Having not been in America since June 2025, I don’t know what the prevailing thoughts are regarding Israel and the war. I’ve been told that most American Jews believe the long two-year war is over. Here in Israel, however, no one shares that sentiment. Moreover, everyone in this country believes the continuation of the war is not a matter of if, but when. That being said, the last 27 months here have changed not only this country and its people forever but indeed the course of history of the Middle East and the world. On October 6, 2023, Israel was surrounded by and under constant threat from Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen. As of January 1, 2026, Iran is crumbling under the weight of its own repressive, incompetent, fundamentalist Jew-hating, paper-tiger regime; Hezbollah has been decimated, its leadership eviscerated; Assad’s Syria is no more; the Houthis are in shambles; and Hamas is nowhere near the menace it once was.
Sadly, we have lost too many of
our own in Gaza and Lebanon. Argue if you’d like about how the county has conducted
the war, but to comprehend the magnitude of what has transpired over the last
couple of years, you have to trace it back more than a decade to understand
just how monumental and – dare I say – biblical this victory is. I have written before
about the daily wonders and miracles we get to witness in this land, but the
ones below garnered from various sources might help give you some perspective of
just how beyond this world, real things are happening here.
* * *
During the 2014 war with
Hezbollah, a certain Mossad analyst was looking at the bodies being collected
from the battlefield and noticed that all the dead fighters were wearing
walkie-talkies on their chests. She mentioned to her bosses at the agency an idea
she had while watching the thousands of dead bodies from the other side. “What if we were able to put a
bomb in those walkie-talkies? We could press a button and wipe out thousands of
them.” Mossad told her if she could figure out how to get it done, they
would support it.
Years ago, my brother, who at
the time was learning in Rabbi Frand’s shiur at Ner Israel, would tape
his rebbe’s Chumash shiur for me, which I believe was given on Wednesdays. From what
I can gather, it was usually the unabridged version of the Thursday night Chumash
shiur
Rabbi Frand gave in
town. I remember hearing Rabbi Frand discuss “tzadik v’ra lo, rasha v’tov lo – the
tzadik
has it bad and the evil one has it good,” and how Moshe Rabbeinu
struggled to make sense of it. He asked Hashem to show him His face, and Hashem
instead showed him His back. It was at that moment that Moshe understood what
the pasuk meant.
Rabbi Frand explained the world
seems unjust. Things happen every day, and we can’t understand how a just and
merciful Creator would allow the wicked to prosper as they do or how our
enemies succeed against us in barbaric fashion. He said what changed for Moshe
was his vision or, better, his perspective because, at that moment, he was
shown the entire picture, not just snippets in time. To make it easier for the
layman to comprehend, Rabbi Frand compared it to needlepoint. If you look at a
needlepoint picture from behind, it’s just a mess of random threads
seemingly going nowhere. Yet, when you turn it over, you see a beautiful
picture, and those random threads now make sense.
* *
*
The Mossad agent started a shell
company in Germany that eventually connected to a small company in Taiwan with
a massive online business. They sold communication devices all over the world.
The next time Hezbollah was looking for walkie-talkies, her shell company
interrupted the supply chain and injected the plastic explosive C-4 into each
item they ordered. The plan worked to perfection, and for 10 years, the
Hezbollah fighters wore this bomb on their chests unbeknownst to them or anyone
else besides the Mossad and few others. As the years went on, Nasrallah, yemach
shemo, grew suspicious of Israel’s spying and technological
capabilities and ordered his people to go old school and change to pagers to
retain organizational security.
The agent, now more than a
decade after her original idea, heard of this plan and made the quick decision
to stock up on pagers, which were rarer at that time than rotary phones are
today. Three days later, her company received a request from Lebanon for 5,000
pagers, which Mossad also injected with C-4, and soon enough all Nasrallah’s fighters were wearing the
explosive on their hips. Israel had a small window of opportunity to act after
hearing that Nasrallah was considering moving to the Hamas practice of no
digital communications at all. So, on a random Tuesday afternoon, 42 members of
his army were killed and more than 3,000 were removed from the battlefield
permanently with various injuries. There were no Israeli casualties among our
people that day. A mess of random threads seemingly going nowhere….
The next day Nasrallah ordered
everyone to go back to the walkie-talkies, and at the funerals of their dead
pager comrades, Israel detonated those same decade-old walkie-talkies, killing
at least 25 and injuring hundreds more in the process. I would venture to say
there were a lot of people in Lebanon afraid to turn on their air conditioners
or televisions that day and beyond.
By Thursday of that week,
Nasrallah closed down all digital communications and demanded that his 20-plus
high-ranking commanders get together for a meeting. Three Israeli Air Force F18
jets deposited precision munitions into that very same apartment building and
in one fell swoop ended the threat of Hezbollah. There were no Israeli
casualties on that day. A mess of random threads seemingly going nowhere….
