The Gulf War and Purim 1991: An oral history

In 1991, the State of Israel was besieged by missiles from Iraq. The Gulf War started in August 1990 when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm saw the United States lead a coalition of countries against Iraq. In January 1991, Iraq began shooting missiles into Israel. The war ended on the morning of February 28, 1991, which corresponded to the 14th of Adar, 5751 – Purim.

The [Florida daily] Sun Sentinel reported in 1991 that popular Purim costumes included US general Norman Schwarzkopf and Israel Defense Force spokesman brig.-gen. Nachman Shai, who had been a fixture on Israeli television and radio during the war.

“Thousands of years ago something happened in that part of the world, that region, and somehow history is repeating itself and maybe we should have another reason to celebrate,” Shai was quoted as saying.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported about a toy store selling IDF uniform costumes with a pair of glasses and a name tag reading “Nachman Shai, Army Spokesman.” It also noted bakeries selling traditional Purim hamentaschen called “Saddamtashen.”

Prime minister Yitzhak Shamir was quoted as stating, “On the festival of Purim, which commemorates the downfall of an ancient enemy who sought to destroy the Jewish people, comes the defeat of a modern enemy who sought to destroy us and other nations.”

A Jerusalem Post editorial by Michael Freund records the following memory:

“After hearing the megillah reading in the morning, I boarded a bus in Jerusalem with some friends from yeshiva… one of my pals was lugging around a guitar, which he promptly removed from its case, and then we all broke into song on the packed bus: ‘When Adar enters, we increase joy.’

“Our fellow passengers, young and old, religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, all joined in… if I had any doubts beforehand, that memorable Purim solidified my determination to make aliyah.”

This year, The [Jerusalem Post] Magazine reached out to people to share their experiences about the war and Purim. (Locations are at the time of the Gulf War.)

Memories of Purim from the Gulf War

Reb Yankela Shemesh

Moshav Mevo Modi’im

I remember that on Purim we got the message [the war was over]. The windows were closed up with plastic and tape so that no gas could get in. We were afraid that Saddam Hussein was going to gas everybody.

So they had everybody stay in their rooms, and you had to put plastic on all your windows, and tape the plastic to the windows so that if the bomb would fall and the gases would spread, it wouldn’t go into your house. And the bombs were coming into Israel constantly. We heard the number of explosions not too far away from the moshav, but in an open area.

The feeling was that this was something biblical happening. All of a sudden it ended, like right out of the Purim story. And they said, ‘Okay, take down the plastic.’ And everybody just started ripping all the plastic off their windows. No more bombs falling. And it was Purim.

Haim Roman

Karmiel

People were worried that Iraq would send over biological missiles. That’s why we had gas masks and why we weren’t necessarily trying to get to the most reinforced places. In the end, all the missiles were just plain exploding Scuds. I shaved my beard, even though I’m Orthodox and don’t use a razor. But I did that time for the gas mask. I was annoyed with one rabbi who did not shave his beard, but he explained that not everyone thought there were actually going to be chemical missiles – and in the end, they turned out to be right.

I had a good friend, who today lives in Israel and is Jewish and very Zionist. He was an employee of the American government. When the war started, the Americans told all employees they had to leave immediately. It was a Shabbat and my friend was shomer [an observer of] Shabbat, but he left because it was pikuach nefesh [a matter of life and death] – and because there wasn’t that much time to think about it.

I lived in Karmiel in the North during the first Gulf War. At the time, I was married and had a baby daughter. During one of the first sirens, my wife and I put on our masks. We put our baby into a special box called a MAMAT [transparent gas-proof baby carrier]. She did not cry in the box; she did not cry during the siren. After we got the all-clear, my wife and I took our masks off. And then she started bawling. I didn’t realize I was that ugly.

Mordechai Fisher

Beersheba

I remember I had just finished high school. There were sirens: up and down sirens. You had to go into the heder atum, the sealed room. You had to seal the windows because they thought there would be biological missiles from Saddam Hussein. My father was a doctor at Soroka at the time, and he would wake up at 5 or 6 a.m. and ride on his bike to the hospital while there were sirens going on.

I remember being in the sealed room with my stepmother and the dog. We had to put on our gas masks. There was no gas mask for the dog, so we hoped for the best. We just stayed there until they told us we could leave the rooms.

Raz TelChai

Kibbutz Revivim

I originally made aliyah right before the Gulf War had started. Interesting times. This was also around the time of the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. I was a volunteer, and we were meeting them at the airport and handing out food packages with gas masks.

