War

Contrary to the song of the same name, sometimes war is good for something. In this case, letting Hamas know they can no longer rain down rockets on Israeli cities unchecked, risking the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Firing back is never a good thing, but sometimes it is necessary. I'll let David Bogner's comment on his blog speak for my feeling on this:

"are you serious? ... I have a deal for you. What if I decided to sit in my car across the street from your house and get good and drunk every day. When your kids get off the school bus I get to shoot in their general direction. My state of inebriation and lack of aiming will almost guarantee that I'll miss your kids every time. I may mess up the paint job on your house, but who cares... you have to repaint at some point anyway, right. What's that? You don't want to take that chance with your kids? So why is it you are OK with Israeli kids living under fire every day? What you REALLY need is to be dragged from your comfortable Brooklyn apartment and flown to Sderot where you will be chained to a sign post in the center of town for just one day. When the sirens start going off (as they do every 20 - 30 minutes) you can take comfort in the fact that "there had not been a single Israeli death from rocket fire since June". The odds are with you, right? RIGHT?! Idiot."

Anyway, this is mainly to let you all know that we are safe and, at the moment, far enough away from where the action is. And if anyone has read about the Palestinian Arab who stabbed 4 people in Modi'in Illit, that is a town called Kiryat Sefer (it's also known as Modi'in Illit), across the highway from us. It is not Modi'in. We are, thank G-d, out of rocket range, although we have been hearing all the jets taking off from nearby. We knew the Operation had started on Shabbat when we heard all the jets, although we couldn't confirm until Shabbat was over. It's a little strange actually being here while an action is going on, but to be honest, it almost feels less real here, because life for the rest of us is going on as "normal."

Except we're all praying a little more and listening a little harder.

Prayer for Soldiers
May the Almighty cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our fighters from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor.

Amen.