Prayers for Eratz Israel

[RabbiKnife]

Our prayer for the leadership, the soldiers, and the citizens of Israel as they battle the evil unleashed among them.  May God protect and give them victory.

[Sojourner]

Tragic. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Israel. And it's no coincidence that Hamas' attack comes just a few months after Biden unfroze 6 billion dollars in Iranian assets. While I'm sure the family and friends of the 5 hostages released are happy, their freedom comes at the cost of 1,100 innocent people in Israel. Obama paid $425 million apiece for 4 hostages, which seems like a bargain compared to Biden paying out 1.2 billion apiece for five. We should never play the hostage game with dangerous regimes like Iran, as it results in more hostages being taken in hopes of future paydays.

[Fenris]

More than 700 Jews have been killed, thousands  more injured, and more than 100 were taken hostage back into Gaza. There are not enough tears to mourn the tragedy.

My son lives in Jerusalem and is ok, thank God. My cousin's grandchildren had to be evacuated from Sderot by the army.

This is the traditional prayer for IDF.


He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - may He bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Force, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea unto the Jordan River Valley, on the land, in the air, and on the sea.

May the Lord cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our soldiers from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor.

May He lead our enemies under their sway and may He grant them salvation and crown them with victory. And may there be fulfilled for them the verse: For it is the Lord, your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you.

Now let us respond: Amen.

[RabbiKnife]

By the great mercy of God, my baby brother, (that's Colonel Baby Brother to all you civilians), who is the senior US military attache to the US Embassy Annex in Tel Aviv, was scheduled for leave months ago.

He, his wife, and his two children left Tel Aviv Thursday night, less than 24 hours before the cowardly and evil attack on Israel began.  I've talked with him a couple of times since he landed stateside, and they are well.  His communication with his contacts back in Israel ( which are very senior Israeli IDF, government, and unofficially - Mossad - leadership), indicate that although the scope of the intifada is severe, especially as to the kidnappings and hostage taking, there is much going on with IDF and Mossad that you will never hear of in the media that hates Israel so much.  Of course, he can't tell me anything that is not public record or in the news, and has never (and will never) violate his security clearance or say anything even that is public that would put others in danger, but brothers have this understanding in what is said as in what is not said.

So I'll leave it here.  This is not going to end well for Hamas or Hezbollah or their demonic leadership.  Either in Gaza, Dubai, Qatar, Lebanon, Syria, or Iran.  Israel's hand is neither short nor weak.  And the Israelis are, to put it bluntly, pissed.

Despite rumors to the contrary in some ridiculous ultra-right wing conspiracy theorists websites, the Israeli government and military have not declared the Israeli equivalent of "Broken Arrow" and abandoned all those taken hostage.  That's probably the only reason that Gaza is not a smoking pile of volcanic glass at this point.

My brother is not currently begin called back to station during his leave, but he's working the phones pretty hard.  SO the situation, although severe, is not dire enough to require the most senior US leadership and coordination on the ground.  If the Gulfstream shows up in Knoxville, you'll know that it has truly hit the fan.

Prayers indeed for all of those responsible for the safety and security of Israel and its citizens, including our Jewish friends and the large Arab and Christian populations in Israel (which for me means also inside Gaza and the so-called "West Bank."

[RabbiKnife]

More than 700 Jews have been killed, thousands  more injured, and more than 100 were taken hostage back into Gaza. There are not enough tears to mourn the tragedy.

My son lives in Jerusalem and is ok, thank God. My cousin's grandchildren had to be evacuated from Sderot by the army.

This is the traditional prayer for IDF.


He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - may He bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Force, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea unto the Jordan River Valley, on the land, in the air, and on the sea.

May the Lord cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our soldiers from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor.

May He lead our enemies under their sway and may He grant them salvation and crown them with victory. And may there be fulfilled for them the verse: For it is the Lord, your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you.

Now let us respond: Amen.

Amen.

[Sojourner]

Amen.

[Fenris]

By the great mercy of God, my baby brother, (that's Colonel Baby Brother to all you civilians), who is the senior US military attache to the US Embassy Annex in Tel Aviv, was scheduled for leave months ago.

He, his wife, and his two children left Tel Aviv Thursday night, less than 24 hours before the cowardly and evil attack on Israel began.  I've talked with him a couple of times since he landed stateside, and they are well.

