Subscribe to Naomi's blog and receive a notification every time Naomi posts a new article.Click to Subscribe

GAZA WAR DIARY: 16 JUNE 2024

By 11 comments

To live in Israel today, June 16, 2024, is to open your Facebook account and to see post after post of beautiful young people, young couples, parents, children, grandmothers and grandfathers and to realize that they are all part of the October 7 Memorial by Alex Plutser.

To live in Israel today, is to go to sleep with the news that ten more soldiers have been killed in their heroic and determined fight to destroy the terrorist organization Hamas, and to look at their faces, read the names of their home towns, and feel your heart ache for their families without being able to do anything about it. It means reminding yourself, again and again, that to surrender means more October 7 massacres, and that these ten soldiers gave their lives so that thousands of Jewish babies would not be burnt alive, thousands of young Jewish girls would not be raped and mutilated, thousands of old people would not be kidnapped and slaughtered. It is to remember how during the Holocaust, we were not killed by enemy weapons as we sat inside armored vehicles, but how millions, weaponless, were rounded up and shot by the side of ditches, buried alive, gassed, and cremated.

To live in Israel, is to hear the words of Hamas leaders as they gloat at how victory is near because look at how the Israeli government is falling apart, and how there are protests in the streets and to know that next week the leaders of Israel’s Left will be confirming his words, protesting against our government, urging a shameful surrender. It is to know that the leaders of these protests demanding immediate elections, cannot hope to be voted into power because they do not represent a majority of Israelis; that they are the same people who supported dragging Israelis form their homes in Gaza in the Disengagement; rallied behind Rabin and Peres to sign the delusional Oslo Accords that empowered terrorist Yasir Arafat, and put Nasrallah in place with their insistence on a premature retreat from Lebanon. They are the same people who tore the country apart over judicial issues, convincing Hamas we were weak enough to destroy on October 7. To live in Israel is to know that if they have their way, Hamas will be right and the country will be destroyed, and all of us slaughtered and exiled. And yet, as a democracy, we must let them march and shout and express their idiotic, defeatist dogma in hope of accomplishing yet another disastrous mistake.

To live in Israel is to watch videos of children ten minutes away in Tulkarm training to kill Jews. It is to watch marches in Jenin where the marchers say: “If you have a gun to shoot at wedding celebrations, take it out and kill a Jew, or give it to Hamas.”

To live in Israel is to watch propaganda videos from Hezbollah promising to do to the people of the Galilee what was done to the people in the Gaza Envelope.

But also, it is to remember the words of Yonatan Netanyahu, who said “I would rather live here with ongoing fighting than be part of a wandering Jewish people… because I have zero intention of telling my grandchild of a Jewish state that once existed in the 20th century as a short, passing episode in a millennia of wandering Jews. I would rather hold on with all my might.”

It is to remember the words of Golda Meir, who said: “We refuse, absolutely, to be the only people in the world which consents to having its fate decided by others.” “You cannot negotiate peace with someone who has come to kill you.” And “This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It is ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.”

I am so sorry it is our young people who we must send out with arms to defend us. I would so much rather send them off on trips to climb mountains in Peru and the Himalayas; to sit and study in the universities and yeshivot. I wish I could trade my used, old life for their new, young ones. But I will never forget that it is their sacrifices that make my life possible here, for me and my children and grandchildren. They have made it possible for us to create a country filled with the best values, with creative, intelligent, hardworking people who have with sweat and tears built up a beautiful place to live, and work, and raise families.

If only our enemies had some other reason to live than their hatred. If only they had some other ideal rather than martrydom and death for themselves and their children. If only they were filled instead with love for their families and their wives and children. But they are brainwashed advocates of a sick religion and a false prophet who has brought only misery to his followers, and to all those who dare to refuse to succumb to its meaningless, deranged, distorted view of the world and mankind.

