Back to “Normal?”

I saw a YouTube video earlier this week which just about sums it all up for us Israelis. The caption was “All limitations cancelled. Back to normal.” In the background of the caption, a woman sways drunkenly, hopping on one foot as she tries to put on a shoe, her shirt half off. Sounds right. There is also a very popular internet joke going around: “A nation like a lion will rise. But why every two hours?”

I can’t imagine any other nation on earth going through the turmoil, uncertainty, danger, tragedy and triumph we have just gone through in a little more than a week. We are all shellshocked.

But our success, with God’s help, was extraordinary.

According to the IDF spokesman:

• 1,500 air force sorties and 600 aerial refuelings
• 1,400 fighter jet strikes and 500 drone strikes.
• Eleven senior nuclear scientists were eliminated, more than 30 senior officials in Iran’s security system, and hundreds of Iranian soldiers.

Three nuclear sites were attacked: Isfahan, Natanz and Fordo. Thousands of centrifuges for uranium enrichment were destroyed. Nuclear research and development centers were destroyed. We destroyed 15 enemy aircraft, 80 surface to air defense launchers, 200 missile launchers – 50 percent of all Iranian launchers – 35 missile production plants were attacked, and six airports. We had an 86 percent success rate in intercepting ballistic missiles, and 99 percent in intercepting UAV’s. Thousands were launched against us.

According to Iran, 332 buildings and about 3,500 housing units were damaged in Teheran.

It’s pathetic that the ayatollahs are now trying to present this to their people as a “victory.” They too will be running out of graves, as they are in Gaza, where the price of graves is skyrocketing.

But along with the heroism of the Israeli military and political leaders, let us not forget the heroism of the average Israeli who took their children into a bomb shelter again and again and sat quietly and uncomplainingly, allowing the IDF to do its job. Every young mother who cradled a baby at two in the morning, and led a sleepy three year-old by the hand, sometimes out of the house, to a shelter. I am so proud of them all. And I hope that we will never have to live through this again.

Something more fundamental to our pride was this reaction of Christian American Tik Toker with 613,000 followers. Casey Barker saw in the successful attack against Iran the hand of God and the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Hopefully, other religions will also see this. It is believed that a wave of new Muslim countries will be joining the Abraham Accords. Wouldn’t that be super?

More than 60 terrorist operatives connected to Hamas, ten squads in an underground bunker, have been discovered in Hebron. The terror cell was on the verge of carrying out deadly attacks in Israel. Most of the operatives are released prisoners. Now they are either dead or back in jail. It was described by a Shin Bet official as “the largest and most extensive plot that the Shin Bet has thwarted in Judea and Samaria in a decade.” Countless lives have been saved.

Recently, the head of the Mossad and the National Security came to the court where Netanyahu is being “tried” to convince the judges of the urgent need to suspend the trial. Tongues are wagging that a new large scale military operation is afoot. His testimony has been postponed for a week.

This farcical trial needs to be over. I agree with Trump about the legal fiasco of the lawfare against Netanyahu which has dragged on for YEARS! They have been persecuting him for political gain for the most ridiculous of reasons – he took a few cigars as a present, some wine. Ridiculous. They are not ashamed to hound him in the middle of a war. In light of this, the whole Israeli judicial establishment has lost credibility in our eyes. The trial needs to end now. Leave him alone.

As for the war in Gaza, slowly, methodically, the IDF is cleaning Hamas out of their entrenched enclaves in Gaza City and Khan Yunis, something that looked impossible at the beginning of the war. The new aid distribution network is depriving Hamas of much needed funding, and deadly attacks are thinning their ranks.

If only it wasn’t so dangerous. We lost another soldier today. Sergeant Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld, age 20, from Ra’anana, a soldier in the 601^st Combat Engineering Battalion, who fell during combat in Jabaliya when an IED was detonated on our forces as they tried to enter a building. Other fighters at the scene were not harmed.

I embrace his family. Their beautiful son. May his memory be a blessing.

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