I thought that I should try to do a round-up of the year’s events. But the more I tried to summarize, the harder it became.

I can give you statistics: 891 soldiers killed since the beginning of the war – 558 in 2023 and 363 in 2024. 5,569 soldiers wounded in the same period. Of the soldiers killed, 329 fell on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel.

Our enemies fared far worse, of course. Seventeen thousand dead Hamas criminals(!!!), and another 17,000 Gazan cheerleaders, to which numbers the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health has added everyone in Gaza who died of natural causes. There are no innocent civilians in Gaza as far as I’m concerned. What about the babies, the pregnant women, the little kids, you ask? The parents are complicit. They are responsible for their children’s deaths. Idiots and child abusers. All their kids should be taken away from them at birth and brought up by sane people. Hezbollah admits to 4,000 dead. And we have pretty nearly erased their combined leadership: Sinwar, Nasrallah, Aouri, Haniyeh …

Many, many successes. Many, many miracles. And yet …

Mere numbers don’t convey what Israel went through and continues to go through. Almost every night this week Houthi ballistic missiles were fired towards the Tel Aviv area. My grandkids running for bomb shelters at two in the morning; four in the morning. The khat-chewing druggies and morons shooting don’t actually hit anything, but it’s exhausting.

My lovely daughter in-law Anat described what it’s like to have her brother in his fourth round of reserve duty. He leaves behind a wife in her eighth month and four little kids. Her parents aren’t sleeping. The whole family is on edge, waiting for him to get out. He served in Gaza, then in Lebanon. The whole family is praying so hard for his safe return.

The fighting isn’t over. There are multiple funerals each week, sometimes among the same communities. I went to pick something up in a store in a moshav called Kfar Netter near Netanya. And as I entered a huge sign with the picture of a young fallen soldier greeted me on a billboard. There is hardly a community in Israel that has not faced loss, some more than others.

My son’s religious high school in Jerusalem, Himmelfarb – not a large school – has lost ten graduates and a teacher. I can’t describe what it means to sit in the homes of parents who have lost their sons or daughters. And to do it several times, one day after the next, is close to unbearable. Another religious school, Horev, has lost twelve graduates.

The demonstrations are ongoing. The pain of everyone over the hostages is chronic. On my way out of Zikhron Ya’akov where I live – a little village between Hadera and Haifa – some group has placed the photographs of every, single hostage on posts so that every time you leave, or return, they flash before you. The center of the village has a billboard that keeps track of every day they have been held captive.

How to free them? Even though the nightly near hysterical demonstrators all over Israel seem to think they have the answer, I have no idea what it is, I just don’t see it. The fighting in Gaza has been increased ferociously, hundreds of terrorists dying every day week, but they seem to have an endless supply and couldn’t care less. And now they have changed tactics: having aggressive IDF combat units breathing down their necks in Northern Gaza, and most of their tunnels destroyed, Hamas has now booby-trapped almost every structure that remains standing in Jabalya, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun, and filled it with weapons.

This is a very dangerous situation for our soldiers, even though the IDF is making intelligent and generous use of drones and attack aircraft. But whenever rockets are fired from the midst of the “humanitarian” zones, and the IDF moves the population, the terrorists dressed in civilian clothes move along with them, then duck into burnt out buildings in which they’ve stashed their weapons, firing at our precious troops. Immediately after firing, they stash the weapons and leave, posing again as unarmed civilians. 

The IDF is trying hard to weed them out. But it isn’t easy with the world breathing down our necks about the poor f-ing civilians.

While the shaky cease fire agreement in Lebanon has been more violated than adhered to, the IDF is taking a very, very tough stance. For example, when rocket launchers are uncovered in a village and reported to the Lebanese army which likely as not ignores the problem, the IDF has not hesitated to bomb the rocket launchers to smithereens. I have no doubt that the IDF isn’t going anywhere when the sixty day cease fire elapses because we cannot trust the Lebanese Army or the UN “Peacekeeping” Force. We cannot rely on anyone but ourselves. Our displaced Northerners have to be able to return home and live in safety.

But despite all this, I believe much has been gained. The battered border kibbutzim are coming back to life. My friend just took her daughter up north for a vacation. I too will be going up to the Golan to soak in a hot tub and play in the snow. So many lives have been sacrificed to give me that right. It would be wrong not to take it.

I know that in the years to come, there is nothing as ephemeral as peace to look forward to. As long as Islam exists and honors its mad, evil prophet and his adherents refuse to honor the sanctity of life, continuing to encourage their followers to kill and be killed, there will be no peace for anyone on planet Earth. But I have not lost my faith that with the help of our God, Who loves life, and our remarkable next life-loving people, we will live safely in our precious homeland. Now, and forever.

Looking forward to Trump in the White House and the magnificent cabinet of Israel-supporters he has nominated.  May God bless him and them.

And us.

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