Shalom from Israel! This Sunday night will begin Yom HaShoah, and the remembrance will run through Monday afternoon. Translated literally as “Day of the Catastrophe”, this is Israel’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the 1930s and 1940s, more than six million Jews lost their lives under the Nazi regime. Of those victims, greater than 1.5 million were children.
At 10:00 on Monday morning, sirens will sound throughout the nation of Israel. At that moment, all people will stop what they are doing and stand in silence for two minutes to honor and remember those who were slaughtered during that horrific time. Places of business will halt their activities. Cars will pull over and their passengers will get out. School classes will pause their instruction. As a nation and as a people, we are determined that we will never forget what took place during those dark times.
Why is it so important to intentionally remember tragedy? To answer that, all you need to do is look at what is currently happening in national and international government buildings and on university campuses around the world. On October 7, a slaughter took place that was so vile, so vicious, so demonic that it seemed the world had to pause to catch its breath. Torture, systematic rape, kidnapping, murder, and mutilation were perpetrated by gleeful terrorists against an unsuspecting and wholly innocent civilian population. Israel was forever changed, and a huge majority of nations around the world commiserated with us. But that was then, and this is now.
But now the Jews have a home, and that home has allowed us to become strong. No longer are we forced to take the shots. When the chanters cry out, “From the River to the Sea”, we respond, “Yeah, just try to take our land.” And when the terrorists invade, Israel will make sure that they can never, ever do it again. How do we do that? We kill all of Hamas’s leadership, and, if there are any of their rank-and-file members that survive the onslaught, we will bring them to justice. It’s harsh, it’s violent, and it’s bloody. But it is what it will take for Israel to once again be safe within its own borders.
The International Pushback
The United Nations hates anything it can’t control. For decades it’s been unsuccessfully trying to control Israel. Resolution after resolution condemning Israel and demanding the government change its ways have all fallen on deaf ears. This is especially frustrating for them, because Israel is filled with those same Jews that for so many centuries were under the thumb of many of the United Nations’ nations.
After October 7, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the Hamas attack, although the body itself never did so. But what goodwill might have been contained within the UN soon started to fade once Israel began to fight back against Hamas in Gaza. In January, Guterres condemned Israel for the killing of Gazan civilians, despite the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) taking unprecedented care to avoid innocent deaths. Then, in March, the UN Security Council demanded a ceasefire in Gaza for Ramadan. Since those tactics didn’t work, they’ve now concocted a new scheme to use the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and other top government officials. The United States’ president and congress have threatened retaliation if the ICC goes through with this hair-brained scheme, but it goes to show how desperate the international community is to get those renegade Jews back under control.
As wonderful as it is to have this support from the United States, Israel recognizes that America is getting frustrated at the fact that they, too, are losing control of their closest Middle Eastern ally. From its inception, Israel has been the beneficiary of U.S. goodwill, sometimes military, sometimes financial. The extent of this goodwill has varied from time to time, often based on who is in the White House. In return for that support, the United States could typically count on Israel to acquiesce when Washington felt strongly enough to insist on a matter. Currently, that is not the case.
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