* *
*
Syria had been in a civil war
for over a decade and, with the help of Hezbollah and the Syrian army, was
murdering hundreds of thousands of its own citizens with nary a word from
college or media elites the world over. Israel got wind of a move by the Syrian
opposition and the current Syrian president to attack the government. With
Hezbollah out of the picture in Syria, Israel put a plan into motion, and for
two days in early December 2024, 350 Israeli pilots bombed and destroyed every
single Syrian fighter jet and naval boat the country owned. They assassinated
every general in the army as well as every nuclear and chemical weapons
scientist in the country. Israel moved quickly and conquered southern Syria,
taking it as a buffer zone in defense of our land. Bashar El Assad escaped to
Moscow. His Syria was no more. There were no Israeli casualties on that day. A
mess of random threads seemingly going nowhere….
* *
*
This past June, Israeli F-35s
took off for Iran and blitzed the country in an unprecedented, stunning
surprise attack. The planes traveled 2,000 miles there and back, something the
IAF was told was not possible by Northrup Grumman, the American manufacturer of
the F-35’s fuselage and radar systems, among other things. Israeli engineers
had tinkered with their plane design, extending things inside to make it work
for our purposes. The Americans disagreed with the changes and claimed they
would in fact ruin the plane’s capabilities.
The expected casualty rate for
each operation was eight planes and eight pilots, eight of the best our people
have to offer. Using that equation of expected losses per mission, over the
course of the war with Iran it was assumed we would lose more than 60 of our
brothers and sisters in defense of our people and our land. Mike Huckabee, the
American Ambassador to Israel, said they did not know how to file a report on
the attacks because we lost zero pilots. None of it made sense. Zero planes
were shot down; none dropped from the sky. They all arrived back in Israel
unscathed. Mechanically speaking, this is an impossibility. Not improbable –
impossible. At the same time that our planes were decapitating Iranian
government and army infrastructure, more pilots and drones took out the top
Iranian nuclear scientists and military leadership before anyone knew what was
happening. Unbeknownst to Iran, those drones were manufactured by Israel on
Iranian soil. You read that right. We had a base of operations in Iran for
years in anticipation of this day. At the conclusion of the 12-day war, there
were no Israeli casualties in Iran. A mess of random threads seemingly going
nowhere….
* *
*
Iran, as you know, sent
ballistic missiles towards Israel in response. Most people think our air
defenses took out the majority of them, and this is true. The success rate was
exceptional. However, some missiles did get through, and the damage was
staggering. A building that housed American military personnel in Tel Aviv was
struck, leaving the building basically destroyed. There were no Israeli
casualties on that day and, in fact, no American ones either. The American
government can’t explain why. A mess of random
threads seemingly going nowhere….
Soroka Hospital was hit, as most
of you probably know. But what you may not know is that, for some reason,
Soroka decided to transfer its patients and employees who worked in the
building to a different building nearby the day before the strike! There
were no Israeli casualties on that day. A mess of random threads seemingly
going nowhere….
Following the Thursday night
Iranian attack I wrote about in these pages a few months ago, a funeral home in
Jerusalem close to where we live was ordered by the Israeli government to
acquire extra freezers and prepare to store 10,000 bodies. The expected losses expected
by Government sources were between 80,000 and 100,000 people, mostly Jews.
Sadly 28 people in total were lost due to that attack, most of whom,
unfortunately, did not take cover in a shelter. A mess of random threads
seemingly going nowhere….
* * *
On the 22nd day of
Shevat 5785, February 20, three buses blew up in a parking lot in Bat Yam at 9
p.m. Two more bombs were found on buses earlier that evening. Every bus on the
road in Israel was pulled over at that point. Some of the basketball players I
coach had to walk more than 40 minutes back to our hotel in Givat Ram because
they were on a bus that was pulled off the road. The enemy’s barbaric plan was to simultaneously
blow up five buses during rush hour in Tel Aviv, killing and injuring
thousands. The bombs were supposed to go off at 9:00 a.m. But all five bombs on
five different buses were mistakenly set to go off at 9:00 p.m. instead. There
were no Israeli casualties on that day. A mess of random threads seemingly
going nowhere….
Lastly, this is the one everyone
here is very attuned to. At some point in Gaza, Israeli forces found Yahya
Sinwar’s battle plans in a tunnel or building. I remember the
night this was reported on Israeli news. It sent shockwaves through the entire
country. The actual plan was for Hamas to do what they did in the south while,
at the same time, Hezbollah would attack on foot from the north, aided by a
50,000 to 100,000 rocket bombardment, and joined by an Iranian attack of
hundreds if not thousands of ballistic missiles. For some unexplainable reason,
Sinwar attacked early and not only took Israel by surprise but Hezbollah and
Iran as well. The idea was to wipe out millions of our people, take the rest
hostage, and, for all intents and purposes, destroy Israel.