I'm glad your brother got out and is well.

Hamas does not understand Israel. They think that can murder some innocents and commit some atrocities, and the Jews will all pack their bags and leave. They don't understand that Israel is the Jewish homeland. They're not going anywhere. They're home. And Israelis are horrified by what has happened. Bu they're not afraid. On the contrary, Hamas is going to learn about the Jewish fighting spirit, which goes back thousands of years.

The one, the only thing that worries me, is that the politicians might pull the plug on an operation before the job is done. I pray that this does not happen.

God bless you all and thank you for your support.

[RabbiKnife]

Bibi has learned the almost fatal errors of Golda and Dyan from 73…. Caught with their pants down but recovered.


IDF and Mossad are in a mucus stronger position than in 73. And the political situation is very different.

Hamas has, as the Defense Minister said, opened the gates of hell and is getting ready to be shoved headlong through the gates.

[Sojourner]

With many saying Israel is responsible for the recent unprovoked and cowardly attack against it, this piece from 2019 is a reminder that historical context is still important with regard to the ongoing Israel-Arab conflict. From the website, AJC. org:

This piece originally appeared in Times of Israel.

Mention history and it can trigger a roll of the eyes.

Add the Middle East to the equation and folks might start running for the hills, unwilling to get caught up in the seemingly bottomless pit of details and disputes.

But without an understanding of what happened in the past, it’s impossible to grasp where we are today — and where we are has profound relevance for the region and the world.

Fifty-two years ago this week, the Six-Day War broke out.

While some wars fade into obscurity, this one remains as relevant today as in 1967. Many of its core issues remain unresolved.

Politicians, diplomats, and journalists continue to grapple with the consequences of that war, but rarely consider, or perhaps are even unaware of, context. Yet without context, some critically important things may not make sense.

First, in June 1967, there was no state of Palestine. It didn’t exist and never had. Its creation, proposed by the UN in 1947, was rejected by the Arab world because it also meant the establishment of a Jewish state alongside.

Second, the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem were in Jordanian hands. Violating solemn agreements, Jordan denied Jews access to their holiest places in eastern Jerusalem. To make matters still worse, they desecrated and destroyed many of those sites.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control, with harsh military rule imposed on local residents.

And the Golan Heights, which were regularly used to shell Israeli communities far below, belonged to Syria.

Third, the Arab world could have created a Palestinian state in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip any day of the week. They didn’t. There wasn’t even discussion about it. And Arab leaders, who today profess such attachment to eastern Jerusalem, rarely, if ever, visited. It was viewed as an Arab backwater.

Fourth, the 1967 boundary at the time of the war, so much in the news these days, was nothing more than an armistice line dating back to 1949 — familiarly known as the Green Line. That’s after five Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948 with the aim of destroying the embryonic Jewish state. They failed. Armistice lines were drawn, but they weren’t formal borders. They couldn’t be. The Arab world, even in defeat, refused to recognize Israel’s very right to exist.

Fifth, the PLO, which supported the war effort, was established in 1964, three years before the conflict erupted. That’s important because it was created with the goal of obliterating Israel. Remember that in 1964 the only “settlements” were Israel itself.

Sixth, in the weeks leading up to the Six-Day War, Egyptian and Syrian leaders repeatedly declared that war was coming and their objective was to wipe Israel off the map. There was no ambiguity in their blood-curdling announcements. Twenty-two years after the Holocaust, another enemy spoke about the extermination of Jews. The record is well-documented.

The record is equally clear that Israel, in the days leading up to the war, passed word to Jordan, via the UN and United States, urging Amman to stay out of any pending conflict. Jordan’s King Hussein ignored the Israeli plea and tied his fate to Egypt and Syria. His forces were defeated by Israel, and he lost control of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. He later acknowledged that he had made a terrible error in entering the war.

Seventh, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded that UN peacekeeping forces in the area, in place for the previous decade to prevent conflict, be removed. Shamefully, without even the courtesy of consulting Israel, the UN complied. That left no buffer between Arab armies being mobilized and deployed and Israeli forces in a country one-fiftieth, or two percent, the size of Egypt — and just nine miles wide at its narrowest point.

