Let me begin by wishing all of my readers a very happy and healthy new year. This past year was filled with many wonderful joys and several sorrows, but we thank Hashem for another year of life.
Living in Israel is an exciting, stressful, wonderful, yet depressing experience. There is nowhere else in the world, according to our Torah, that Hashem commanded us to live. As I often mention, if more Orthodox Jews would come to live here, Israel would be a better and very different country where we could outvote the irreligious and anti-religious residents.
The paradox of living in a strong Jewish state where Jewish leaders fear to anger the non-Jewish world and allow a band of Muslim enemies -supported by their fellow Arabs – to terrorize us, is difficult to understand. All who spread the fictitious allegation, in both Israel and the U.S., that you cannot stop terrorism, are foolish cowards. They are, unfortunately, not willing to recognize their Muslim enemy or pay the price to stop Muslim terror. These leaders seem to forget that the price of ignoring terror is greater terror.
This time the Kassams hit a little too close to home. My grandson, Amiad, was in a tent at the base where two Kassam rockets fell, injuring 69 “Atuda” (R.O.T.C.) students doing their last day of basic training. The Israeli Army “Atuda” program chooses the brightest young men to attend university at army expense, and they then graduate as officers in the Israel Defense Forces. Each unit of trainee soldiers sleeps in tents surrounding an empty tent used for meals. The Erev Rosh Hashanah miracle was that the rocket fell directly on this empty tent. Sixty-nine young boys were injured in the blast, but it could have been, God forbid, much worse.
The early morning phone call awakened us and, thank God, Amiad was unhurt. A young Israeli genius, Ari Dorfman, who turned down a full scholarship to a prestigious American university in order to serve in the Israeli army, was seriously wounded by shrapnel in his head. He has already undergone several operations in an attempt to save his life. Another young soldier’s life was saved by an operation to remove several pieces of shrapnel from his heart. A third soldier lost his leg, while others sustained light to moderate injuries.
I just loved that day’s headline in the Israeli newspapers in which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proclaimed that, “We will not allow the Arab terrorists to thwart our peace plans.” I guess the prime minister was hinting to the Arab enemy, “Kill our boys, but we will still make gestures for peace by freeing hundreds of Arab terrorists from our prisons, even if our kidnapped boys are not returned to us.”
I have lived in Israel for almost 35 years, and I just love living in this country. Yet I still cannot understand the mentality of fear by the current secular Israeli government leadership and their insistence on committing national suicide, no matter what the cost. Every Arab leader admits that, in the long run, he has but one goal – the annihilation of the Jews in Israel. Why can’t our leaders understand that Arab goal and stop acting so dense? It does not minimize Israel’s problem to say that the U.S. and Europe act in a similar fashion toward their own Muslim threats. Isn’t it time that Israel and the Western world wake up and seriously fight to win against this Muslim terror?
May the new year bring an end to Muslim terror and bring real peace to the world!
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