As you can see, I have changed the title of my weekly summary of what’s going on in Israel, because, as you can also see, it is no longer just a war in Gaza.

This war came as a surprise to all of us. As late as Thursday, we were still shopping and preparing food for Sabbath guests – our granddaughter and her husband and her two babies, an 18 month-old and a nearly 3 month-old.

The sirens Thursday night came as a shock, as they always do. There is really no way to prepare mentally that someone who doesn’t know you is launching deadly ballistic missiles and drones at you hoping to kill you and yours. While Israel believes in precision targeting of combatants and military sites and weapons, not so our enemies. Hamas butchers came over the border like the vicious, mindless savages they are brutally torturing, raping and murdering anything that moved – grandmothers, babies, and everything in between. Even pets!

We rethought our invitation to our precious family. The challah and cakes had already been baked. A mountain of food was resting in the refrigerator. But would it be safe for them to leave home and travel from Jerusalem to Zichron Yaakov? What would they do with the babies if a siren went off when they were on the highway? In the end, we said, we love you, but no. Stay home.

Then, Friday afternoon, the sirens stopped. We were told it was okay not to be near a protected space. They called me again, wanting to come, until finally their longing and mine converged, convincing us both (a bit recklessly) that it would be okay.

The almost two year-old took everyone’s mind off the situation, and the adorable baby kept us smiling. In our area, there was only one siren Friday night, and none the whole day Saturday. But after the Sabbath, seeing dire predictions of heavy impending rocket fire, we convinced them to spend another night instead heading home immediately.

It was a good thing, because the sirens went off. But unlike Zichron, in Jerusalem the sirens went off and kept going off. So they were still better off with us. The two year-old was put to sleep in her crib in the shelter, and when the siren went off, we joined her, the baby carried sleeping in her mother’s arms. And there we were, three generations: children, grandchildren and great-great grandchildren of Auschwitz survivors waiting for the bombs of Hitler’s heirs to land. It proved that the hatred was as virulent and deadly as ever. New life had been breathed into the old Nazi blood libels by people too stupid to remember history or understand the truth. Caught up with slogans and catch words, they were too stupid to see that the “Free Palestine” movement was simply the latest Islamic colonialist project, this one intent on stealing the land of the Jews and polluting it with the religion created by a primitive, blood-thirsty, desert warlord.

Early in the war, Abu Ali conducted a survey among 22,000 subscribers asking them how they felt about the war against Iran. The choices were either afraid or happy. Eighty-seven percent said happy. That’s right. Sitting in a sealed room waiting to be blasted to bits, we were still happy that our brave little country had finally taken steps to thwart the mullahs plans to kill all nine million of us with an atom bomb.

While I see many things online about how Israel is doing this for the world – which might even be true – I can say with absolute certainty that I personally couldn’t care less what happens to “the world.” No. Every bomb the IDF drops, every fighter plane that takes off, every Israeli soldier on the battlefield is doing it for every man, woman and child in Israel, and for the generations that preceded us, murdered in the Holocaust because they had no one to fight for them.

I will say with total honesty that I am prepared to give my life, to have my home blown to bits, if it will mean that Iran will not have an atom bomb to kill the nine million Jews of Israel. It would be an honor.

And as I cradled the soft head of the tiny baby who is my great-granddaughter in that bomb shelter waiting for bombs to fall, or for the all clear to sound, I felt confident that the Jewish people in the land of Israel would protect her, and she would grow up a free, educated, faithful Jew with children of her own. That with her, would come a new generation of remarkable people with the ability to defend themselves even as they live creative lives filled with real values, honesty and faith; people who are nothing like those who hate them. Even now, our enemies are on their way to becoming rancid dust, with not a single accomplishment of any value.

As we emerged from the shelter to the photos of devastation in Bat Yam and Tamra, civilian areas targeted by the cowardly Iranians whose leader is cowering in some dirt hole, we learned that sixty one buildings had been destroyed in Bat Yam. The photos reminded me of the twin towers, or Gaza. Yet, despite the damage, miraculously, hundreds of people emerged unscathed from bomb shelters because civil defense preparedness actually works.

Ten were killed, including two children, people who had not been in shelters. It is a horrifying loss. But there is no turning back.

I pray for the IDF to continue its sacred work of freeing the world from the new genocidal Nazis, the Ayatollahs and their ilk. They created buffers of terrorist groups to be their proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Houthis, etc. and one by one we have peeled them off and come face to face with the puppet-master, Iran. So far, we have decimated Iran’s leadership by a clever IDF ruse which took them out as they gathered together. Their weapons have been depleted, some of their oil refineries and gas fields set on fire. Their nuclear facilities have been damaged, their evil scientists murdered in their beds. Still, it is far from over.

But whatever sacrifices will be asked of us Israelis to free nine million Jews from the threat of annihilation by nuclear bombs, we are willing to pay. I may not be young enough to be a soldier, but each time I listen to the instructions of the home front command and keep myself and my loved ones safe, I am contributing to the victory of our armed forces.

I fully expect that tonight the bombardment will be worse. That we will be huddled in the small, dark spaces of our shelters for many hours. But we are prepared. We know it’s coming. We are ready to play our small part until victory.

May God bless us all.