Israel News for 10-16-2024
News Update
Hezbollah fired at least 50 rockets towards Safed and other areas of northern Israel today, wounding 2 people and causing minor damage to a home. Earlier today, IDF jets struck a Hezbollah weapons cache stored in an underground facility in Beirut’s Dahieh district. The IDF had warned residents of specific buildings in the Hezbollah-controlled suburb to evacuate immediately. The IDF said extensive precautions were taken to minimize civilian casualties. The IDF also carried out extensive airstrikes in southern Lebanon, including in the city of Nabatieh. Fighting continues in southern Lebanon and throughout Gaza.
The IDF is reportedly removing landmines and establishing new barriers on the frontier between the Golan Heights and a demilitarized strip bordering Syria. The IDF could use this area to launch missions against Hezbollah from the east. For more, click here.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have warned Israel that if it does not allow the transfer of American humanitarian aid to Gaza within 30 days, the U.S. may halt military assistance. [Is it a coincidence that we’re 3 weeks before the election?] For more, click here.
The Shin Bet arrested Vladimir Verchovsky, a resident of Petah Tikva, who agreed to assassinate an Israeli scientist for $100,000 on behalf of Iranian intelligence. Verchovsky had been carrying out various missions for Iranian operatives, including tagging graffiti, distributing posters, and gathering intelligence on a targeted Israeli. He allegedly traveled by taxi from Tel Aviv to Modiin, where he collected a bag containing a handgun, a matching magazine and 15 bullets. Upon returning to his home, he was arrested. For more, click here.
Does Israel even have the capability of destroying, or significantly setting back, Iran’s nuclear program? Or would attempting to do that cause Iran to speed up development of a nuclear weapon? To read an article with some insight into these questions, click here.
The holiday of Sukkot (Tabernacles) begins tonight and runs through next weekend.
During Sukkot Jews live (eat and sleep) in a hut-like structure called a Sukkah.
The Talmud states two reasons for the mitzvah of living in the Sukkah for seven days.
The first is to commemorate that our ancestors dwelled in Sukkahs in the wilderness. The second is to remember the “clouds of glory” that surrounded and protected the Jews in the desert. The Talmud seems to lean towards the second explanation. If this is the case, then why do we use a hut to represent the clouds? Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to live out in the open air, under the clouds? Wouldn’t that give us more of a feeling of complete dependence on the protection given us by God?
Although, in truth, living out “under the clouds” does starkly represent total dependence on God, real life isn’t as clear cut. We all try to build structures to provide us with security and protection. We live in these structures and feel safe and in control. We view these structures as permanent and without them we could not function. The reality, however, is that our structures are really just flimsy huts that create for us the illusion of permanence and security. They fall apart when we least expect them too.
The Sukkah that we live in for seven days reminds us that our own structures of security – our houses, careers, social status – are just temporary. They last for a week, a month, a year, several years, but are then taken down. The Sukkah reminds us that our real security and protection comes not from the walls that we build but from the graces of God.
May we all be blessed with the wisdom to differentiate between the security that is true and comes only from God and the false security of the hut that just looks real, but is only an illusion. And may we blessed with peace in Israel and the entire world.
[Taken from my book Deep Waters.]
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