Grandma's army

  The “Israeli Defense Forces”   is the only army in the world to be named as such. Since its inception, it has never been Israel’s intention   to be the aggressor or to start a war.   Israel is not looking to enlarge its territory, to become an Empire, or to make converts.   There are 56 Islamic countries, 125 predominantly Christian countries - how dare the Jews claim the right to have a country of   their own, and such a big one! People are used to the Jews being helpless, homeless, and defenceless.   That has been our role in the world for the last 2,000 years. For days, the civilized world has been steeped in stories of the unbelievable barbarity perpetrated by Hamas in Israel. And yet, there is still an international political regime, including academia, that romanticises so-called Palestinians and now blame Israelis for being brutalised. How can one rationalise the murder of close to 1,400 individuals, including rape, decapitating babies...

  GRANDMA'S ARMY IN EMOTIONAL DISTRESS Yesterday felt like the longest day in my life. I was   spending   the festival - which is considered the happiest in the Jewish calendar - with my daughter, her husband, son and very pregnant daughter-in-law in Gannei Tal (a moshav down south). Instead of dancing in the synagogue we were being confined to their “safety room”, like prisoners, while continuously being bombarded by the thousands of rockets coming from Gaza. Not long after the first siren woke us all up at 6:30 in the morning my grandson, who was a commanding officer in an elite unit, was called-up. He was gradually joined by his three brothers, one son’s triplets, plus the son and daughter of my other son. With the addition of two of my granddaughters’ husbands. Some are on the border with Gaza and others were sent to the north, where the threat from Hizbullah is always imminent.   Like the Yom Kippur War, the Arabs took Israel completely by surprise. The wa...

“Grandma’s Army” began with seven of my grandchildren in the army at the same time. Since then, we are still “soldiering” on and the original seven have been gradually joined by eight others (all but one in fighting units) all of whom have finished their compulsory service. One of the original seven is still serving, and has been doing so for eight years - so far. After completing an officer’s course, he was given total responsibility in the training of a troop of recruits, and turning them into a unified fighting corps. Not long ago, he was promoted to Major. Most of what his unit   carry out are covert military operations and are strictly confidential. Even though my other grandchildren are no longer regular soldiers, they are still serving in the reserves. Israel has constructed a unique system that relies on a rapid mobilization of large numbers – all well-trained reservists - to complement its regular force. These reserve forces are considered the very backbone of our na...

  Jonathan (Yoni) Netanyahu z”l always felt committed to serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. While Yoni enjoyed his studies at Harvard, in which he excelled, he felt increasingly that his place was not there. Israel was in the midst of fighting a “War of Attrition” against Egypt and Jordan, and of combating terrorism in its towns and cities.  Consequently, he discontinued his studies in philosophy and mathematics at Harvard and returned to Israel to rejoin the army. Soon after, he was appointed commander in chief of the top commando unit in the Israeli military (where his two younger brothers, Benjamin - Israel’s current prime minister - and Ido, also served). He had previously served in the Six Day War and was badly hurt while helping to rescue a fellow soldier who lay wounded deep behind enemy lines. In the same year he commanded a dangerous operation, in which senior Syrian officers were captured and exchanged in return for captive Israeli pilots. The following year,...

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 three Japanese men - who had been recruited by the “Popular Front for the Liberation ...

  The unreasoning hatred in this world to the Jewish people is one of the great mysteries of the human story. It is the oldest social disease and, unfortunately,   it has again reared its ugly head in today’s society. Assimilation has not proven the answer. In Russia, during the last quarter of the 19 th century, a great number of Jews assimilated, many becoming Christians. Anti-Semitisim didn’t disappear but worsened. The use of the term "pogrom" became common in the English language after a large-scale wave of murderous anti-Jewish riots swept through more than 200 towns and villages in south-western Imperial Russia. As a result of the growing anti-Semitism, between three to five million Jews escaped to the west. The doctor and writer, Leon Pinsker,   believed like many others,   that the spreading of Emancipation and humanism would bring an end to anti-Semitism. When the progroms which erupted, were eventually abetted by the government and defended by the ...

  The Foundation “Aliyah Bet” became the code name given to illegal immigration Jews to Mandatory Palestine between 1934 and 1948, most of whom were Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi Germany. It became one of the principle ways of rescuing Jews during World War II. All told, a fleet of 60 ramshackle ships transported more than 60,000 “illegal   immigrants” from European ports between 1946 and 1948 in severely unsafe and dangerous conditions. Immediately after the War of Independence, Aliya Bet was resumed on an ambitious and urgent scale. Its intensification, beyond the objective of rescuing Holocaust survivors from all over Europe, was adopted as a tactic in the organized Jewish resistance in Palestine - designed to end British   rule. Over 32,000 “illegal” immigrants who sailed from post-Nazi Europe for Palestine travelled on vessels bought in the US and manned by American volunteer sailors. The ten American "big ships brought to Palestinian waters...