I was in ulpan to learn Hebrew down south in Kibbutz Revivim in the Negev – the desert. We had already been preparing with our windows taped up and gas masks being handed out. I was in the dining room on the phone with a family member from the United States. She asked, ‘Why aren’t you running to your bunker?’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘I’m watching CNN, and you’re getting bombed.’ So that’s how I found out that we were in the middle of a war. Only four rockets came in our proximity during that whole period, so we were kind of immune to it.

We went to a seminar from the Negev to the Tel Aviv area. The sirens started going off, and all the people from the cities were running for cover. But we’re from the Negev. We were kind of laid back. So we went up on the roof and cracked open some beers and watched the Patriot missiles knock the rockets down. And that was my introduction to Israel.

Gidon Ariel

Jerusalem

We were three single guys. Everybody was stressed out. I said, ‘This is a great time to have a party because anybody who’s going to be stressed out about parties won’t come, and anybody who’s cool about it will come and have a great time.’ I had a small apartment in Katamon; we stuffed about 30 to 40 people there. 

And then toward the end of the party, there was a siren. So everybody had to grab their masks and run into my room, which was the safe room. It was really tight in there. When the time was up, everybody said, ‘Okay, I guess it’s the end of the party.’ People really complimented me that I made a party in the middle of the Gulf War.

Toward the end of the war I was in miluim, reserve duty. This was before the Oslo Accords, and I was in the Gaza Strip and in charge all by myself of guarding a small city. It was me facing this entire city on a little mountain. And then all of a sudden I could see the rockets coming in from Iraq and being hit [by the Patriot missile interceptors]. I thought that was pretty cool.

Before that, in reserves we were doing practice in a basic training base. There was an alarm, and the basic training guys all ran into the safe space with their masks. We didn’t even have our masks: We left them in our cars. The commanding officer of the basic training unit said, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t come in here because this is just for my basic training unit.’ So all of us miluimnikim [reservists] just sat around. It was funny – we just remember the funny parts. And it was Purim when it ended, so that was the funniest part of all.

Moti Leiberman

Kedumim

I remember all the equipment we were given, such as masks and incubators for babies, and we went to measure the masks to see if they fit. I strongly remember the smell of the rubber – I still remember it to this day. The mask had a filter at the end. The incubators were like a tent, like a plastic see-through thing where you put the baby inside and closed it.

We received instructions on how to seal the rooms. Today it’s mandatory for every builder to construct a safe room in every building, but back then we didn’t have it. So they told us to seal the door with tape as much as we could to avoid gas coming inside the room.

My aunt and uncle came to my parents’ house because we lived in the Samaria area, which was not targeted like the center, Tel Aviv, and the Gush Dan area. So they came to us, and I remember we were all in the storage room. And we saw my parents and my uncle standing by the window and watching the rockets going down into Gush Dan.

My brother was born during that time. My mother had to go to the hospital in Kfar Saba to deliver him.

Back then, a popular Purim costume was Saddam Hussein. Many Purim costumes related to the Gulf War.

Rabbi Dov Lipman

Jerusalem

I was studying in a Jerusalem yeshiva in 1990. My yeshiva had 120 students. Seventy returned home because of the war; fifty of us stayed. I was named to be the head of the sealed room on my floor in the dormitory, which meant that every time a siren went off, I was in charge of making sure that everyone got to our floor, and then I sealed up the floor.

There was one floor in the dormitory that we sealed completely. We had tape all over our windows, we had gas masks. And in the middle of the night, we’d have to run and put on the gas masks when the siren went off. As someone who grew up in the United States, I had never experienced anything like this before. I remember one night, we suddenly started hearing these booms during the siren. It turned out they were Patriot missiles from the United States that were shooting down the missiles from Saddam Hussein.

It was definitely a time filled with prayer and a time where I felt a great identity and connection with the people of Israel.

We didn’t know what was going to happen on Purim. At a certain point, we thought that there was going to be no Purim celebration, and then all of a sudden the war came to an end right before Purim. Ba’yamim ha’heim b’zman hazeh” – ‘in those days in this time’ as we say in the prayers.

I remember the joyful feeling of running to pull off the tape from the windows and putting away the gas masks – and just feeling so liberated and so free, and truly feeling a redemption of the Jewish people as Purim is supposed to be.

And we had a full Purim celebration with dancing and singing and freedom. It was the greatest feeling to be able to connect to what our ancestors experienced in the time of Purim – where out of nowhere, all of a sudden, v’nahafoch hu [everything turned around] and they become free from Haman’s decree. We became free from Saddam Hussein’s decree, and we were able to truly give thanks to God for this miraculous experience.

It was a great celebration of redemption and connection and something that I’ll never forget. 