Selfies and humour keep Israelis smiling

Stephen Epstein with his wife Alison and their daughters.

The first post to the Facebook group Bomb Shelter Selfies, on July 8, was a picture of Stephen Epstein, a former Torontonian who now lives in Rehovot, Israel, his wife and daughters. The photo was shot moments after the Iron Dome had intercepted and neutralized a rocket aimed at Israeli civilians by Hamas. 

Set against the drab background of their apartment building’s bomb bunker, the family looked straight into the camera and smiled. As Epstein wrote last month in The CJN: “Relieved to be OK [after the rocket attack], I took a ‘selfie’ photo to let friends and family know that we were safe and sound.”

Bomb Shelter Selfies is indicative of the manner in which Israelis have reacted to the 3,356 rockets fired from Gaza this summer. Safety has been paramount, of course, but Israelis recognized the need to retain their sanity at the same time. With creativity and humour, they managed to brighten the dark days and hold on to some semblance of normality amid Hamas’ terror campaign.

In the weeks since Epstein’s original post, nearly 2,000 Facebook users have joined the Bomb Shelter Selfies group, posting their own images from bunkers across Israel and offering words of strength and advice to each other. In the process, the selfie, a pictorial symbol of the social media generation’s most frivolous instincts, attained new significance. 

Just about every person in every picture is smiling, many of them broadly, some of them even laughing. Wherever they may be waiting for a signal that it’s safe to go outside again – whether they’re alone, flanked by family, neighbours and co-workers, or huddled with a bunch of complete strangers – it’s clear the subjects of these pictures are trying to make the best of a terrible situation. Each image is a reminder that Israelis, and indeed all Jews, are in this together. 

Of course, that doesn’t negate the tension embroiling Israel – and so long as Hamas rules Gaza, it’s hard to see how the uneasiness might dissipate, ceasefire or not. But Israelis are finding ways to channel their fears into laughs. A comedy trio called Ritalin Kids is leading the way with a viral video called Did you hear that? in which Israelis mistake everyday noises – from a motorcycle to a lawnmower to a whistling kettle, and even the late Whitney Houston – for air raid sirens and scramble for cover.

Did you hear that? is undeniably funny, but the humour can’t mask the terror – in fact, it relies specifically on the viewer’s familiarity with the ordeal Israelis are fighting through right now. In so doing, the video accomplishes the complex feat of depicting Israel’s collective anxiety and joking about it at the same time. Did you hear that? is a documentary of fear, and a blueprint for how to counter that fear.

Smiling selfies and slapstick humour can’t knock a rocket aimed at civilians out of the sky, nor can they root out Hamas fighters or dismantle terrorist tunnels. But they are helping to keep Israelis smiling during this difficult conflict. And considering the terror of these last weeks and the uncertainty that lies ahead, that’s no small feat