RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://thejerusalemconnection.us/blog/2019/05/06/peace-peace-but-there-is-no-peace-

The Jewish prophet Jeremiah said those words millennia ago and it is telling when applied to peace between Israel and the Arab aggressors, yet still the hope for a true and lasting peace is resurrected again and again. But is it a case of “blessed are the peacemakers” or just another attempt to disinter a rotting corpse, just like Chamberlain’s “peace in our time?”

As I write this article, more than 500 missiles have been launched against the embattled Jewish state and Israeli civilians have been killed and wounded. The hate riddled junior branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, takes “credit” for this relentless act of genocidal war. This is reality, and it is upon this chimera that we wait for the Middle East peace proposal that President Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner, has said, “is realistic … it’s executable and it’s something that I do think will lead to both sides being much better off.”

Kushner also noted that the peace plan, which is expected to be unveiled in June, “will provide answers to the final status issues” between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs – whatever that means.

https://dallasjewishmonthly.com/a-tribute-to-israeli-mothers/?fbclid=IwAR1ipPvCGhLgut9QsB2k_FXVt8_0Nn7SDZ5fh9vUkQWofzBhnzS86rs5n08

In a well-deserved tribute, Rachel Frenkel, Bat-Galim Shaer and Iris Yifrach – the mothers of the three teenaged boys whose abduction and murder at the hands of Palestinian terrorists in the summer of 2014 sparked Operation Protective Edge in Gaza – were invited to light a torch at Israel’s Independence Day ceremony on May 9.

The annual event is held on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, the site of the Israel’s national military cemetery. It takes place at the end of the day of mourning for all the country’s fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, and marks the beginning of joyful birthday celebrations for the Jewish state, which turns 71.

The jarring juxtaposition of the somber and the sweet is purposeful. Before partying with nighttime fireworks and all-day barbecues, Israelis pause for a 24-hour period to commemorate, weep for and thank all the men, women and children killed either defending the nation from incessant enemy assault – or simply for going about their daily lives in the ancient Middle East homeland that they transformed into a flourishing Western democracy.

It is rare to find a family in Israel that has not been touched in some fashion by this particular form of bereavement. Indeed, funerals are just as much a part of the Israeli experience as weddings and baby-namings. And fear of losing one’s offspring in bombings, rocket-fire, car-rammings and stabbings is as present as anxiety about whether those same kids eat their broccoli or do their homework or find a suitable mate or get a good job. It is a country of Jewish mothers, after all.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/jihadi-missiles-israeli-mourning/

Four families’ names will now be noted and quoted together by virtue of their shared tragedy over the course of a single fateful weekend.

Reeling after three days of nonstop rocket barrages from Gaza, and fully aware that the ceasefire with Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists is temporary, Israelis are preparing for this year’s Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) ceremonies with particular sadness and no small degree of frustration.

This evening, when the Jewish state enters into a 24-hour mourning period for all the fallen soldiers and civilian victims of terrorism who have been killed since its inception, four new names will have been added to the list. Four new sets of spouses, children, parents and siblings will have earned the dreaded label of “bereaved.”

Each will wish he or she could have turned the clock back to the minute before Moshe Agadi, Moshe Feder, Ziad al-Hamamda and Pinchas Menachem Pashwazman were murdered by missile fire that changed the course of their history.