Grandma's army

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 explai...

  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 t...