Hamas spokesman Abaida tells CNN that Hamas has no idea how many Israeli hostages are still alive, because they were kidnapped not only by Hamas operatives, but by ordinary Gazans, the “innocents” that the deranged world insists we feed and shelter; people who took our women and children, our male and female soldiers, and tortured them and killed most of them. And even though we know most of our hostages are probably dead, this war will go on until every, single one is either rescued, accounted for, or avenged. I would be willing to give my life for that, and so, I know would most of the people who live in this country, perhaps even those fools out marching to force us to surrender.

Spread the word. Share this post!

11 comments on “GAZA WAR DIARY: 16 JUNE 2024”

  1. Andy

    “If only our enemies had some other reason to live than their hatred. If only they had some other ideal rather than martrydom and death for themselves and their children. If only they were filled instead with love for their families and their wives and children. But they are brainwashed advocates of a sick religion and a false prophet who has brought only misery to his followers, and to all those who dare to refuse to succumb to its meaningless, deranged, distorted view of the world and mankind.” – Naomi.

    It is a little-known historical fact that for the best part of three hundred years, [Islamic] corsairs sailing from ports on the Barbary Coast preyed upon civilians living along the Mediterranean coastline, attacked cargo boats from non-Islamic nations, carrying their crews off into slavery, and as we shall see, carried out devastating attacks on towns as far away as Baltimore in Ireland and Grindavik, Lón and Djúpivogur in Iceland. [. . .]

    The corsairs did not limit their attacks to boats from countries that lay east of the Atlantic. American boats fell victim to these privateers from the Barbary states too. In July 1785, the Dauphin was sailing off the coast of Portugal when she was approached by another vessel. The unsuspecting American skipper, Richard O’Brien, allowed the foreign vessel to get too close to his own, and before the crew knew what was happening, an armed raiding party was coming aboard. The attackers of the Dauphin turned out to be privateers, sailing on behalf of the Barbary state of Algiers. O’Brien and his crew were taken back to North Africa and thrown in a slave pen. Together with the crew of another American ship, the Maria, they were forced to break rocks, then drag massive sleds containing the pieces down to the harbour where the rocks and rubble were used to construct a new breakwater. Many of these Americans would die as slaves – worked to death under the heat of the North African sun. ​

    In March 1876, the two men who would become the second and third Presidents of the United States, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, met together in London. Adams was at that time serving his government as the first American ambassador to Great Britain, and Jefferson was acting as minister to the government in France. Adams had visited the home of Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, the ambassador from the Barbary state of Tripoli, a few weeks earlier. The meeting had gone well, with the two men smoking pipes together. Adams thought that another meeting with Abdrahaman could be helpful, as the American politicians wondered what to do about the enslaved sailors.

    Adams and Jefferson duly met with Abdrahaman at the home of the Tripolitan ambassador, and the conversation soon turned to the American slaves currently being held in North Africa. Abdrahaman informed the two Americans that it would take the exorbitant sum of 30,000 English guineas, the equivalent at that time of approximately 120,000 dollars, for Tripolitan privateers to no longer attack American shipping. The United States would also have to reach separate agreements with the other Barbary states of Tunis, Algiers and Morocco. To all intents and purposes, these Islamic states were running a protection racket that would today be recognised as a criminal enterprise, with one hand wielding a sharpened scimitar, and the other outstretched in the expectation of payment.

    According to a letter sent later that month to John Jay, who was at that time the American Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Adams and Jefferson thereupon “took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretentions to make war upon Nations who had done them no Injury.” The response the two men received is noteworthy:

    The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

    Sittason, Andrew. Living In A Salt Land (pp. 87-95). Andrew Sittason. Kindle Edition.

    The actions of the Islamic fanatics on October 7th last year are not unprecedented. Chapter 10 of “Living In A Salt Land” describes the conduct of the Islamic slavers who carried out raids all over Europe, before taking their captives back to the Barbary Coast in North Africa, where they were enslaved by black African Muslims.

