution, the miracles are evident to her despite the recent Houthi attacks.

“I look at the dreidel and read the Hebrew letters for ‘a great miracle happened here.’ We are still experiencing these great miracles in Israel more than 2,000 years later,” she said. 

“Even with the sirens and missile attacks, we held a Chanukah party for our extended family this week. Just being able to continue with our routine is a miracle. And this is all thanks to our brave IDF soldiers, who are just like the Maccabee warriors of Hanukkah, fighting to protect us.” 

Israel has responded to the Houthis by attacking infrastructure used by the rebel group in the Yemen capital of Sanaa as well as power stations and ports. 

In addition to attacks on Israel, the Houthis have been frequently targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea, including vessels owned by America, Britain, and other countries. Many of the attacked vessels contain food, such as grain and corn headed to impoverished countries like Sudan, Ethiopia, and Yemen itself.