Each time we think we have a handle on the situation, something happens to show us how much more fighting, dying, and sacrifice is needed until we secure our borders.

The ceasefire with Lebanon was never respected by our enemies. In the midst of Hezbollah threats to back out of the ceasefire deal altogether if Israel insists on actually enforcing it and not allowing Hezbollah terrorists to reestablish themselves on our borders as it has been attempting to do every day, every hour, and making sure that their attempts to rearm fail, our attacks are all justified. So if the ceasefire fails, it will not be our fault. In fact, it will be hard to tell the difference between Hezbollah’s behavior with or without a ceasefire, except for the resumption of terrorist missile attacks on northern Israel. Still that would be better than allowing them to establish their missile batteries. Israel has no choice but to act firmly and decisively. Goodness knows neither the Lebanese Army nor UN peacekeepers are going to do the work for us.

Like Hezbollah, Hamas too continues to howl about Israel’s continuing strikes – one of the few things in life they really good at. There is no doubt that Hamas doesn’t consider itself defeated. Despite the wailing over the Israeli raids of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza after Hamas reestablished its regional command center there, more than 240 terrorists were apprehended including the terrorist who is the hospital’s “director” and several members of the medical staff. Among them were barbarians who took direct part in the Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel. You won’t hear that in the mainstream media. Nor will you learn that this operation was in the planning for several weeks, during which time some 350 patients and medical personnel were successfully evacuated to another hospital, while Kamal Adwan was provided with the necessary supplies to continue operating as a medical care center. But Hamas uses hospitals and their sick be damned. When will “journalists” figure that out?

Israel really has no choice. Rocket fire coming from “humanitarian” areas set aside for civilians continues to plague us. Today alone, five rocket launches were detected towards Sderot from the Northern Gaza Strip. That’s so heartbreaking. The inhabitants of Sderot have suffered decades of Hamas rocket fire and have only just recently returned to their homes. No one was hurt, but how traumatic for these brave people to find themselves once again in bomb shelters! It is intolerable! If only Israel was not so worried about “innocent civilian casualties.” There are no innocent civilians in Gaza and I wish we could internalize that and allow our soldiers a freer hand to do more than just “evacuate” them. Along with their tents, they transfer their missile launchers.

And let us not forget the miserable savages in Yemen who sit all day abusing their women and chewing the addictive narcotic khat leaves that fry their brains. Almost every, single night this week, Israelis in the center of the country – where my children and grandchildren live, and even in Jerusalem – were awakened by sirens at 3AM to run to bomb shelters because of Houthi missiles. Okay, no one was hurt by the missiles themselves, but running in the middle of the night for shelter causes accidents and hospitalizations. My son in Tel Aviv was so exhausted he had to cancel one of his patient’s therapy sessions!

Who are these maniacs and what do they want? And why has the West allowed them to disrupt international shipping lines? And why isn’t Egypt upset at the lack of traffic because of them through the Suez Canal? As hilarious Israeli comedian Yohay Sponder says in his routine: “We’re almost finished with the war. We only have the Houthis left. Man, where did that sh—come from? It’s like you finish cleaning the house and then oh, f—! The toilet! You still have to clean up the toilet.” The Houthis are the toilet.

Good thing we had Chanukah to celebrate this week as well. I decided to make my postponed annual Thanksgiving Party (too many bomb alerts in November) a Chanukah party. So there was a 16 pound turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, apple pie, lemon meringue pie consumed by most of my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren here in the country. 

We lit the Menorah against the encroaching darkness, and we sang the ancient songs that are astonishingly appropriate despite having been written so long ago. Maoz Tzur was written during the first and second Crusades when Jewish communities were devastated. The song recounts all our tribulations, from the destruction of our temple, the slavery in Egypt, the Babylonian destroyers, the plot of Haman to kill all the Jews in the Persian empire, and finally the Greeks who wanted to uproot Judaism altogether. And in each of the six stanzas, we remind ourselves that our enemies failed, and with God’s help, we triumphed. Our present situation is summed up in the last stanza: “Avenge the blood of Your servants spilled by the wicked nation. For triumph is too long delayed for us, and there is no end to the evil days.”

Recalling Jewish history, and the many miracles we have experienced, and the many times we have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat is the best and only antidote to the despair it would be so easy for us to fall into. Instead, let us remember that we are simply the continuation of Jewish history, and we too will triumph in the end. 

To paraphrase the words of the Al Hanisim prayer, written to commemorate the triumph of Judah the Maccabee over the Greeks (but might just as well have been written for the situation in which all of us Jews find ourselves today –  just substitute “our” instead of “their”): “You, in your enormous mercy, stood up for (us) in (our) time of great need, upheld (our) cause, judged (our) case. You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the degenerates into the hands of those who cling to your Torah.”

As I sat there among the beloved members of my family during our Chanukah party, many of them home from the war safe and sound, I felt tears come to my eyes. I thought of the words of Winston Churchill on Xmas eve after the bombing of Pearl Harbor as the Americans entered the war, the end of the war and the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese still so far off: “Resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.”

I wish that for my progeny, and for yours. Happy Chanukah.

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