By ANDI KRON
Los Alamos
I recently reunited with an Israeli friend who was visiting the Lab on official business. It had been 2 1/5 years since I last saw him in Israel. “How are things going in Israel?” I asked with trepidation. “We are traumatized,” he answered. His brother is a surgeon and has been on reserve duty for months as a medic in Gaza. His wife is a lecturer in universities and lost several students in the massacre of October 7, 2023. Her parents live in the south where Hamas terrorists infiltrated and killed residents of their community. He needs police protection when he travels to Europe on business.
Life was not like this three years ago when we met on the beach in Israel, about 30 miles north of Tel Aviv, in a rural village along the Mediterranean coast. We would spend Saturdays together, his family joining my husband and me who were volunteering nearby at a youth village perched on cliffs above the sea.
We had been volunteering as English tutors in a boarding school at the village which houses children at risk from ninth through twelfth grades. I did a 6-month stint alone in 2012 in honor of Hadassah’s (the Women’s Zionist Organization of America) 100th anniversary. After that, my husband joined me every year for 3 months during the winter, usually January through March. This came to a halt in 2023 as security concerns and exorbitant travel costs precluded our annual visits.
The youth village Hadassah Neurim (‘youth’ in Hebrew) is named after the organization that founded it in 1948 to house orphans from the Holocaust who came to Israel without families, usually aboard decrepit, overcrowded boats evading the British naval blockade of Palestine. In addition, a large transport called the ‘Tehran children’ came overland by train via Iran.
At its height, the village housed around 1,200 youth, offering them mainly vocational and agricultural training. Now, the approximately 350 students come mostly from Russian-speaking states of the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia and Israel. There are a few Arab and Druze youth, and many of the Russian-speakers are Christian who celebrate Novigod (Russian-Orthodox Christmas) with a Christmas tree and decorations in a large community hall.
Needless to say, I miss my annual trips to Israel and have been devastated by the October 7th massacre and mutilation of 1,200 Israelis and visiting foreign nationals, plus the taking hostage of 251 individuals, many of them wounded and since perished in Gaza.
I am also dismayed by the weekly protests here in town along Trinity Drive and Central Avenue with signs calling Israel a genocide state. This is completely the opposite of reality, as Israelis are continually reaching out for peace with their neighbors. The reality is, if Israelis cast down their arms, they would be slaughtered. If on the other hand, Hamas and the Palestinians would agree to peace, there would have been a two-state solution by now. It’s in the Hamas charter to kill the Jews and they only want one state, as the chant goes, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This is a deliberate call for the destruction of the State of Israel.
I tried to talk to one of the protesters holding up a sign, but she just yelled at me, “Go back to Poland!” I do not hail from Poland but a dear friend who lives in White Rock does. She survived the Holocaust by escaping with her father from the Warsaw Ghetto after her mother was struck and killed by a balcony that collapsed while she was holding her 3-year-old daughter’s hand. Did this protester imply I should go back to the gas chambers?
I was motivated to write this opinion piece after watching an interview on Israeli TV Channel 7 with Mossab Hassan Yousef, son of a Hamas founder, and former Shin Bet operative known as the Green Prince (https://youtu.be/tFLc7y2SZeg). He describes the massacre of October 7th as one of absolute barbarism beyond anyone’s imagination after watching a video of a Hamas terrorist eating the liver of a person he had just murdered.
“This is 9th Century barbarism,” he states unequivocally. He does not feel safe in America anymore. “How can you find a common ground with people that justify suicide bombings, killing toddlers and raping?” he asks. “This is the Palestinian mindset—a death culture where sacrificing civilians is a strategy for political and financial gain and it has been like this for 70 years.” He continues, “The death of so many civilians will lead to global sympathy and most importantly will lead to deligitimizing Israel. Those students supporting Hamas are stupid.”
Mossab has returned to live in Israel after 15 years in the US. It’s the only place he feels safe after being cancelled for expressing his anti-Palestinian views. Speaking of Israel he states, “This country is the strongest in the world. The Jewish people won’t eat other Jews. I can’t say that about other countries. Israel is the hope, the blueprint for survival and has made contributions to life through the centuries. It’s a pillar of human evolution. Take down that pillar and you risk entire destruction. I get lots of inspiration from the Jewish people and their struggle against the odds.”
So my question is, which side are you on—one that supports and promotes barbarism, or the Jewish code of ethics enshrined in the Ten Commandments? The Jewish people of Israel are on the front lines fighting for their lives and Western civilization. The enemy supports radical Islam and a cult of death.