    • Andy

      None of this is new behaviour. For example . . .

      As bad as the raid on Baltimore was, it could have been worse. Some four years earlier, Murat Reis had participated in a raid on Iceland. The Dutch renegado was the skipper of a ship that landed at Grindavik on the south-west coast on 20th June of 1627, where he and his crew captured around thirty Icelanders and Danes. On July 5th, three slave ships from Algiers had carried out a series of raids on the south-west coast, taking eighteen Danes and over a hundred of the local Icelanders captive, before heading for the Westman Islands, just off the southern coast.

      On this occasion, with no fear of interruption by military forces (real or imagined), the corsairs had embarked on a violent rampage not unlike the terrorist attack on southern Israel that took place on 7th October 2023. According to one account, the slavers invaded the island and drove everyone towards the shore. Anyone who did not move quickly enough was beaten to death on the spot – pour encourager les autres. The corsairs set fire to the islanders’ homes, and in one particularly gruesome incident, they threw a mother and her two year old child into one of the newly lit fires, laughing as they forced their victims deeper into the flames with their spears.

      One of the locals, a man named Bjarni Valdason, was beaten by the corsairs until he died. When his wife fell down beside him, she was dragged away from her husband, and had to watch as the body was cut into pieces before her. Another man, Erlendur Runólfsson, was stripped naked and made to stand at the edge of a cliff, where he was shot at until he fell to the rocks below. The bodies of people who had been murdered lay on the ground everywhere. Many of the female bodies lay in a state of nakedness that spoke to the depravity of the perpetrators.

      Sittason, Andrew. Living In A Salt Land (pp. 91-92). Andrew Sittason. Kindle Edition.

  3. Eliezer

    So true. so poignant, so sad.
    We have failed to ensure that our “leaders’ and media are Zionist who have respect for our traditions and creed. They only crave for none Jewish culture and ways besmirching the Honest National Zionist citizens whose love of the land far outweighs anything else.
    The ultimate sacrifice stares us in the face daily in Israel whilst our Diaspora brethren behave as they did in the 1930’s, blind and deaf with sealed lips. Their religious leadership have since 7 October ,- Shemini Ateret, produced a deafening silence and remain as if they don’t have any connection to Eretz Yisrael – do they utter their prays in vain or is it by rote.

  4. golda

    there should be one million dead muslim Arabs for each Israeli killed, maimed, tortured, raped and defiled.
    I refuse to use the word palestinian. they don’t exist, never did, never will.
    the world and we Jews fed into Arafat’s lies..
    someone once said, repeat a lie often enough, and it will be believed eventually.
    Shame on all of us.

    • Phillip Erickson

      Golda,

      They should always be referred to as ‘adjacent arabs’.

  5. Dalya Horowitz

    I am in tears for your beautiful and oh so true diary entry for June 16, 2024. I am in total agreement with you. I love your quote from Yonatan Netanyahu.
    The left is delusional. I thought Oct 7 would have brought them around. But we don’t have a choice – we must stand up for ourselves and our brothers and sisters. You are totally right about pulling out of Gaza.
    Where we live – we proudly fly the Israeli flag outside of our house and have a sign that says “We stand with Israel” with an American/Israeli flag. Several like signs were vandalized when they first appeared in October. People got new signs, two, then three. Then the vandalism stopped when they saw they can’t intimidate us. But where we live the police are very supportive.
    We will never give in – we will always fight for our people. Thank you so much for your realistic and very moving piece.

  6. Bobbie J.

    Your words are so touching and so true. Read recently of 10 IDF soldiers killed. While it is depressing, I know how wonderful, beautiful Israel is for Jews, Arab Israelis and others who come to live and learn at places like: Arava Instituted for environment, Hand in Hand and more places helping to make the world a better place.

Comments are closed.

Discover more from Naomi Ragen נעמי רגן

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading