Grandma's army

                                                                                                             A short while ago, Arab terrorists set fire to the Havat Gilad farm in northern Samaria, forcing 100 families to evacuate. Nir Amitai , from kibbutz Lahav in the Negev, cancelled his entire schedule, loaded his car with produce from his farm – honey, olive oil and fresh vegetables – and rushed to help. Nir met a mother with 10 children who had no idea where they would sleep that night. Saw the home of Yael Shevach who had lost her husband in a terror attack, and now also all her memories that went up in flames. But he also saw a spark of hope. A man who l...

  Written in 2013, the world needs reminding, from time to time, what Israel is up against. The entire world has changed dramatically since the 1970’s – a decade which is, for Israel, one of the most traumatic. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 left the country devastated by the loss of 2,600 soldiers. In spite of the astonishing victory against all odds, the country lost faith in its leadership and, with it, a sense of security. [That is perhaps one of the reasons that, in 1977, a right-winged government defeated the impregnable Labour Party for the first time]. Although terrorism has been an ongoing factor since before Israel existed, the 70’s was a nightmare. Palestinian terrorists were sowing terror against Israelis, both on Israeli soil and around the world. The most glaring example was the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, in which eleven members of the team were murdered. In the same year, Ben Gurion Airport became a slaughterhouse, when t...

In 1290 King Edward I expelled all Jews from the Kingdom of England. After the expulsion, there was no overt Jewish community until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. Although Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to England, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656, and allowed to remain. England, in the 19 th century was no exception to the rest of Europe when it came to bigotry and anti-Semitism. Jewish born Benjamin Disraeli had been converted to Christianity, allowing him to pursue a political career, at a time when Jews were barred from Parliament.   Even though he was elected twice as Prime Minister, he was constantly subjected to antisemitic slurs. He was regularly characterized   in cartoons with a hook nose and a stooped posture. [In answer to a personal insult by a member of Parliament, Disraeli wrote in a letter to the  Times : "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honourable ge...