On a day like today, I just feel like crawling into bed and pulling the covers over my head. I’m sure I’m not alone. The death of 21 Israeli soldiers in a catastrophic accident in Gaza when two terrorist anti-tank missiles were fired and by chance hit a building being wired for demolition, has hit us all in our most vulnerable place: the love of our soldiers and the love of our families. For every soldier lost, an entire family is torn asunder with grief: parents, wives, children, grandparents, in-laws… And because Israel is such a small country, you are bound to know someone who knows someone.

Gazans are gloating now in online posts about how many of our soldiers they killed, inflating the numbers, pretending it was the result of some kind of brilliant military strategy, instead of the random fire of some Hamas rat who stuck his head out of tunnel hole for a moment and fired. Israel, on the other hand, has killed over 100 Hamas terrorists over the last two days., and thousands over the past 100 days.  But we don’t brag or rejoice about deaths, even  those of our enemies.

Instead of giving into my grief, I took the train to Jerusalem and spent the day taking care of my three month-old great-granddaughter, so her Mom wouldn’t have to take her to school with her, as she usually does, especially since the weather was terrible in Jerusalem. The wind was so strong and cold, it broke my umbrella, and the rain felt like icy needles.

I haven’t cared for a baby for a very long time. I’d forgotten how delicate they are. The hair is like down. The skin is as soft as silk. How easy it is to scare a baby, I realized as I held her, trying to play all those games I hadn’t played in decades, trying to modulate my voice, to keep my movements gentle so as not to startle her.

I read that Khaled Mashal announced today that: “We reject the Two-State solution. October 7 showed that the liberation of Palestine [sic] from the river to the sea is a realistic goal and has already begun.”

I thought about those babies in Be’eri, and Kfar Aza and elsewhere, and what members of Hamas had done to them on October 7. People simply refuse to believe it, because what kind of monster could hurt a helpless baby? Who would want not only want to harm a baby, but also make it suffer? And how sick and hate-filled do you have to be to actually burn a baby, or even have the idea to put it into an oven or cut off its head? What kind of society, philosophy, religion breeds such men? The answer as we all know, and refuse categorically to admit because Western society doesn’t want us to, are Muslim Palestinians who live in Gaza and the West Bank of Israel.

These are the people to whom, reportedly, 18-24 year-olds in America would like Israelis to hand their country over. These are the people who would be the citizens of this “from the river to the sea” domain, with people like Mashal as its head of state, turning yet another piece of God’s green earth into a breeding ground for human monsters and inhuman scum. Every pro-Palestinian demonstrator is waving Mashal’s flag and saluting the scum of the earth.

When I boarded a crowded Jerusalem bus as I began my homeward journey to Zichron Ya’akov, I couldn’t help but remember the buses blown up by the suicide bombers of Hamas and the PLO right after the Oslo Accords, when we Israelis were busy teaching our kids to paint doves. Etched in my memory are all those front page photos of young school girls, grandmothers, middle-aged men, mothers and infants, exactly the same kind of faces that surrounded me now.

Why weren’t they afraid, daunted, cowering? After all, someone, a leader of the same people who had perpetrated the October 7 atrocities, had just vowed to do it again, and again, and again? And then I thought: What about you? Why aren’t you afraid to get on a train, or a bus, to visit your family at such a time?

And the answer is because the IDF is on the border now. The terrible accident that took those precious, irreplaceable lives from us, will not stop the IDF from destroying Mashal and his grand plan. Quite the opposite. The more brutal and monstrous our enemies become, the more they unite us and take away any option to come to an accommodation with them. He rejects the Two-State solution?!! Every Israeli in their right mind rejects it!! But as we all know, no one cares what Israelis want. But if this despicable excuse for a human being – made a billionaire by his supporters in Iran, Qatar, and the EU – doesn’t want it, they might listen to him.

Palestinians are reporting that the IDF is hitting Khan Yunis hard; that it has called on its residents to evacuate to safe zones. And I think: if only the residents of Khan Yunis could have done the same for the residents of Be’eri, Kfar Aza, and Sderot, as well as the beautiful young festival goers, to warn them to evacuate to safe zones before invading, destroying, raping, and butchering.

Israel has to destroy Khan Yunis. Because there are tunnel holes everywhere, and every other house is a weapons depot. And if some of the people there do not heed the warnings and choose to remain and wind up dead, it will be better for all of us, for all mankind. The moment their hate-filled hearts cease to beat, rendering them incapable of ever again harming our soldiers and our babies – whose good hearts are filled with love – will be a blessing.

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