A couple of weeks ago, we posted two podcasts in which I sought to give a brief history of Zionism and then an explanation of “How and why October 7 was a violation of the promise that Zionism and Israel had made to the Jewish people.”
The first episode we made available to everyone, while the latter was for paid subscribers only.
In response to numerous requests on the part of paid subscribers who felt that that second episode was important to share with other readers, we’ve now made that episode available to everyone. You can access the episode directly from here.
Almost exactly a year ago, on December 26, 2022, we posted a column on Israel from the Inside called “If you know Jewish history, Israel's being 74 years old should make you very, very nervous.” For the first two times that Israel was sovereign and united, I noted (as have many others, of course), lasted 73 and 74 years, respectively. And we were heading to 75.
Little did we know.
Little did we know that just two weeks after that column, massive protests over judicial reform would begin to tear the Jewish state asunder. Little did we know that many sober Israeli commentators would warn that Israel was edging closer to civil war. And little could we have possibly imagined that on October 7, Hamas would launch an attack that would kill more Jews in any single day since the Holocaust, plunging Israel into its most devastating war in history.
Little did we know. And little do we know.
We do not know long this will go on. We do not know how it will end. We do not know if we will succeed in destroying Hamas. We do not know how many of the hostages will come home. We do not know if war will spill into Lebanon. Or Iran. We do not know if the United States will join the fighting. We do not know how long the US will keep supporting and re-arming us.
So this is, for us, a very sober secular new year, more a day of introspection than celebration. All we can do at the moment, because of and despite all we do not know, is hope and pray that somehow, 2024 will be better than 2023.
Maybe even just a little?
While there is much to worry about and much to mourn, we have sought throughout these past three months to share something of the extraordinary spirit of Israel, as well. We have written about the tragedy and the agony, and the loss and the fear, but we have also shared glimpses of Israel’s truly indomitable spirit.
So that is how we will begin 2024, with two videos that require little comment.
The first, above, is a snippet of a concert that took place in Caesarea last week, in which 1,000 musicians performed in support of the families of the hostages, in a plea that the world hear our prayer to bring the hostages home.
We pray that the prayer is heard.
The video below, which has also made the rounds on Israeli social media is a conversation between an El Al pilot and the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Hersh had been scheduled to leave for his trip to India on December 27. The flight took off, but Hersh, badly wounded and still in captivity, was obviously not on it.
Below is a video of the pilot calling Jon and Rachel, Hersh’s parents, from the cockpit, to pray with them that Hersh returns home as soon as possible and that he will take the vacation he’s been planning for so many years.
The pilot is no stranger to Jon and Rachel. His name is Erez, and he’s been one the group of people accompanying the families of the hostages since the Black Sabbath (as October 7 is increasingly called). So this was more than national to him, it was personal. (We’ve added subtitles to give you the basic sense of the conversation.)
As you hear, the conversation ends with a prayer for “besorot tovot,” good news.
Amen to that, as well.
And here is to a 2024 that, G-d willing, will be infinitely better than was 2023.
If you’re just joining us, Israel from the Inside typically posts a written column on Mondays and a podcast on Wednesdays. That is obviously irrelevant for the time being.
We’ve delayed all the podcasts that were ready to go, because the people whose stories they tell deserve to tell them when we all have the bandwidth to hear. Hopefully, that will return some day.
For the next three weeksbeginning Sunday, December 17th, we have been posting a bit less, as people in the United States would be on vacation, traveling and the like, while in Israel, as some reservists were being rotated out of units, those of us who could not leave while our kids were/are at the front, used the time to visit kids abroad.
2023 was without question the worst year in Israel's history