27 Tishrei 5779
6 October 2018
Photo of the Day
A photo from the Gaza border yesterday. This is what our soldiers and citizens face everyday. Note that all the fires set by Palestinian terrorists are producing massive clouds of smoke that are blowing into Israel–not into Gaza.
The News On The Israeli Street
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
On the Gaza border:
There were widespread attacks overnight along the border involving an estimated 20,000 Palestinians, some of whom breached the border and were then repelled, and some of whom met their timely demise.
We awoke here in Ashdod this morning to the acrid smell of the smoke which is blanketing the city as fires continue burning in numerous locations 25 km south of us along the Gaza border.
In Judea and Samaria:
Aside from the daily “rock” and Molotov attacks, major arson terrorism occurred at night. Security cameras captured Palestinian terrorists setting fire to four chicken houses in Beit Lechem Hagalilit (Bethlehem of the Galilee).
More than 40,000 chickens were incinerated.
An amazing reunion took place on Thursday . . .
It was a reunion of one of the most renowned fighting groups of the Israel Defense Forces–“Tiger” Battalion 82 of the 7th Armored Tank Brigade.
Members of the unit today.
The 7th Brigade is the oldest armored brigade in the IDF having first fought in the battle for Latrun in 1948 during which it suffered 139 casualties.
In case you are unfamiliar with the Tiger unit, the soldiers in it fought and won some of the most vicious battles of the Yom Kippur War—especially on the Golan Heights where they were vastly outnumbered by Syrian tanks.
At the end of the Yom Kippur War.
What was so remarkable about the unit during the Yom Kippur War?
Zero wounded. Zero fatalities.
Let me repeat that.
Zero wounded. Zero fatalities.
How did they accomplish such success with no casualties? Uri Segal who was a company platoon commander during the war (he is now a reserve Colonel) described it at the reunion in this way:
“When you think back, this was an extraordinary level of success. Tiger was a company with three things that characterized it – a company commander with very high demands for recognition of the terrain, uncompromising soldier discipline, and our sticking to the combat doctrine of the Armored Corps.”
It didn’t hurt that Tiger also had extensively practiced for war before the Syrians invaded. As Segal pointed out:
“We did the most operational exercises and shot more practice rounds than any other company.”
At the reunion Segal was asked about members of the unit today. He expressed mixed feelings:
“Unfortunately, I go around among the fighters, and although they absorb the material, it is not clear that the legacy of the battalion is being passed down to them. The young guys are amazing and have intellectual capabilities and technologies that are much better than ours were. However, the basics are lacking – everything today depends on technology — [but] men and their fighting spirit are the decisive factors on the battlefield. ”
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Food for thought.
TODAY’S BLOG:
“Death is life for our people and life for our children.”
Your humble servant is sure that all of you dear readers remember this famous quote of Golda Meir:
“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
Meir wrote this sentence in her book A Land of Our Own : An Oral Autobiography. The words were written in 1973.
1973.
45 years ago.
And nothing has changed.
The simple fact is that love of death is so ingrained in Palestinian culture that your humble servant doubts that the day Golda Meir speculated about will ever come.
This love of death was underscored yesterday by the new leader of Islamic Jihad. Ziad Nahala proudly made this Orwellian statement to the international media:
“Death is life for our people and life for our children . . .”
Death is life for our people.
Death is life for our children.
The Palestinian ethos could not be more clearly stated. It is an ethos which is so unalterably opposed to our Israeli ethos of “nothing is more important than the lives of our children and our people” that there can be no bridge between the two.
Of course the Palestinians have never wanted such a bridge.
Nahala continued yesterday on the subject of death:
“[We have] the ability to turn the border and Zionist communities there into a place that is not worthy of life.”
As we have pointed out in recent weeks, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are doing precisely that. They are turning Israeli border communities into places in which it is difficult if not impossible to live.
Do you know what is unusual about this Shabbat morning here in Ashdod? Silence.
There are no children playing in the park beside our house as parents shelter their children from the smoke that grows ever thicker.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.