Day 49, A Different "Shavuot"

According to my friend Miriam's facebook update, this is the 49th day of this unending war with the Gazan Arab Hamas terrorists. Miriam lives in southern Israel and keeps people updated about real life there in her blog, Miriam's Words.

The number forty-nine when describing days has a lot of significance in Judaism. One of the three main, pilgrimage, holidays is Shavuot, שבועותת meaning weeks, more specifically seven weeks, and 7X7=49. Yes, it takes place forty-nine days after the beginning of the Passover Holiday. On Passover historically we escaped slavery in Egypt, and on Shavuot we received the Torah from G-d.

Grandparents at funeral of 4 year old
Daniel Turgeman, HaYa"D Flash90

That forty-nine day period has a beginning, middle and end, but this forty-nine does not seem to signify anything other than Israel's being attacked by Amalek enemies who have tasted blood and want more. As I've said many times, there's not way for us to negotiate a peace with psychopaths who aim to destroy us, so I'm not surprised that our appeasing words are just being met with more deadly rocket attacks.

Rocket fire on Ashdod, Facebook

The Israeli Government must change its mindset, its basic policy and officially recognize that the "two state solution" is off the books. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu himself must apologize to all of us for having supported it. It must be officially announced that it was a mistake, and that the State of Israel considers all supporters to be our enemies.

As Ruthie Blum put so well in her recent Israel Hayom article, we must stop censoring and cleaning up the news reports and pictures of Arab brutality.

...However, it is precisely the chilling depiction of the slaughter that provides the world ‎with a glimpse into the nature of the Islamic State group (ISIS), the Sunni terrorist organization that is trying to ‎take over Syria and Iraq, before turning the entire region (and then the world) into an ‎Islamic caliphate.‎Not that the group has been hiding its blood lust. On the contrary, it is proud of its ‎brutality and pedophilia. And tales of its raping, maiming and killing of Christians are ‎being told, albeit with far less gusto than the media reserves for Israeli air strikes in Gaza.‎.....But it wasn't until President Barack Obama watched the footage of Foley's murder, in ‎the video titled "Message to America," that the ostensible leader of the Free World was ‎forced to face what the West is up against......Publishing gruesome pictures was deemed by a majority of the editors to be out of the ‎question for a number of reasons, chief among them the dignity of the dead and the ‎privacy of their families. After all, who can bear seeing a child's bloody backpack on the ‎ground -- with its owner's name in plain sight -- next to an arm or a leg of someone else? ‎......The Palestinian press had a different approach. Any retaliatory action on Israel's part was ‎met with a media blitz of blood and gore for the world to see. Then, as today, many of ‎their photos were staged, stolen from previous wars in other countries and touched up for ‎both local and foreign consumption. ‎Then, as today, it has the desired effect. Israel looks like a vicious Goliath trampling a ‎helpless David...

We have been making this mistake of whitewashing Arab brutality for decades. This also happened during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the reports of what the Syrians did to our captured soldiers was censored from the news, so as not to upset their parents and grandparents.

So while the Arabs show over-dramatic graphic, bloody scenes reminiscent of black and white silent film but in bloody color, Israel shows the world some damaged middle-class livingroom furniture and keeps repeating the mantra that "the rocket fell in an empty field," "no serious damage."

Here we are at day 49, and the Israeli government is trying to reassure the public that next week school with start "on time." Yes, that may be very possible in places like Jerusalem and Shiloh, but how can those in Ashkelon, Ashdod, Netivot and the rest of Israel's south send their kids to school? Many are on extended "vacations" far from home, and others are barely leaving the fifteen second run to a shelter. When I was in elementary school and we were trained to hide under a desk from an atomic bomb, it was humorous, but since the chance of our being bombed was less than zero, it didn't matter. The children in the south of Israel are under a real danger. Some schools and preschools have already been damaged by Gazan Hamas terrorist rockets, so those need shelters not desks to protect them.

The so-called moderate Abu Mazen aka Mahmoud Abbas is threatening Israel with a "surprise" tactic.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen assured that in the coming week, there will be a new solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He claims that it is a diplomatic and political solution but not a traditional one. He is afraid the Americans won’t respond to the proposal.

We mustn't forget that Abbas has been a public political ally of Hamas even before this war/operation all started.

Sorry, but I can't end this on a positive note. This 49 isn't an end, a spiritual high-note. We seem to be in a long process which will take a very high level of leadership to end. The State of Israel needs strong Jewish leadership with faith in G-d Almighty, HaKodesh Baruch Hu. G-d willing they will rise to the challenge.