Kids in Israel Feel Connected to Their Country
On Wednesday, Sammy Jackman, an immigrant from Britain, eulogized his beloved son, Efraim, who was killed in battle in Gaza. He described his ambition and drive, his love for family, his high standards and unwillingness to compromise, and the way he gave his all for the army, his country and his people. He said: "Only in Israel can you raise children like this." It's true.Douglas Murray, Col. Richard Kemp explain uphill battle for Israel
Kids are educated to give of themselves to society at large. This spirit of volunteerism pushes them to serve as counselors in youth movements, to run camps for the physically disabled, to visit the elderly, and to organize all kinds of group activities to help their communities. This tough spirit fosters independence and idealism. That's what happens when you give 18-year-olds guns and tell them they are responsible for each other's lives.
The so-called "Tik-Tok generation" in Israel was able to put down their screens in a matter of moments and get out there to protect their people and their country. They have shown little sign of the entitlement, coddling, or failure to take responsibility that plague many of their counterparts in other countries.
RESPONDING TO the issue of the hostages, Murray said that he was genuinely shocked by “the lack of empathy for Israel internationally.”Kenyan reverend: UN ‘obsessed’ with Hamas war, ‘hates Jews’
A glaring example, he said, was the tearing down of posters of the hostages around the world. “If you put up a poster of a missing cat or dog in your neighborhood, you would not expect anyone to rip it down,” he asserted.
“And if anyone did rip it down, you would think that person was subhuman. This wasn’t dogs or cats. These were Jewish children. In city after city, sociopaths tore down these posters. This lack of empathy has been there since [Oct. 7].”
Addressing the tragic incident in which three hostages were mistakenly killed by Israeli troops, Murray said: “The media treats it as more evidence of the brutality of the Israeli soldiers – ‘they even kill their own!’
“Imagine the lives of those soldiers who shot those three hostages, how they must have felt. And yet, instead of recognizing what a tragedy that is for everybody involved, they use it as a weapon against Israel! That really has slightly startled me.”
When asked by the moderator about “the day after,” Kemp said: “The IDF has no option whatsoever, apart from to stay in control of Gaza from now on. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks; it doesn’t matter what President Biden might want to happen.
“What is absolutely certain is that the IDF must maintain security control of Gaza. It means either a permanent IDF presence inside the whole of Gaza, or it means the creation of a one- or two-mile buffer zone on the inside of the Gaza border that no one is allowed to go into and that the IDF can police.”
About the general population of Gaza, Kemp said: ”The reality in Gaza is that the vast majority of allegedly innocent civilians support Hamas. Even when they see the horrors that Hamas has brought on them, they still support Hamas. And there will be efforts to have a Hamas 2.”
Murray concurred that it is a “very bleak necessity” for Israel to stay in Gaza. For how long? “Call me a pessimist,” Kemp said, “but I would say forever.”
Both Kemp and Murray spend time visiting the wounded in hospitals. On a recent visit, Murray met a farmer from a border kibbutz who had lost his wife, son, and both his legs in the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack. He told Murray: “I have been a leftist all my life. I now want to look out on nothing but potato fields from here to the Mediterranean.”
Commented Murray: “Who can risk living beside these people? Nobody else in the world would be expected to have to put up with that. I think you should have the right to live in peace and know that the border you have does not contain genocidal maniacs on the other side who want to kill you.”
A prominent reverend from Kenya, who also directs the Israel Allies Foundation African office, has accused the United Nations of having “an obsession with antisemitism.”
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post via WhatsApp a few days after he returned to his country from a solidarity mission in Israel, Rev. Dennis Nthumbi said that “the war against Hamas has exposed the decay in the UN and its moral rot that has led to the molestation of its statutes.”
He accused the UN of becoming so preoccupied with the Israel-Hamas conflict “because it hates Jews” that it has failed to offer a response to real genocides – one in his area – namely the genocides of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar in Southeast Asia and the Masalit civilians in Sudan.
“The UN is no longer useful,” Nthumbi said. “Abolish it. All sane member nations should either demand a refund or a leadership change.”
He also accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of “running an education system that is enshrined on the principles of jihadism” with an objective of “churning out child terrorists” and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) of disregarding the slaughter of Israeli children on October 7.
Nthumbi is a senior, though unofficial, adviser to Kenya’s president, William Ruto, whom he accompanied on a mission to Israel in May. Both Ruto and Nthumbi are devout Christians who believe their biblical obligation is to support Israel.