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THE SANCTITY OF LIFE

Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer, who has more experience in war and terrorism than almost anybody stated:   “The only reason Israel goes to war is to defend itself. And it has to defend itself because it is surrounded by countries, and armed groups, that want to destroy it”. The IDF is an army of defense because the primary tenet of Judaism is the sanctity of life. The Jews are not wired to be killers or avengers. That is why, even when facing an implacable enemy, we make every effort to minimize the killing of civilians One of the most outstanding Jews who exemplified the sanctity of life was  Rabbi Yekusiel Halberstam, whose wife and eleven children were murdered in Auschwitz.    A fellow inmate of the brutal concentration camp recounted the discussion the Rabbi  had with a German officer.The officer told him, “Every morning you Jews bless G-d for not making you gentiles. Now look who’s more important – you or me?” The Rabbi explained to him that we Jews
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GRANDMA'S ARMY AT WAR - II

  My youngest son, Yoni, has five sons, three of whom are triplets. Their oldest son is studying abroad, but the other four were all called up at the beginning of the war. Ido functioned as a team commander in a Reserves corps whose role was to guard and navigate logistics for farmers in the settlements surrounding Gaza. Farmers, who returned to work in areas adjacent to the fence that were threatened, until recently, by terrorists. The corps were also guarding against terrorist infiltration in the area. Aviad, the oldest of the triplets (by five minutes) wrote: “I have been serving until now in the Alexandroni Reserve’s brigade of the Golani regiment. On Simchat Torah we were sent up north to guard the border in case Hezbollah, like Hamas, would try to infiltrate into Israel. Our brigade was situated on a border kibbutz. We prepared ourselves, not only against infiltration but also against missile attacks. The settlements are in constant danger from anti-tank missiles that the H
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GRANDMA'S ARMY AT WAR - I

  My oldest daughter, Simcha, has four sons in the Reserves, plus her son-in-law: Her oldest son, Nir, is a Major in the Givati commandos. He was on his way to volunteer at 11:00 a.m. on October 7 th , before his call-up papers arrived. His present service is connected to Intelligence activities and is not for   the public ear. Omer, from the Givati Battalion, also went straight to his army base on the 7 th of October, before his call-up papers arrived two days later. Givati forces are in charge of combatting terrorism in the Gaza Strip area His first assignment was as Deputy Commander of the Forward Command Squad. Because of chronic back problems, he was transferred to the Battalion’s War Room where he is part of a small team. He monitors orders between the Battalions and Brigades, deals with problems of the ground forces in his command, and records the day’s military activities. Assaf wrote: “At 6 a.m. on Tuesday, October 7 th , my wife Deni left for her work as a nurse in the
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GRANDMA'S ARMY AT WAR

  Six-and-a-haIf years ago I began to write a blog “Grandma’s Army”, as I had seven grandchildren serving in the army at the same time.   Little did I dream that today, that number would jump to seven + ten, Apart from two in the regular army, all the rest are in the Reserves. Both of my sons, who are over 60 years-old, are in army uniform again. They have volunteered to drive army trucks for transport purposes all over the country, after taking a special driving course. Since I began this blog, Azriel and his wife have returned to live in their home on the moshav. They had been evacuated since the beginning of the war, since their home is in the “Gaza envelope”. Azriel has four children and one son-in-law in the army since the beginning. His officer daughter, Adi was called up to the War room of the Gaza Brigade on the second day of the war: “When the first Givati ground forces of the regular army entered Gaza, I knew that my fiancé, Hillel, was amongst them serving as an offi
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THE HEAVENS WERE WEEPING

  Two days ago, I stood with my family, and former residents of Gush Katif in the pouring of rain, at the graveside of my son-in-law, Gideon Rivlin ×–"ל . 19 years ago, he was murdered by terrorists in Gush Katif. Gideon’s youngest son, Gilead was one of the speakers: “I began to write, but had no idea in which direction the text would lead me. What should I speak about? On the grief, the war and death? Or on the new life and about our Alma?   At Alma”s birth I was confronted by a whirlpool of feelings because of this dissonance. A moment ago, I was at my army base preparing my   soldiers and equipment for going into Gaza. Suddenly Noa phones. I leave everything and travel straight   to the hospital.    I am sitting in the hospital and Alma is sleeping peacefully on my chest when, at the same time, I read on my cellphone of one soldier killed and others wounded. This dissonance has accompanied me for 19 years. Since you were killed I live and function but still feel your lo
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BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE - I

At the height of the election campaign in 1977, the Labour Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, visited the first moshav (Netzer Hazani) to be set up in Gush Katif.  In a symbolic gesture, Rabin affixed a mezuzah at the entrance to the home of the Yefet family and declared: “This is a big day for the State and the settlement movement, a day which symbolizes the foundation of our attachment to the region which, since the Six-day War, has become an inseparable part of the State and its security.” Nine years later, when Rabin was Minister of Defense in the National United Government Peres-Shamir, he made a return visit to Netzer Hazani and declared, almost word-for-word, the same speech he had made in 1977. When the Herut party won the 1977 elections for the first time, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, had to uproot close to twenty young settlements in the framework of the Camp David Accords. However he strongly opposed the proposal to return Gaza to Egypt. He promised that the precedent wh
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BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

  The area known today as the Gaza Strip was allocated in the 1947 UN Partition Plan for a prospective Arab state. Its borders were based on the ceasefire line that ended the fighting after the 1948 War of Independence. The failure of further diplomatic efforts to end the Arab-Israeli conflict turned, what was intended to be a temporary armistice line, into a de-facto boundary, and the Gaza Strip into a distinct geopolitical entity. L ocked in one of the world’s most densely populated areas, along with unsettled political status, Gaza has always been a focal point of the Israeli-Arab conflict. It has also been, perhaps, the most controversial and   divisive issue in Israel itself. In the 1956 Suez War, David Ben-Gurion, who was then the Defense Minister, ordered the IDF to capture the Gaza Strip and most of Sinai. His own Chief of Staff, Moshe Dayan, opposed the plan to take over Gaza. Because of international pressure, Ben-Gurion felt forced to give up his plan to incorporate th
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