Well, I’m sure all of you have read the headlines about the rescue of Bedouin abductee Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52 years-old, from Rahat, held hostage in the tunnels of Rafah by Hamas since October 7. Alkadi, the father of 11, was working in the fields of a kibbutz when he was abducted.

“Suddenly, I heard Hebrew. I couldn’t believe it,” Alkadi told Israel President Isaac Herzog.

The IDF has cleared for publication the fact that Alkadi’s rescue was not planned. Soldiers were operating in a tunnel in Rafah and came upon him by chance. Alkadi had somehow become separated from his captors – either by escape or because they fled – and made himself known to the Israeli soldiers. He is the first live hostage to be rescued from a Gaza tunnel. The other hostages who were rescued alive were all being kept above ground. He says he had almost nothing to eat the whole time, just bread, and even that not every day.

Alkadi was helicoptered to Soroka Hospital in Beersheva, where he was pronounced to be in good medical condition. Videos of the huge welcome he received from his ecstatic family are filling us all with happiness.

Hamas, who has lost another pawn, is furious. At first, they completely ignored the hostage rescue, and then they came up with a “game plan.” Israeli commandos didn’t rescue him, Hamas declared. We let him go from the goodness of our [black] hearts because he is a fellow Muslim.

What a joke! Too bad for them he speaks Arabic and will be able to tell everyone how Israeli commandos took him out of his prison to safety. Hamas’s sudden declaration of humanity towards their fellow Muslim flies in the face of the fact that they abducted him in the first place, then starved and imprisoned him for almost a year.

A photo of Alkaidi in his hospital bed with his caring, kippah wearing doctor on one side next to his devout Muslim brother is worth a thousand words about what kind of people Israelis are. Not exactly genocidal or apartheid, wouldn’t you say?

Ever since the Temple Mount was visited by unprecedented numbers of Jews this past Ninth of Av, the controversy over the present “status quo” which forbids Jews to pray on the Mount has been raging. Itamar Ben Gvir, the controversial firebrand, even suggested building a synagogue there, to almost universal condemnation from both the Right and the Left. Ultra- Orthodox Jews went so far as to print a notice in Arabic in their newspaper Ye’ted Ne’eman quoting rabbinical authorities who forbid Jews to enter the Mount because of its holiness. On the Left is the mantra that he is courting all hell breaking loose in the Middle East for such a proposal.

In an article in Ynet, Shmuel Munitz writes that since all hell has already broken loose, maybe the time has come for equal prayer rights for Jews on their holiest site?

“It’s a shame that Itamar Ben Gvir became the face of the struggle for Jewish prayers on the Temple Mount. It’s a shame, because it only establishes the stigma according to which going up to the Temple Mount is a practice suitable only for extremists, messianic fantasists or politicians who love provocations. In practice, this is a struggle that every human rights knight should support. In principle, the situation in which the prayer and experience of Jews in the place most sacred to them is an issue that stirs up the political system and the media in Israel is absurd.
“After all, it was already promised in our Declaration of Independence that the State of Israel would guarantee religious freedom to all its citizens, an important and fundamental value in a free democracy. It can only be limited in the case where it clearly conflicts with another important value.
“In the case of the Temple Mount, as we know, the reasoning is security. Defense Minister Yoav Galant, for example, claimed that “challenging the status quo on the Temple Mount is a dangerous, unnecessary and irresponsible act.”
“Quite a few concepts have been shattered in the past year, and maybe it’s time to challenge this concept as well. If a terrorist organization goes on an attack to achieve certain goals, the logical thing for a life-seeking country to do is to convey to it and to others that terrorism does not pay. If instead of freeing thousands of prisoners, masses of terrorists are killed or arrested as a result of the operation – the goal of the terrorist organization is not achieved. If instead of pushing the feet of the Jews from the Temple Mount, the Jewish presence on the Mount only intensifies – this is another failure of Hamas in achieving its goals…There is nothing wrong with thinking about an interfaith complex…The status quo is not a sacred thing. If it is morally flawed and unfair, it can be changed, and the discretion in the matter should be given to the authorities…The only ones who should be removed from the Mount are people who engage in terrorism and endanger public peace there.”

Something to think about…

I love to read. That’s why I become an author. And the last book I read was so heartbreaking, so wonderfully written, so unforgettable, I wanted to bring it to your attention. Since it was in Hebrew, I’ve waited for the English translation to come out. And now it has. “One Day in October: Forty Heroes, Forty Stories” by Yair Agmon and Oriya Mevorach is available here. You will thank me.

By the way, I have no connection whatsoever to this book, so my recommending it is purely an act of kindness.

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