Do you remember a day when the weather was so foul that you couldn’t go outside? You couldn’t even look outside because there was a howling wind, and an icy brutal rain that landed like icicles, piercing coats and hats, and freezing toes? So you stayed indoors. Maybe you lit up the fireplace, turned up the heat, watched an old movie you loved. Had a hot cocoa, and just tried to endure until the day was over and the weather changed.

That’s how I feel now. I go to the pool. Meet my friends for our lively aerobics class. My garden is blooming. The sea is blue and calm. But the minute I turn on the news, read a newspaper, the unbearable nightmare of our current situation bangs against the windows of my shelter, demanding attention. It’s almost unbearable.

I open up Ynet, whose publisher is behind so much of the causeless hatred and venom vented against our less than perfect, but very, very brave Prime Minister, and am bombarded by articles in which Israel’s military establishment broadcasts weakness: Halevi hints we can leave Philadephi and come back? And how many soldiers’ lives is that going to cost? And are those lives less valuable than the hostages? I read about the thousands of Israelis rioting in the streets because they have nothing to contribute, and nothing intelligent to say, so why not destroy, undermine all that is heroic, good, unselfish, noble by those who are fighting the last battle of this terrible war?

I peek at what’s going on in the White House, the collapse and betrayal by a corrupt, weak and stupid administration, who wants it both ways: Condemning the barbarians who killed hostages – some of them American –  while condemning in the same breath the Israeli leader who is trying so hard to protect 9 million Israelis from endless repetitions of the October 7 massacre by the barbarians across the border fence. Hamas are still there, still armed, thousands of them. They are still able to fight, still have the initiative.

Our enemies are so numerous. All the “peace agreements” were broken. Egypt allowed Gaza to build tunnels and arm terrorists. The Oslo Accords blew up in our face as we now try to dig out from under the terror infrastructure in the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas.

The “Disengagement” that then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told me to my face was going to “save soldiers’ lives?” Another catastrophic mistake. And all the Left wing, Peace-Now, Four Mothers (who got us out of Lebanon and let Hezbollah take over) where are they now? Why, demonstrating in the streets to force us into another catastrophic mistake for which they will take no responsibility. Ever.

Listen to this as an example. Today Liat Atzili, who was abducted to Gaza and released after 54 days in captivity through our Prime Minister and the IDF, was invited to speak by Peres’s daughter at a memorial ceremony at Har Herzl at the eighth anniversary of the death of Shimon Peres – another architect of Israeli disaster –  and had the nerve to say: “Eight years have passed since you left us, Mr. Peres, and it feels like ages! Netanyahu succeeded in erasing the dream of peace, putting aside hope, dividing the people and uniting all our enemies against us.”

Such historical revisionism! Apparently being kidnapped by our “peace partners” and having her husband slaughtered has not dimmed her enthusiasm for Mr. Peres’s delusional outlook that saw so many Israelis blown up on buses and in their hotels by Yasir Arafat’s “sacrifices for peace.” Really. At times, I despair.

What did FDR say about the Nazis? “You can’t tame a tiger by petting him…There is only one way to have peace with the Nazis – one of you has to surrender.” And that is exactly what people like Liat Atzili want us to do. Surrender to Hamas.

Do we want that kind of peace with Hamas, the peace of our surrender? The end our country?

I certainly do not. I know that the great majority of Israelis feel the same. We cannot turn back. We must keep going because to stop now would be to betray all those who have been brutally murdered, or laid down their lives with courage to prevent just such an outcome. People say: “But what if it was your child being held hostage? Your father? Your husband, your brother?”

Do you know that there are parents of hostages who have said “My child would not want a single murderer released for his sake”? Like Tzvika Mor, founder of Tikva Forum, the hostage family group opposed to negotiations with Hamas terrorists: “It’s not just about my personal suffering as Eitan’s father; it’s about the nation as a whole,” Mor said in December. “I can’t let my personal hurt take priority over collective interests. Letting terrorists go free endangers Jewish lives. And Eitan wouldn’t want that.”

We don’t hear those voices, because political interests that want to take down Netanyahu drown them out with their shouting in our streets. Now all we hear are the voices who would sacrifice us all, like the parents of Gilad Shalit once did, to free their child. They are single-minded and directed at only one outcome, and anyone who disagrees is shamed into silence.

Can we criticize them? Dare we criticize them? Probably not. To be selfish and single-minded is what is expected. And yet, thousands upon thousands of Israelis have left their wives and children, and gone into the maelstrom to kill our murderers in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank. They have flown the planes that destroyed the leaders of Hamas all over the world. What about them? What about their sacrifice, their families, their lives?

Still, I go to sleep with hope in my heart, and each morning I awake, hoping that God has taken pity on us and the weather has finally, finally changed.

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