I have lost track of time which is no longer measured by the clock or calendar but by changing events tracked on numerous phone apps, none of the information coming from outside Israel, where people have no clue what is really happening.

We live from one news bulletin to the next, from one siren to the next, from one scrap of information and news conference to the next. Day imperceptibly falls into night, but nothing changes. Sleep is impossible. What if we miss something? With our families in the army or in rocket-vulnerable cities throughout the country, the passion, almost palpable, for news is all-consuming.

I live in a beautiful little house on a beautiful little street, with a blooming garden. I have not been in my bomb shelter once, because we are just not important enough or centrally located enough to target. And yet, in my mind, I have been in the thick of the war from the moment my grandson told me in the synagogue on Simchat Torah that hundreds were dead.

I have not yet had time to absorb it all. I can’t possibly mourn, not when there is still a war to win. And so I madly pen furious replies to worthless people in cyber space who are not worth my spit, let alone my time. But I can’t help it. What else can I do?

Younger people like my daughter pick lettuce, give blood. I donate money, and I write.

Yet, each day, just as I think I can’t bear it one minute more, something comes along that lifts my spirit. Today, it was two stories:

(I hope the source of this story forgives me, I don’t know who wrote it or where it was published. If you let me know I will give full credit where it is due ) Police Officer Igor Pivniv from Moshav Yated, 4 kilometers from Gaza went to work as usual on October 7. Then his wife messaged him: their community’s electricity was cut, gunfire was heard, and she and their three girls were frightened. 

Igor immediately grabbed a utility vest, a helmet, a rifle and bullets, and drove straight home. It wasn’t easy, by then many of the roads were blocked. On the way, Igor heard the terrifying news on the radio that multiple communities had fallen and were now under the terrorists’ ntrol. 

Soon enough, he spotted an ambush set up by Hamas terrorists. He approached carefully and managed to kill them all and keep going. Then he came across another car driven by terrorists, who were shooting at civilians trying to escape the area. He killed them too. Then waiting patiently, he saw four more terrorists approach his car. Opening fire, he killed them too, then searched their vehicle finding grenades, ammunition and weapons which he took. Continuing on his way, Igor saw more terrorists on a motorbike atop a hill. Again, he approached stealthily through bushes, wiped them out and took their weapons and ammunition. Pausing for a moment, he messaged his wife that he was OK. 

When he reached his village, Igor realised that he was alone. There, he managed to prevent two further attacks until finally reaching home safely. All the while, Igor tried repeatedly to contact the police and the military, but their hands were tied in other places. Finally, he came to the inescapable conclusion that he had no choice but to defend his community on his own.

Together with a band of spontaneous volunteers with whom he met up with later, Igor managed to defend their village until the evening, when the army finally arrived. Not only did he and his family survive and avoid injury, thanks to Igor’s tenacity and bravery, not a single person in his village was killed that horrible day.

Story number two is heroic too but in quite a different way.

When all the villages around Gaza were evacuated, Yaffa (not her real name) refused to leave. An ambulance driver, she decided to stay behind and help the troops any way she could. She let soldiers use her house to take showers and she wound up doing mountains of laundry, using an untold number of machines from the abandoned houses. “My only hope was that God would give us good weather and hot breezes so that it would dry,” she said. Grateful soldiers left her heartfelt notes of thanks. “I can smell home again,” one wrote. When not folding laundry, she was baking them cakes and cookies. She is there still, even as the ground rumbles beneath her feet.

Now the moment of truth is coming as the long-awaited ground invasion picks up steam. Our dear soldiers are already there, inside Gaza. Despite the handwringing of the press and the UN and terrorist advocates worldwide, the IDF is going in to face hundreds of meters of underground tunnels filled with bloodthirsty terrorists and their weapons. So far, the IDF has had numerous clashes with terrorists, who when not facing babies and Holocaust survivors in wheelchairs don’t seem very competent or brave. Every single one seeking to engage our troops is dead. Hundreds more will surely die. Israel has already distributed flyers throughout Gaza explaining how to surrender. I can’t help hoping they start believing their own propaganda and wind up dying like the dogs they are. We don’t need more prisoners. Our jails are already full of Hamas scum.

I read online about how Egypt dealt with Hamas terrorists coming out of tunnels in 2021. They pumped in poison gas. Oh, what a worldwide outcry there would be if Israel did that! And then, of course, there is the worry that our hostages might be down there. I think our boys are prepared to go house to house to find them. My grandson among those soldiers. I know I will not sleep tonight either just thinking about it.

As for the Hamas supporters, did you see the demonstration in Great Britain with the bundles of white sheets smeared with red made to look like dead babies? Oh, how they rejoiced! Such hero worship! Such a wonderful accomplishment to display, to taunt us Jews who have lost our babies! Seriously, who are these people? We know they’ve been raping young British girls for years, but really, Great Britain, why not stop hiding all the degenerates you’ve taken in? Stop apologizing for them and simply deport them? Otherwise, you might very well find yourself in the middle of a war with ISIS, every Brit facing what we in Israel are facing now. And then the Blitz would have been for nothing, the Nazis taking over in the end.