Grandma's army

  Knowing the extraordinary measures the IDF will take to protect innocent civilians, Hamas deliberately positioned its military assets among the civilian population. They hid weapons in tunnels under schools and hospitals, placed rocket launchers alongside apartment buildings, then forced those civilians to stay in areas they knew would be attacked. They also instructed their people to report the lie that every Gazan killed was a civilian, even if they were actually fighters. Numerous Internet sites show Palestinians elaborately staging sniper victims and smashed ambulances, among other phony horrors. One of my grandsons who was a pilot and an expert on drones is now a farmer living on a moshav only seven kilometers from Gaza. Since he finished his nine and a half years of compulsory service in the air-force he does reserve duty one day every week (like every ex-pilot), operating drones over Gaza. The following are his words, written some time ago, but just as relevant today a...

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 preceden...

The Gaza envelope   ‎   (“Otef Aza” in Hebrew), refers to the region of  Israel  surrounding the  Gaza Strip , to the depth of a few miles (7 kms.), mostly agricultural settlements such as  Kibbutzim  and  Moshavim . These Confrontation-line Communities compromise of   approximately 55 settlements, with the addition of the small town of Sderot. Since the  Second Intifada , and especially since Israel  withdrew unilaterally from all settlements and bases in Gaza  in 2005, the communities in the area surrounding the Gaza strip have been suffering from incessant  terrorist attacks - such as infiltration attempts,  mortar  shells and  Qassam rockets  . 13 years ago, Israel withdrew from Gaza and transferred the entire coastal territory to the Palestinian Authority. In 2007 Hamas violently seized Gaza from Abbas and the PA and has since initiated or provoked three major conflicts with Israel. For ...

Israel has been continually provoked and battered by its enemies since  long   before becoming a State in 1948.   In just one of many examples: In the 1920’s, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, incited pogroms against the returning Jews by claiming falsely that the Jews intended to destroy al-Aksa. Virtually the same words are being used today by the mufti’s contemporary leader, Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the PLO. In the 60’s and 70’s, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (before the Six-day War in 1967), specialised in attacking airports, airplanes, schools, and public events. By the 1990’s, Hamas focused on suicide bombs in buses and cafes.                   We are battling on all fronts.  While both my grandson (a commander in an   elite air-force unit)      and granddaughter (an arms instructor), are serving in the IDF , their father an...

Simcha was devastated as she had to both support her five children and to create a new home in a completely unfamiliar and unstable environment, facing an uncertain future. We were not aware of the great toll it took on her physical and mental health as she put on such a brave front. It was only when we discovered that she was suffering from malnutrition (she lost 11 kilo) that steps were taken to boost her both physically and psychologically. All the children suffered traumas which have repercussions - until today. The only bright spot was the warm and unstinting support she received from her community all of whom stayed together, the strong helping the weak. The members of the moshav who had been working outside in various jobs were able to continue to support their families. The majority, who were farmers had no land to work on, even if they would have had the necessary will, stamina and ability to start all over again. Also many of them had been employed in the Gush with no ...

In 199 5 , Israel disengaged from 85% of Gaza and 100% of its population living there. The disengagement created the largest terrorist base in the world, led/harboured by PLO graduates of terrorist camps in Yemen, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon and Tunisia The disengagement was interpreted, by terrorists, as a retreat from the role-model of countering terrorism (Israel), and a reward to the role-model of terrorism (PLO/PA). It has inspired Islamic terrorism, which also threatens pro-US Arab regimes. The day immediately after the disengagement, the nine thousand Jews from Gush Katif and Northern Shomron, found themselves scattered at random in hotels and youth hostels, with no idea of what their next steps would be. No strategy was planned to re-settle or re-integrate them. The compensation packages significantly undervalued their assets, and hardly covered basic living expenses during the lengthy period of unemployment. Most had to use some of the compensation monies to pay off their m...

On January 12 th 2005 a terrible tragedy struck our family – our beloved son-in-law, Simcha’s husband Gideon, was murdered by terrorists. Since the Israeli Defense Forces were responsible for the defense of settlements in the Gaza strip, Gideon had been driving in an army jeep to determine where to build a security fence at one of the settlements - Morag. While they were traveling in the area of the greenhouses around which the fence was scheduled to be built, the jeep was suddenly blown up by a roadside bomb which was detonated by two terrorists. Gideon, who was driving, was killed outright and the vice battalion commander who was sitting next to him lost his leg. The two young 19 year-old soldiers sitting at the back were miraculously physically unharmed but severely traumatized. Gideon’s oldest son, Nir, who worked together with his father and was supposed to be with him at the time, was held up and didn’t accompany him to Morag. To compound the tragedy, in August of the ...

GUSH KATIF – II Gush Katif – 10 years old Since Gush Katif was planned as a strategic buffer between Israel and Egypt, people were given incentives to join and were offered a small house (not yet built) and a greenhouse. Ganei Tal , which Simcha (my first-born) and her husband, Gideon , decided to join, was the second moshav to be built there. Since the houses had not yet been built the other members, who were all married and lived elsewhere, had to leave their families in their homes at the beginning and lived together as bachelors in one building, in order to be able to start work in their greenhouses. Simcha and Gideon, who were newly-weds, started their married life living in an old caravan and turned it into a home - although Gideon was so tall that his feet stuck out of the “bedroom” window! Their next “home” was an old bus from the time of the British mandate which Gideon shlepped from the Tel-Aviv old ...

Jews and their Israelite ancestors have lived in Gaza since Biblical times. A historic Jewish community existed in  Gaza City  prior to its expulsion by the British, for safety reasons, during the infamous 1929 riots by the city's Arabs. Land for the village of  Kfar Darom  was purchased in the 1930s and settled in 1946. It was evacuated following an Egyptian siege in the  1948 Arab-Israeli War . Gush Katif began in 1968, when  Yigal Allon  presented an initiative for the founding of two  paramilitary settlements in the center of the Gaza Strip. He viewed the breaking of the continuity between the northern and southern Arab settlements as vital to Israel's security in the area, which had been captured the previous year in the 1967  Six-Day War . In 1970, Kfar Darom was re-established as the first of many Israeli agricultural villages in the area. Allon's idea was ultimately designed with five key areas slated for Israeli presenc...