This Syria thing is a bit like that mountain…unknown, out of “my” control. Israel can not control this situation. We have treated dozens of wounded Syrians; ignored many mortars and gunfire fired into Israel. But the path the Middle East will take in the coming days and weeks will be decided by two men – Obama and Assad, and neither particularly cares about Israel; both care more for themselves, their futures, than they do about their own countries, never mind Israel and the Jews.
In Hebrew, there is the concept of a stubborn child who gets himself up a tree and can’t get himself down. In real life, we have two leaders who have drawn red lines…and the lines endanger Israel. They are up there in those trees, but the land so close to the branches where they sit…is Israel.
This is not 1973, in the days before or after the Yom Kippur War. There is no danger of Syria’s army overrunning the Golan and threatening Israel’s north. In 1973, lulled into the stupid belief that no nation, not even the Arab countries would dare attack on Yom Kippur, we came perilously close to disaster.
We will be on alert this coming Shabbat, this Yom Kippur, and we will live once again, for a few days or weeks, on the edge of war. But there is this sense of strength, of faith. We might be on the edge, but the mountain is not insurmountable – our satellites and air force fly above it, our sons patrol it. God watches from above, always.
I don’t know what the winds will bring, but I have such faith in my country’s ability to overcome it all – the ego of Assad, the naivete of Obama, the missiles of Hezbollah. The mountain before my operation was kind of scary because I went in asleep and alone…to this future coming our way, we are united, awake, aware, determined.
We are the land and people of Israel and we have the protection, the love, and the strength of our sons, our leaders, our forefathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), and four mothers (Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel) and most of all, the Protector of Israel.
May God bless us and inscribe us in the Book of Life through all the winds, all the battles, all the days to come.
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