There’s a particular Israeli soundscape to the weeks before Purim: the dry pop of firecrackers in alleyways, the sharper concussive thud of backyard “M-80s,” the whistling sound of bottle rockets - and the reflexive flinch - or worse - they still provoke in anyone who’s worn a uniform or lived near someone who has.
A new Israeli PSA reframes that sound. Ominously.
In it, a buyer approaches a sketchy-looking dealer sitting at a makeshift stall in an alleyway selling “holiday” fireworks. Boxes are stacked, bright and playful, but hidden beneath a blanket. Revealing his wares, the dealer begins his pitch, naming the products. But the names are not brands. They are named after soldiers — in this case, real IDF veterans (St.-Sgt. Shachar Mizrachi, Lt. Yarden Ashkenazi) still enduring post-traumatic stress after Gaza combat.
As he gestures to different boxes, the dealer cites where they were “tested out”: Shuja’iyya in the north, not far from Israeli towns that came under invasion and intense rocket fire by Hamas terrorists in the coastal enclave; Khan Yunis, along the Egyptian border. Places Israelis know not as abstractions in a distant news report but as lived-in, still-reverberating rooms in the national memory where the fighting was especially close and brutal, and losses heavy.
The buyer’s interest drains away. The interest collapses. What had been framed as innocent Purim mischief now reads as something else entirely: traumatic reenactment.
The brilliance of the PSA is its restraint. No gore, no sermon, no scolding voiceover. Just the unbearable equivalence: recreational explosions and neurological injury sharing the same trigger.
“When you ‘set them off,’ you’re setting us off, too.”
