Grandma's army

Perhaps the most daring rescue ever attempted was the Entebbe mission carried out in 1976 in Uganda, 4,000 kms. from Israel. 98 Jewish and Israeli hostages were rescued by an Israeli commando squad, and brought back to Israel. Tragically, apart from the three hostages who never made it back, was the leader and hero of the mission IDF officer Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of the present Prime Minister. Another daring mission took place very recently when the said Prime Minister exposed documents containing over 1,000 kilograms of nuclear information - captured by Israeli commandos - from the most secret and well fortified archives in Iran.   S peaking of Iran – the world’s most dangerous terrorist power - another very different rescue was carried out from there by Israelis in 1979. In the Bible, a man named Noah built an ark to save two animals of every species during a major flood that engulfed the planet. A more recent tale centres on a mission to reintro...

Apart from Nir (see blog 34), two of his three brothers are also in the Reserves ( miluim). Omer served as a squad commander of recruits   in the Givati regiment during his army service, and was later assigned as commander of a   squad dealing with anti-tank missiles. He was in the middle of his service when his father was murdered. Six months later they lost their home in Gush Katif when the whole of the Gush was evicted. Unfortunately, it was the army which had to carry out the eviction. Omer refuses to speak about it. He was certainly not the only soldier whose home was in Gush Katif at the time and faced with such a terrible dilemma. When Omer is called up for miluim, he is responsible for a specific sector on the Gaza Strip border (an area where he once lived). Apart from his regular miluim   - whenever there is trouble in the area an emergency call goes out to the Reserves, which has to be answered to immediately. Like his father and three brothers, Assaf ...

Today is “Jerusalem Day” and I am taking advantage   of my blog to quote excerpts from a moving article I once received concerning Jerusalem. It was written by Eliezer Whartman after the Six Day War, in memory of his son Moshe z”l who fell in a clash with terrorists in Lebanon in 1975. “I am not a creature from another planet, as you seem to believe. I am a Jerusalemite – like yourselves, a man of flesh and blood. I am a citizen of my city, an integral part of my people. There was a Jerusalem before there was a New York. When Berlin, Moscow, London and Paris were forest and swamp, there was a thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which you nations have rejected ever since you established yourselves – a humane moral code. Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightening. Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, fought off waves of heathen would-be conquerors, bled and died on the battlements, hurled th...