A lot of the news these days is very sobering. We’ve covered some of that earlier this week. At the same time, Israelis are fully aware that they’re discovering something extraordinary about the people that make up this society, and much of what is getting attention these days is news and social media that capture that.
Today, we share three brief clips to give a sense of what, even in these dark days, gives many Israelis cause for hope that a much brighter future still lies ahead.
There are, not surprisingly, hundreds of brief clips that make their way around Israeli social media each week. Today, we’re gathering three relatively recent clips that garnered significant attention among Israelis—because they speak to the essence of what this country is, and what it can still become.
The first video, above, is of two soldiers in the same unit, one 64 years old and one 22 years old. We get to hear what the 64-year-old thinks of the generation that could be his grandchildren.
And here’s a soldier describing a conversation between soldiers as to who should “go in,” each wanting the other to stay out so he can head into battle. And listen to the comments about the fracture in Israeli society during most of 2023, and his plea that we not return to that.
And finally, Eyal Shahar, the father of Major (res.) Amit Shahar, z’l, went on TV to pass along a message to the soldiers who had accidentally killed his son in Gaza.
Here is how the Times of Israel described the IDF’s report on the event:
… six combat engineers were killed and several others were wounded. The reservists were killed when explosives intended for demolishing a Hamas tunnel in Bureij detonated prematurely.
According to the IDF’s initial probe of the blast, the early explosion of the tunnel system was caused by a tank shelling. Combat engineers had been preparing the tunnel for demolition, rigging the underground passages with explosives.
Half an hour before the detonation was supposed to be carried out, a tank stationed near the detonating cord fired shells at a nearby building after identifying suspicious movement. According to the probe, one of the shells hit an electricity pole, and the blast somehow activated the detonating cord, leading to the premature massive explosion of the tunnel system while the combat engineers were still working on preparing it for demolition.
With that as background, now listen to what Amit’s father, Eyal, has to say to the soldiers who were in the tank that fired the shell.
When a new Israel emerges, it will be thanks to people like this.