Eighth, Egypt blocked Israeli shipping lanes in the Red Sea, Israel’s only maritime access to trading routes with Asia and Africa. This step was understandably regarded as an act of war by Jerusalem. The United States spoke about joining with other countries to break the blockade, but, in the end, regrettably, did not act.

Ninth, France, which had been Israel’s principal arms supplier, announced a ban on the sale of weapons on the eve of the June war. That left Israel in potentially grave danger if a war were to drag on and require the resupply of arms. It was not until the next year that the U.S. stepped into the breach and sold vital weapons systems to Israel.

And finally, after winning the war of self-defense, Israel hoped that its newly-acquired territories, seized from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, would be the basis for a land-for-peace accord. Feelers were sent out. The formal response came on September 1, 1967, when the Arab Summit Conference famously declared in Khartoum: “No peace, no recognition, no negotiations” with Israel.

More “no’s” were to follow. Underscoring the point, in 2003, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. was quoted in The New Yorker as saying: “It broke my heart that [PLO Chair] Arafat did not take the offer (of a two-state deal presented by Israel, with American support, in 2001). Since 1948, every time we’ve had something on the table, we say no. Then we say yes. When we say yes, it’s not on the table anymore. Then we have to deal with something less. Isn’t it about time to say yes?”

Today, there are those who wish to rewrite history.

They want the world to believe there was once a Palestinian state. There was not.

They want the world to believe there were fixed borders between that state and Israel. There was only an armistice line between Israel and the Jordanian-controlled West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.

They want the world to believe the 1967 war was a bellicose act by Israel. It was an act of self-defense in the face of blood-curdling threats to vanquish the Jewish state, not to mention the maritime blockade of the Straits of Tiran, the abrupt withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces, and the redeployment of Egyptian and Syrian troops. All wars have consequences. This one was no exception. But the aggressors have failed to take responsibility for the actions they instigated.

They want the world to believe post-1967 Israeli settlement-building is the key obstacle to peacemaking. The Six-Day War is proof positive that the core issue is, and always has been, whether the Palestinians and larger Arab world accept the Jewish people’s right to a state of their own. If so, all other contentious issues, however difficult, have possible solutions. But, alas, if not, all bets are off.

And they want the world to believe the Arab world had nothing against Jews per se, only Israel, yet trampled with abandon on sites of sacred meaning to the Jewish people.

In other words, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, dismissing the past as if it were a minor irritant at best, irrelevant at worst, won’t work.

Can history move forward? Absolutely. Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 powerfully prove the point. At the same time, though, the lessons of the Six-Day War illustrate just how tough and tortuous the path can be—and are sobering reminders that, yes, history does matter.

David Harris is the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

[Fenris]

Hamas carried out a pogrom against Jewish civilians. They murdered whoever they could find. Men, women, children, the elderly. Even infants in their cribs.

I don't want to see the pictures and videos. But I must watch them. To see, to know, to bear witness.

Hamas must be obliterated.

[Athanasius]

Hamas carried out a pogrom against Jewish civilians. They murdered whoever they could find. Men, women, children, the elderly. Even infants in their cribs.

I don't want to see the pictures and videos. But I must watch them. To see, to know, to bear witness.

Hamas must be obliterated.

It's been awful to see those things. Hamas deserve nothing less than annihilation.

[Cloudwalker]

There's been an international petition started calling for a stop to civilian targeting.  I signed it but it's useless.  Hamas doesn't care about public opinion.

[ProDeo]

The end of the story will be that Israel gets all the blame, as usual.

[IMINXTC]

Yes, heads commence to talking while one glaring question undercuts all the talk of retribution (which is due). How did the highly regarded system of Israeli security, including U.S. intelligence and a very costly Gaza wall fail to intercept such a massive build-up?

And has Iran-supporting Putin, whose double-sided, self-incriminating mouth has also opened in the guise of statesman, also entertained ambitious exploits in the region?  All speculations must be considered.

Hamas stormed through that useless wall like a squadron of hell's angel look-aliikes while neither Kibbutz nor music-festival were adequately guarded.

An highly uncharacteristic lapse of security which needs to be honestly addressed.

[Fenris]

The end of the story will be that Israel gets all the blame, as usual.

Israelis don't care at this point. Hamas has to go.