By Leah Garber
“From the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land.”
– Book of Jeremiah 1:14
In the last few days, all eyes have turned to Israel’s north, with great concern and fear. The Iron Swords War is shifting gears and is now focused on fighting against the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. Being so close to the country’s northern border and motivated to attack and kill Israeli citizens, the Shia terrorist movement constitutes a real and ongoing threat to Israel.
As a reminder, Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group led by its secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah was established primarily to fight Israel. It adopted the model set out by Iranian fundamental leaders and has nurtured close ties with them. During the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), Hezbollah’s manifesto listed its objectives as the expulsion of “the Americans, the French, and their allies definitely from Lebanon.” Between the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and the current war, there was constant, intense conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Despite U.N. resolution 1701 and Israel’s withdrawal of all forces from Southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah did not disarm. On the contrary, the group’s military strength grew significantly—to the extent that its paramilitary wing became more powerful than the Lebanese Army. Hezbollah has been described as a “state within a state” and has grown into an organization with seats in the Lebanese government, a radio and satellite television station, social services, and large-scale military deployment of fighters beyond Lebanon’s borders. Hezbollah receives military training, weapons, and financial support from Iran, and its armed strength is considered equivalent to that of a medium-sized army.
For several days now, Israel has been acting decisively, with high intensity, and in an exacting manner against Hezbollah terrorists, destroying many missile launchers.Like Hamas terrorists, Hezbollah does not spare the lives of its own people, and tempted poor Lebanese villagers to store weapons and missile launchers in their homes. Yesterday, Israel called on all residents of those villages to leave to save their lives. The Israeli army personally called tens of thousands of residents of Lebanese villages, warning them and asking them to evacuate before Israel bombed the missile launchers hidden in the heart of populated villages.
Israel is determined to keep Hezbollah’s threats away from our border and to neutralize the existential threat inherent in the organization’s power and motivation.Hezbollah, for its part, is responding as expected, and for several days, entire areas of Israel have been under constant shelling.
Difficult and intense fighting days are in store for us. We are all experiencing real, existential anxiety, which only adds to the post-traumatic effects of October 7 that hover over Israeli society as a whole.
As in the south, in the north, too, the terrorists’ aggression erupted without defiance on Israel’s part. In these days when every sound from a motorcycle on the street seems like an explosion and every slammed door like a missile falling nearby, our nerves are tense, our nights are sleepless, and our hearts are so heavy.
But especially these days, when we are all focused on what is happening in the north and on the consequences of the war on the entire Israeli home front, it is important to look south and not forget for a moment the 101 of us who are still held captive in Gaza by the murderers of Hamas—and have been there for 354 days and nights.Israeli hostages must not pay the price of the intensifying war in the north, they mustn’t be abandoned, and cannot ever be forgotten.
In the Miran house on Kibbutz Nahal Oz on the morning of October 7, two-year-old Roni and 6-month-old Alma were still sleeping when the sirens began to wail. While the family was locked in their home-based shelter, the girls’ parents, Omri and Lishay, quickly realized this was not the usual “Red Alert” morning. They heard terrorists make themselves at home in the family’s living room as though they were welcome guests. The terrorists then began yelling outside the safe room door, brutally forcing Tomer, a 16-year-old neighbor, to lure the Mirans to open the door for him. Unbeknownst to the couple, the terrorists were holding a gun to his head, and when they opened the door, he and the vicious terrorists burst in.
Then they took the entire family to a neighbor’s house—probably to make it easier to watch over them—waving guns and knives over the small children’s heads. The Mirans were held captive in the neighbors’ home, both families seated together, knowing that the neighboring family’s 18-year-old daughter had been killed in the other room. Imagine the horror of her parents—sitting on the floor, handcuffed in their own home, guns to their heads, surrounded by curses and screams in Arabic—when in front of their eyes, blood from the shots that killed their daughter spreads throughout the house, staining it forever red.
Hours later, Omri was forced to hand over his car keys and was kidnapped into Gaza in his own car. As Lishay and their daughters watched their beloved husband and father dragged into hell, she managed to say a few last words: “I love you. I’ll protect our girls. We’re waiting for you. Don’t be a hero.”
Meanwhile, the terrorists had forced Tomer to go with them from house to house, getting his neighbors to open their doors for him, unaware that bloodthirsty terrorists were standing right behind him and using him as bait. Later that day, the terrorists murdered Tomer.
I met Danny, Omri’s father, on the day Israel marked the centenary—a horrible milestone—since October 7. Danny has good eyes that have remnants of a bright, soft, warm light. They used to smile with joy, but since his son, his beloved Omri, was kidnapped, the light has gone out of them. When I met him, Danny told me he decided to grow a beard until his son Omri is returned. If Omri can’t shave, neither can he. Danny is longing for the day when father and son will stand side by side and shave together. Omri will remove the filth of captivity, and Danny will unload his grief and the symbol of mourning.
Two-hundred-fifty-four days have passed since my conversation with Danny, and his white, sad beard has grown and lengthened—and with it, his sorrow and pain.
Israel is fighting for its existence, and we must not be misled by the false propaganda all around us. This is a just war; it is a war we must fight so that we, too, can have a tomorrow.
Even as we fight to protect our very existence and guarantee our future, we also must continue to fight ceaselessly so Omri and the other 100 hostages will be returned to us, so that Danny’s eyes will smile and shine again, and so Lishay can put their daughters—who have grown up in the meantime—into the hands of her husband, and show him that she kept her promise to keep them safe.
Together, united, we will overcome.
Leah Garber is a senior vice president of JCC Association of North America and director of its Center for Israel Engagement in Jerusalem.
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