The age of miracles. Young girls in Iran lighting – sans hijab – a cigarette with the burning photo of the not-so-Supreme Leader. America warning the mullahs that mass slaughter will be answered by military intervention (or did I and millions of others get Trump’s hints wrong?). But as usual, in our holy little country, nothing is simple. Flat out rejoicing is put on hold as the Iranian beast, hopefully in its death throws, threatens to bomb Israel. We are not taking this lightly. Many institutions are holding emergency security meetings to plan for the eventuality of such a nightmare scenario. I myself am at an Airbnb in Jerusalem wondering where the shelter is in the building.

As much as the Western media want to paint this Iranian uprising as a cost of living protest, we, who have been watching the Iranians for decades, know that it is not. The Iranians, who are not Muslim by history and culture despise their Arab Islamic imperialist conquerors, long to break free to live a culturally, and religiously authentic life.

I bet most people don’t know that 50,000 mosques in Iran have closed down for lack of participants. In the current uprising, regime outlets admit that dozens of mosques have been set on fire. Unofficially, hundreds.

One has to wonder if the uprising against the mullahs will have wider implications for the targets of Islamic imperialism in the West. Will women in Europe find their courage and their voices against the Islamic interlopers that came inside the Trojan Horse of unvetted immigration, the “poor refugees?” Or will weaklings like quisling Keir Starmer allow Islamic fanatics to install themselves as the rulers of Great Britain, creating decades of suffering for the British until the natives finally get pushed to the point the Iranians are at now?

We have our own problem with religious fanatics who are getting people killed. The heads of respected yeshivot and other rabbinical institutions have been going completely overboard with the anti-Israel rhetoric relating to the just and necessary drafting of young men in the haredi world. They talk about the poor “yeshiva students” making it sound like the Israeli government is dragging boys out of study halls and into jail. Actually, the focus has been on those draft-age men who dropped out of the yeshiva a while ago and are simply hanging around. Those are the ones the heads of the haredi world refuse categorially to allow to fulfill their military responsibilities. Why? Because they fear – and not without reason – that allowing members of their congregations (cults?) access to the outside world in the form of military training and relationships with their peers outside the bubble controlled by the rabbis, would lure them away from the lifestyle the rabbis want to perpetuate, with its total disconnection from the real world in which people actually have to work for a living, instead of subsisting on government subsidies and charitable handouts.

This week that struggle took a tragic turn. Yoseph Eisenthal, a 14 year-old haredi yeshiva boy who was encouraged by rabbis to join an anti-government demonstration in which roads were blocked and a poor bus driver pelted with rocks, was dragged beneath the bus as the frightened driver tried to beat a hasty escape from the crowd. His unnecessary and heartbreaking death should be a redline for all the “adults” in that world trying to score political points that will shore up the status quo and let them continue their lifestyle. I write this as the grandmother of two yeshiva boys, both of whom understand that they will have to have military training and serve their country when called upon to do so.

Let us hope that this young boy’s death will not have been in vain.