The Living People of Israel

As you probably noticed, I took last week off. I went up to the Golan, to a lovely little hotel in Kibbutz Merom Golan. I went there because the weather here in Zichron—as usual—is unbearably hot in August. On the way down, we stopped off at Kayak Kfar Bloom and took a leisurely float down the Jordan. The place was packed with young families, religious Jews, devout Muslims, filled the rubber boats that looked nothing like kayaks. We smiled at each other, and when we got stuck, someone jumped out and pulled us away from the shore. Not too many people with grey hair were out there navigating the rapids!

And when we got to the Kibbutz, I was astonished at how many young families, how many little babies, were strolling around eating ice cream and pizza, swimming in the pool, swinging in the hammocks. As if we were really all back to normal. As if the fathers of these lovely families—all reservist-aged—had not spent months on the front lines. As if we were not still at war with Hamas and Hezbollah and the Ayatollahs in Iran.

 In the cool evenings, they sat on the lawns and watched clowns and light shows; and in the morning they filled the cafeterias, their kids running around with plates swaying with piles of pancakes dripping with syrup; their Moms holding the newborns in their arms, their Dads wiping the mouths of the toddlers. And even though my own family was somewhere else, we too have a whole new generation of babies to bring up who are happy, carefree, and enjoying their own summer vacations.

That is not to say we have forgotten anything about what we have just been through. Every single day, the IDF blows up another terrorist in Gaza, and we are reminded of their inhuman capacity for savagery: Mahmoud Mahadi Afanan microwaved three tiny Israeli newborns while ecstatically bragging to his vicious parents—who raised such a subhuman POS—that he had killed ten Jews. (We have it on tape because the genius taped himself.) Now his dead body has joined the detritus of Gaza, mourned by no one. We are still hearing the testimonies of the tortures inflicted on our captives. Their captors will all die. But in the meantime, we in Israel must continue to live. To enjoy summer vacations. Hug our children and grandchildren. Listen to their laughter.

I am concerned about the American obstruction to finishing the job in Gaza. There is no question we are being held back by the Trump Administration as Gaza rearms. The attempt made to blow up an Israeli tank yesterday shows how far this has gone. A forum representing 300 families whose sons and daughters fell in the Gaza war are demanding that Prime Minister Netanyahu renew the offensive against Hamas until it is fully defeated: “Our loved ones fell so that the State of Israel would bring about a victory over the enemy and not so that we would return to the same reality that existed on the eve of the massacre. The blood that has been spilled obliges all of us to learn the lessons and make sure that the threat is removed from the root.”

The same is true of Hezbollah in Lebanon. An IDF officer and two IDF soldiers were seriously wounded when a Hezbollah drone attacked their position in the Ali Al-Taher Ridge sector in southern Lebanon on Saturday. In response, fighter jets attacked in the area, which is filled with Hezbollah terrorists, many of them hiding in tunnels underground. Two Hezbollah commanders and their families were killed.

These terror organizations will not disarm voluntarily, and no one has the incentive to disarm them like Israel. But Trump’s trumped up attempts at fake ceasefires that involve Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, etc. and a host of other bad players in this war that was unleashed upon the Jews of Israel is not serving us. Yes, we are getting U.S. equipment, which Israeli taxpayers are funding, it’s not a gift. But the strings attached are long and debilitating. Just as Trump is sitting on his hands instead of putting an end to the Iranian Mullahs, who are behind both Hamas and Hezbollah, we question his strategy. He may not be in a rush, but we are. We want our men home. We want the life we had before murderous attempts by our enemies to wipe us off the face of the earth.

With the elections coming up, there is much to fear. If Netanyahu isn’t succeeding in standing up to the Americans, what will wobbly newbies like Gadi Eisenkot or the despicable head of the Democrats list Yair Golan do? Eisenkot, a former Chief of Staff, who is of Moroccan heritage and lost two nephews and a son in the recent war, is popular among voters, but he is also one who incessantly weakened Netanyahu’s and Israel’s bargaining stance against Hamas extortion demands for our hostages. That lost him my vote.

As for Yair Golan, while the IDF was fighting for our lives against the savages of Gaza, he had this to say: ‘A sane country does not fight against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.” Israel, he warned, was becoming a “pariah state.” Like Eisenkat, Golan was incensed Israel wasn’t giving into Hamas demands quickly enough. He later backtracked, denied he was attacking the IDF but only the government. Not buying it. Back in 2016 he compared “disturbing processes in contemporary Israel reminiscent of those that preceded Nazi Germany (!!!).”

I think he and his supporters are despicable. Talk about suicidal empathy. I thought October 7 taught Israelis a lesson, but apparently not all Israelis are teachable. I can’t understand why any sane Israeli would vote for him. But I know most of my “liberal” neighbors, who marched to weaken the Israeli government’s position on hostage release throughout the war, will anyway. They are predicting he is going to get ten seats! God protect us.

While there are no doubt some crazy settlers in Judea and Samaria (and who wouldn’t be crazy after all these constant attacks) the number of settler attacks on Palestinians is tiny compared to the daily, largely unreported attacks on Jews by Palestinians in the area. Take for example the near lynching of an Israeli woman and her child who unknowingly strayed into the Palestinian town of Jenin and was subsequently surrounded by an angry, rock-throwing throng of locals intending to lynch her. Luckily she stepped on the gas and escaped uninjured. Then there was the Jewish shepherd assaulted near the Alon Road in Samaria by 30 masked, rioting Arabs from the village of Al-Mughayyir on Saturday. The Benjamin Regional Council has reported that “such incidents have become a recurring phenomenon but often receive little attention.”

One excellent thing the Netanyahu government leaves behind with the help of Bezalel Smotrich, are dozens of new Jewish settlements that will provide a firm Jewish hold on the area against illegal Arab encroachment. A happy occasion this week was the re-founding of the Ganim settlement dismantled by the wrong-headed Disengagement twenty years ago. If only I wasn’t worried that a newly elected government of weaklings and traitors will undo all that good.

Israel is in Columbia to help victims of the earthquake.

Israel and India, two democracies with vicious Islamic terrorists on their borders, are growing ever closer.

I will end with what always gives me hope and comfort, the words of our Prophets, read this week:

Isaiah 51; 22 “ So says the Lord, your Lord; so your God fights His people’s cause. I have taken the poisoned cup from your hand, the goblet of my rage. You will drink from it no more. I will place it in the hands of those who torment you, who have said to your face: Bow down to let us pass. You made your back like earth, like the road to be walked over. Rise, rise Zion! And don your dress of might. Shake yourself free of dust. Rise up to take your place, Jerusalem.

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