Today, Sunday, the eve of Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen, falls upon an Israeli people already in mourning for the last six months. Our latest fallen include five soldiers, most of them nineteen years of age, who died defending our country from Gazan barbarians in Rafah. They say the heart expands to encompass love. I know that the same is true of sadness.

Still, there is joy in the idea that our country is independent and has decided, despite criminal pressure from the United States, Europe, Canada, and Great Britain, to continue the war in Gaza until victory. There is joy that the fate of the land of Israel has fallen into the hands of such a magnificent generation, children and grandchildren blessed with strength and faith and courage.

Never have the Jewish people had more to be grateful for than the young people of our own time, who have shown themselves to be a generation of heroes, flying back from long planned and deserved treks to all parts of the world after completing their IDF mandatory service, to join their reservist units and save the lives of their brothers and sisters; who left behind wives, husbands, children, their studies, their girlfriends, and boyfriends, to put on their backpacks and holster their weapons, going into the maelstrom selflessly and fearlessly.

They are there now, doing what must be done to preserve our country from being overrun and destroyed by the degenerate terrorists who are the children and grandchildren of their beastly forebears, responsible for their education and their despicable, hate-filled worldview. Our children –  brought up to love life – against their children, brought up to love death. May a just and compassionate G-d give to each what they are seeking.

Thank you, dear children, for saving the Jewish people in their hour of need; for proving that the Jewish people are blessed with their youth, unlike so many other countries in the world.

One has only to look at the Eurovision, a silly song contest, which Israelis have embraced this year like never before as popularity poll for the Jewish State, doggedly determined to compete and to win despite cat-calls and demonstrations and the hatred of a suddenly 1940’s Europe. Israel’s lovely singer Eden Golan got the second highest number of popular votes, coming in fifth place overall, which delighted Israelis. Take a look at her, then look at the Irish singer, who made openly anti-Israel comments, a Satanist named Bamble Thug!

Ireland, you antisemites, that is your youth, what your culture is producing. No wonder you hate Israel for showing you up. I pity you.

While the war in Rafah has begun in earnest with reportedly 300,000 Gazans fleeing to areas designated for them by the IDF according to leaflets dropped on the civilian population, civilian casualties have been lower than usual.

Israel has so far in this war killed in excess of 30,000 armed Hamas terrorists, and injured twice that number. But there are still battalions of Hamas fighters left, some of them anxious to retake areas once under Israeli control, expanding the war to all of Gaza, not just Rafah. Rocket fire to Israel continues, a rocket landing in a playground in Ashkelon causing considerable damage, but with no loss of human life. As we fight in the South, Hezbollah ferociously attacks our Northern communities , which have been evacuated for months.

As even Joe Biden recently admitted, “a ceasefire is now in the hands of Hamas.” But, as should be clear to all of us by now, Hamas doesn’t want the dying to end. They love death, ours and their own. Don’t you know? They’ve said it often enough. Believe them.

While Israel’s economy reflects the difficulties of the massive defense expenditures, there is reason for optimism in high tech. This year saw Israeli start-ups sold for profits of over 7 billion dollars. Avi Chason, CEO of Startup Nation Central, an NGO that matches Israeli start-ups with investors, is optimistic: “We could have expected a collapse, with the difficulty of reaching Israel, and fifteen percent of the workforce at war. But that didn’t happen. The downturn in investments is similar to what the rest of the world is experiencing.”

When the war is over, our people will go on inventing. Because we are the country blessed with such talented, educated and inventive people. Our people. All the hatred in the world can’t change that.

From Abu Ali Express: “The Gaza Strip is a ‘closed bathtub,’ especially with the IDF sitting on the Rafah crossing. The number of terrorists is finite and every terrorist killed does not return. So too the means of warfare and the terrorist infrastructure. All infrastructure that the IDF destroys in the Gaza Strip subtracts from Hamas’ capacity. Hamas does not have the ability to produce weapons or additional terrorist infrastructure. It has no supplies from the outside. The same is true of the military operatives – there is no training now and no training for new operatives. Israel needs to continue to destroy terrorist infrastructures and eliminate terrorists. The achievements are not lost even if the terrorists move inside the ‘closed bath’ area.

“You need patience. He who has patience wins. He who wants everything quickly plays into the hands of his enemy who has the most patience.”

We have patience. We will mourn our dead; learn our lessons; rejoice in the magnificent generation we have raised that is handing us our country back through their strength, their faith, their sweat and tears.

May the war end soon. May our soldiers and hostages return. And may the lovers of death – Hamas and its adherents all over the world – be erased from the face of the earth.

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