Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda vegetable market, always one of the liveliest places in Israel’s capital, was pitifully sparsely populated on Thursday, far worse than anything seen at the peak of COVID Was. By evening, many stalls were closed, and others were pulling down their metal shutters, containing large quantities of unsold products, and by Sunday morning, after Shabbat, when the market is scheduled to reopen. Most of it is likely to be unusable.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!In the world, much of the international community is currently engaged in an obscene debate over whether the Hamas monsters, who two weeks ago murdered and beheaded our citizens inside our homes and communities, inside our sovereign lands, Burned, raped and kidnapped, whether they should be considered or not. Terrorists.” Most of the international community is preferring to give credence to the evidence-free Hamas claim that Israel bombed the Gaza hospital, rather than the IDF’s fact-based conclusion that a missile from the Islamic Jihad terrorist group was to blame.
But here, inside Israel, right now, despite all our outrage and disgust at the misperception and misrepresentation of what is going on, we are busy with the Army’s imminent mission to send ground forces into Gaza to make sure That Hamas could never harm us. again.
The Israelis have been evacuated from the south. Now they are being expelled from parts of the north, as Hezbollah is gradually escalating the conflict there.
Rocket fire from Gaza continues unabated – painful for central Israel, which still has little time to build safe rooms and bomb shelters and the generally reliable protection of the Iron Dome defense system; Potentially fatal to the south, where there is little time to flee to find safety. A large portion of the few shoppers in Mahane Yehuda on Thursday were from the south, enjoying the opportunity to get out in a relatively safe environment.
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This country is more peaceful than I ever imagined. Right now, I can only hear the sound of birds chirping in my entire neighbourhood. Struggling with traffic jams, Israel’s roads have been empty for decades. Shops are operating with very few employees, closing early, not opening at all – many employees have been called up to the IDF. Every day more unwatchable documents emerge about the horrors committed by Hamas against our children, parents and grandparents. Every day brings more funerals.
Everyone here knows not only one or more of the 1,400 Israelis who were massacred or abducted by Hamas in southern Israel on and after October 7, but also the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in our standing army and our called-up reserves. Also knows one or more of the. One is about to enter Hamastan in the IDF – a hell of badly boarded up houses, underground terror tunnels, gunmen dressed as civilians and devil knows what else.
We all know that our people’s army will do exactly what Hamas – an Islamic extremist terrorist army that has sworn to destroy us – wants the IDF to do: walk, eyes wide, into a trap. And we all know that Hamas was greatly underestimated by our political and military leadership before October 7.
We greatly appreciate the solidarity and practical support we are receiving from US President Joe Biden and his administration. His visit warmed our souls. He spoke like a grandfather who knows his family is in real trouble, expressing personal empathy based on his own experiences of loss. And he promised us: “The United States is not going anywhere either. We will stand with you. We will walk with you in those dark days, and we will walk with you in the good days to come. And they will come.”
will they? From Biden’s mouth to God’s ears.
We know that this war will take time and will cause even more terrible losses – on both sides, including in Gaza where civilians cannot easily escape the war, and in many cases, we are told, will be prevented from evacuating by Hamas. Used to be.
How do you destroy a huge, barbaric terrorist army from its home turf, which is using civilians as human shields? Two weeks after 2,500 Hamas killers crossed the border, we’re still not sure we’ve gotten them all out of Israel. Now the IDF is trying to eliminate thousands of them from Gaza.
All this while Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon, seeks to engage the IDF in a war on another front, the West Bank simmers, Iran waits, and the international community proves largely incapable of reflecting Biden’s moral clarity. Has been and can be expected to make noise. Even more forcefully against us.
We know our soldiers are brave, good and motivated. We see them encouraging each other in “staging areas” around Gaza. We hope they are properly equipped. We know that the IDF commando units and the Air Force are unique. Morale is high.
They know the country is behind them. They Are Country. Israel’s fate is in their hands, and in the hands of commanders who, we can only hope, have rediscovered their potential.
We hold our breath.
We all know that the mission must be successful. Because we have to be able to live in safety on our little piece of land, and, as of October 7, we are not sure we will be able to do that.
And because, as Biden also said, we know what happens to Jews everywhere without Israel. In fact, we may see it happening again.
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