Instead, the words of Tanach
jump off the page. The Rambam in Hilchos Melachim (12:2) writes, “No man knows what will happen
until it happens, for the prophets have secrets….” Do not try and figure out
when Mashiach will come. Only those alive during that time will understand what
our prophets are talking about. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, Zechariah – they
have already told us about the days we are living in. Everyone in Israel is
acutely aware of why these events happened the way they did. Contrary to what
you may have been told, there is no question about how the majority of the
population of Israel view these events. I call it the “arrogance” of knowing Hashem is with you
here. Israelis know Who is protecting us. “Hashem yishmor alai.” Hashem watches over us. That
is a most common refrain heard all across the country – and among the majority
of soldiers. Yes, we must do our hishtadlus, which is why we need a robust
military. And, just as we are proud of our spouses and our children and sing
their praises, so too, the military can rightfully do the same about its
successes. These unexplainable events make zero sense to the rest of the world
but total sense to most everyone here.
* *
*
We have lost so many phenomenal
men and women, most of whom had bright futures ahead of them. Women have lost
their husbands, men their wives, parents their children, children their parents
and/or siblings. It is not easy here. The price we have paid these last
two-plus years will resonate for the entirety of Jewish history. What we have
learned is that the world goes on. There is no pretentiousness here. No one has
time for that. The nonsense and silliness that people worry about everywhere
else in the world is not a thing in Israel. Life, and the protection of it, is
the most important value.
I work with a coach who is a
commander in the IDF. When he was doing his reserve service, he would drive
back from Gaza for games, then sleep at home that night before going back to
the war the next day. I mention this because it is important for you to
understand what we know here instead of what the media is telling you. This
coach told me that his unit’s job was to protect the 20
hostages still being held captive. They knew where every single one was. In
Rafah, they purposely destroyed every building around the ones with hostages
inside or in tunnels under them. They wanted to make sure Hamas knew they were
onto them. They also knew where every dead body was and executed the same
strategy in those areas. Do not believe for one moment that Hamas does not know
where this last body is. It is all subterfuge. He showed me a point-blank range
picture he took of a Hamas operative and told me he was about to shoot the
terrorist until he grabbed a child by the bicep and started walking with him.
Contrary to what they tell the useful idiots in the media and college campuses,
Hamas knows that Israel will not shoot at them if they are holding children.
Now that the fighting has
paused, soldiers who have returned are dealing with numerous situations – from
business struggles or closures to trying to grow or mend relationships with spouses to
becoming reacquainted with parents or children to plain exhaustion. As I have written
here before, our family has tens of relatives who are still in the reserves and
have been to Gaza, Lebanon, or Syria five, six, or even seven times. That’s tens of wives at home, tens of
children whose fathers are away protecting our country. Whoever makes the claim
there is no manpower shortage in the IDF has no idea what they are talking
about. Our family alone is the antidote to that mistaken claim. It doesn’t matter who is saying it, they
are wrong. Full stop.
Amazingly, after two years of
war, the shekel is at 3.15 per dollar, the Israel stock market is breaking
records, and the economy continues to grow daily. No one here understands how
this is happening, but everyone knows the reason. What my wife and I have
learned living here is simple: Israel is the best kept secret on the planet.
Even with everything that is going on, people are happy. They know they are
where they are supposed to be. Surely, there are those who will leave for the
States or elsewhere due to the uncertainty, and no one blames them. But for
everyone else, this is home. Regarding the world’s opinion of us, yes, it would
be nice if they were fair and not hypocritical, but no one has the time to
concern themselves with this. Haters gonna hate. Jews here simply move on day
to day. We know there is something else happening here; something very
different than anywhere else in the world and very different from any other
time or place in history.
We truly could not care less
what the Tucker Carlsons or Megyn Kellys of the world have to say. Go pound
sand. For our people around the globe, even if things go sideways and the
world kicks you when you are down, be comforted by the words of the prophets
who have assured us Hashem is watching over His People and His land: “You are
My witnesses, says G-d, and My servant whom I have chosen.” (Isaiah 43:10) We
are living in the most amazing time to be a Jew. Those of us alive today whose
eyes are open and are willing to look can see what is unfolding, and I believe
it is fair to say the Rambam would be a bit in awe of the miracles we have
witnessed and continue to experience each and every day. We can see in front of
us the words of Tanach solving the mystery and know the time of our redemption
is near. As the prophet Isaiah (43:5-6) tells us, “I will bring the seed from the
East and gather you from the West. I will say to the North,’“Give up and to the South. Keep
not back, bring My sons from afar and My daughters from the ends of the earth.’”
As of a few hours ago, there has been a
defensive IDF reserves call up in anticipation of an Iranian attack, chas
veshalom,
a last gasp desperate attempt of the mullahs to keep power and cause havoc, for
which we, of course, will be blamed. Iron dome batteries have been deployed in
the last couple of hours, and homefront command has alerted everyone to be
prepared. But I do not fear these attacks against our people and our country
because I know what fate awaits them and what has been promised to us.
Zechariah (12:9) told us straight out: “And it shall come to pass in
that day, that I will destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.”
(Good luck with that, fellas.) “For I will take you from among the nations, and
gather you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land.”
(Ezekiel 36:24) The words of our Tanach jump off the page. May it be Hashem’s plan to bring our Mashiach
speedily in our days. Amazing times indeed.
