Frontline Tours In The Holy Land
There are times when we feel low and other times when we know that the exit from the darkness is just around the corner. The truth is all of our feelings of lacking and despair, are just feelings – true Redemption is always within our reach!
Only when we have faith that the Creator is the ultimate reality and our one real reason for being sent down here is to have a personal relationship with the Almighty, then we will begin to feel ourselves leave the Mitzrayim we have been trapped in.
With days to go until the Biden administration officially takes over at the White House, Israel launched another air attack on Iranian forces in Syria. While an attack on Syria by the IAF has become standard in the remaining days of the Trump administration, this time the IAF struck closer to the Iraqi border in Eastern Syria.
The attack targeted at least 15 installations housing Iranian weapons and acted as the main transit hub for the IRCG into Western Syria. There are claims that it killed 57 people – mostly IRCG members or affiliates.
Syria’s official SANA news agency said the following:
“A military source told SANA in a statement that at 01:10 on Wednesday dawn, the Israeli enemy carried out air aggression on Deir Ezzor City and al-Bukamal area.”
WATCH THE ATTACK ABOVE
From the outset of reports last night, it was already assumed that the US had given Israel the intelligence it needed to successfully carry out such an attack, which essentially crippled the Iranian forces in the area.
The AP has claimed the following in an article published today:
“The U.S. official, who requested anonymity to speak about the matter, said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed Tuesday’s airstrike with Yossi Cohen, chief of Israel’s spy agency Mossad, at a public meeting in the popular Washington restaurant Café Milano on Monday.”
It has been assumed that the Trump Administration would continue to give Israel the green light to take out as much Iranian hardware and personnel as possible before Biden is installed. After January 20th the sinophilic nature of Biden’s regime will make Israel’s overt strikes very hard to carry out. China wants a strong Iran and if past is prescience then so does the Biden administration.
With the region on high alert after the strike, the question remains whether Iran will hold back for a few more days until the Biden administration takes over or retaliate now. Most observers believe the Mullahs in Tehran will refrain from attacking, but if this is not Trump’s final gift to the Jewish state, then expect something far larger to test the Ayatollah’s resolve
When our souls descend into this world we find ourselves in a state of “klipot, layers.” These layers are the cognitive distortions we are meant to spend a life time breaking through.
Growth always starts within darkness, confusion, and illusion. We move up and we fall, move up and fall. In chassidut and deeper lessons connected to the Torah this process is analogous to leaving “Mitzrayim, Egypt,” the place of constricted G-D consciousness.
Our job is to discover light within the darkness that we find ourselves in. It is literally the descending that holds the greatest chance to reveal the light hidden within.
Right now darkness surrounds us and penetrates us. Endless information, unlimited choices, and a world which appears to be more and more chaotic has pushed us into a state of collective despair.
Where and how can we move forward?
We must not fear. The darkness we are experiencing is the moment before the greatest light is revealed – all we need to do is to hold on tight.
(Likutey Moharan 6 & 36, Orot Techiya, Likutey Halachot Hilchot Pesach)
The recently concluded Qatar-Saudi deal to end the blockade on Qatar has once again changed the equation and calibration of peace in the Middle East. There are those naysayers who believe the deal was concluded in time for a potential Biden administration, but that is improbable.
Remember the embargo on Qatar was led by Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States precisely because of Qatar’s connections to Iran and its funding of the Muslim Brotherhood.
A Biden administration that is ready to cozy up to the Mullah’s in Iran would elicit a continuing of the present Saudi led embargo.
Most likely, Qatar has realized which way the wind is blowing in the Middle East when it comes to their Sunni friends. Qatar’s strength has always come from its ability to play all sides – the embargo proved to its leadership in Doha that this strategy is no longer an option.
With a reported pipeline between the UAE and Israel in the works, Qatar’s reliance and drive to build one with Turkey has now become obsolete. The main reason for its support for Turkey’s pro ISIS policies during Obama’s tenure was due to the building of this joint Turkey-Qatar pipeline.
Without the ability to build a secure pipeline and the UAE-Israel potentially being far more lucrative, Qatar has less reasons to hold back from returning to the Sunni block.
True, Biden’s team views things differently and this is the reason for Qatar’s decision to pick sides now. With the White House’s foreign policy potentially being run through Beijing, Qatar’s historic “neutrality” in the region is not longer relevant after Jan. 20th.
President Trump’s team has left the region in a very different situation. The Muslim Brotherhood is fast being pushed out after the signing of the Abraham Accords and with it Qatar’s reason and ability to push against its Sunni neighbors and more importantly Israel.
Qatar’s choice to rejoin the Saudi led block also means that it accepts the centrality and necessity of Israel’s role within that block. Biden can certainly try to partner with Iran. However, the block’s strength is its ability to utilize Israel’s innovation economy, military prowess, and geopolitical connections around the world to sidestep a hapless Biden administration and a rising China without losing ground to Iran.
