Nasrallah is dead. Sinwar is dead. Israel has taken out significant weapons capabilities in Iran.

Then why aren’t we rejoicing?

Being a people who love life makes Israelis fierce, intelligent warriors, who do whatever they can to minimize losing their soldiers and collateral damage. But it is also our Achilles’ Heel. Try as we might, in a war, precious soldiers die.

October 2024 has been a deadly month, with over 75 fatalities (so far…) from operational activities, rocket, and UAV attacks, and terrorist incidents. Since the start of the ground maneuver in Lebanon, there have been heartbreaking daily reports of reservists’ wives becoming widows, their children orphans.

I know what it’s like to grow up without a father. While mine died of an illness when I was only six, the challenges of such a childhood are seared into my being forever. During the Simchat Torah holiday, 20 children between the ages of 4 and 17 lost their fathers in feirce battles in southern Lebanon.

How terrible to be forced to fight for our lives, and to need such enormous sacrifices from our fellow Israelis! Dear children, I am so sorry that we are a little country surrounded by despicable, hate-filled moral pygmies who – unlike your dear fathers – have no other purpose in life but to kill and be killed. May you always hold them in your hearts and be proud that they were heroes, and you children, are the sons and daughters of heroes. May you grow up to be just like them.

Many of the reservists who have heroically lost their lives saving our people were religious Zionist soldiers, known as “knitted skullcaps” as opposed to the black velvet skullcaps favored by Haredim. There isn’t a religious Zionist school, neighborhood or yeshiva without a fallen soldier in this war. The Horev Yeshiva in Jerusalem has lost four of its graduates, a teacher and two family members of students in the last two weeks alone in Gaza and Lebanon.

Rabbi Avi Goldberg who taught 12th grade in the religious Himmelfarb High school in Jerusalem, where my son studied, leaves behind his wife and eight children. Major Rabbi Aviram Hariv, commander of the 9308th Battalion’s 228 “Alon” bridgade, a resident of Dolev and rabbi at the Dolev girls’ school, was a father of six. Sergeant Major (res.) Shaul Moyal from Karnei Shomron, aged 47, was a father of ten who volunteered to fight. He was also in the “Alon” Brigade, which has many religious soldiers. He too fell during combat in southern Lebanon.

If nothing else, I hope this will finally unite Israelis over the religious-secular divide. If that happens – and it must! – their sacrifice will be doubly blessed.

So, how can we rejoice in our victories when the price, for us, has been so tragically, heartbreakingly, high? But also, how can we not? In their honor and memory, our miraculous victories won at such terrible price, must be lauded.

Just this past Shabbat, we all got an “earthquake warning” on our phones. Turns out that the IDF blew up a kilometer and a half underground tunnel filled with barracks and endless weaponry. A “staging ground” for an invasion of Israel. It took 400 tons of explosives, and triggered an earthquake warning, but it is all now dust.

In the last 24 hours Israel has killed the commander of Hezbollah’s Bint Jagal sector and his replacement.

Then there was the attack on Iran. The Israeli Air Force (the navigators were four young women!) struck a dozen carefully chosen strategic targets in Iran, crippling Iran’s ballistic missile program, its air defenses and even the Taleghan nuclear facilty, a key site of the Amad project to build nuclear warheads. All of our troops came home safely.

Quite an achievement! Con Coughlin, in a major article in the UK Sunday Telegraph said some remarkable things: “After Israel’s strike, Iran’s ailing theocracy may be entering its dying days. The Teheran regime’s tottering weakness is becoming clearer by the day… Irrespective of how Iran may choose to respond to Israel’s latest military assault, the Jewish state’s massive military attack against key Iranian bases could ultimately prove to be the final nail in the Islamic Republic’s coffin…”

Can you imagine?!! Little Israel, which you can hardly see on a map surrounded by the massive bullies of Islamic States, is the only one with the guts and skill to fearlessly show up what is now being called “a paper tiger.”

I’m sure they are aware of this too. But because we are Israelis, and live on faith, some of us are basically hoping they do retaliate in a “make my day” kind of situation where we can finally abandon the strictures of the dying Biden administration at last, doing the job that America should be doing in leading the free world.

I pray so hard for stupid Kamala to implode and take the Obamas (who helped create the Iranian monster with its backing and cash) with her!! If there is any Jew out there voting for her, please know you are hurting Israel. I’m sure you don’t care, but after all our sacrifices, is it too much to ask? I hope that Trump, who isn’t perfect, but is in his own way very brave and resourceful, will be there for us in the White House when we need him, and the world can start looking like a familiar place again.

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