Qatar’s growing communication with Israel concerning Gaza has also made it less obstinate in dealing with the Jewish state on other issues. It also has a working relationship with Jerusalem and will now benefit from the Abraham Accords in an indirect way.
The Qatar-Saudi deal may appear to have come out of nowhere, but it needed to be done before Biden takes over in order to ensure that Iranian influence does not pollute the negotiations. Qatar wants to keep its revenues rising and influence steady and sees the Sunni block as the key to doing it.
This agreement will make it harder for Biden and company to push for rejoining the already broken Iran nuclear deal. More than that, it is a message for China who recently upgraded their military pact with Iran, that the Abraham Accords and the Sunni block will not be broken up.
More than 15 years ago I was dragged out of the Neve Dekalim Synagogue by four soldiers and then bussed out of Gush Katif. In those moments I wondered why and where the protest movement to stop one of the largest injustices brought upon Israeli citizens by their own government had gone wrong.
The fact is, up until that point and including the Oslo protests headed by Moshe Feiglin, all of the nationalist protests had a sectoral feel to them. They weren’t meant to be sectoral, but Israel with all of its claims of the need for national unity breaks down along tribal lines and that is the failure of all of the protests in the past few years.
True, the disaster of the first Amona protest in 2006, when cops used horses to stampede settler youth, drew condemnation from the left, but the protest itself was not successful – meaning it did not strike a real chord with anyone else except settlers.
A lot has happened since then. Israelis know each other far better than before. Religious Zionists have penetrated the mainstream media and stand poised to take over the army in the next generation. All the while, both Chareidim and Religious Zionists find common ground on many issues.
Still, there appears to be a lack of real unity of purpose other than just survival or standing by while the country’s hi-tech leaders represent their craft as being indicative of the Israeli citizenry as a whole. The more we know each other, the more we realize we are all being pulled along together, without regard to whether or not we want to be heading where we are heading.
Perhaps the uniting factor in this new young generation, growing up in a post Gush Katif reality is the need for a new national ethos. Many settler youth reject their parents’ views that they need to conform to make it in Israel and like many on the left, they see the vacuous drive towards participation in the hi-tech ecosystem as being disconnected from the larger issues plaguing Israeli society.
This is where the intersection has arisen between the protests surrounding Ahuviya Sandak’s death, potentially at the hands of a negligent police and the disconnect many have in Israel from the government and the elite that rules it.
When Hill Top Youth were placed in administrative detention for six months over Duma and then tortured to be made to confess and still be found guilty despite an admittance that the confession came by way of torture – Israelis scratched their head.
True, most questioned it, but then went on with their life. What is going on now is a confirmation that the bias against the idealistic youth of Judea and Samaria is real and the “fringe opinions” over Duma might have had some legs to them after all.
The simple question is now beginning to be asked: Why all this trouble over a handful of teenagers that seem to be only focused on defending Jewish land from Arab squatters?
Why claim these kids are a threat to the entire nation?
The protests are growing, because people see that Ahuvia Sandak’s death is a symptom of a larger problem in Israel. True, we lead the world in innovation, but we are beginning to lose site of what guides us here in the Land in the first place. We have come home, but have buried the vessels of Redemption in the sands of the Negev.
The youth are showing us something else – that rights are not given to us by the police, the judges, or even the Knesset, but rather they are given to us by G-D himself.
In a sense, the hate for these youth by the apparatchiks in the leftwing controlled security forces and judicial system stems from a sense of embarrassment and jealousy. After all, it is supposed their kids doing this – being Zionists, not these rag tag youth of the hills.
Yet, this goes beyond Zionism that guided Jews back to Israel – this is about Redemption itself. For that, one has to leave behind the trappings and false understandings fomented by those who built the early state, which were then foisted on everyone else.
In a sense we have to leave the construct of our assumptions about what we are doing here to see past the illusions that the governing institutions wants us to believe.
No one trusts the police here, yet before this past year there was too much at stake for all of the various groups to unite. Lockdown after ridiculous lockdown has taken its toll on the public and with it, the last remaining barrier that had prevented it from truly making grassroots change.
The youth of the hills are more than just guardians of the Land – they are messengers of a new way, which is really an old way. They are the David to the government’s Saul. We are not meant to come home to our Land and live like other Nations. Our soul’s are whispering that to us – trying to wake us up and these youth are the reminder that we can behave differently.
There is a price for conformity and that is the anonymity the machine wants us to fall into. However, these youth can and will save us from ourselves at the end. Most of us want something else, but we are just too afraid to admit it to anyone else. All of the technology and entertainment has done nothing to quiet the yearning for a shift to a Redemptive paradigm.
These protests are about regaining the process of reawakening what the Jewish return to its Land was supposed to be about. While this might be scary to many here, it is necessary if we are going to complete the transition from a nation like all other nations to one that is truly a Kingdom of Priests.