By now you have probably realized that I firmly believe that Israel and the army have enough detractors around the world to make me decide not to be one. For the most part, we've been very blessed in our "relationship" with the army (and if you are hearing a "but" in there, you are correct). Elie went in and from the beginning, they recognized in him the many facets I knew were buried inside. They found his love of order, his need and ability to command. They encouraged him to think - in the box, over the box, out of the box. They watched his ability to analyze situations and encouraged him; they found his love of fixing things and knowing how they work, and fed that too. All that he was ready and able to give, they took...and gave back so much more

And then came Shmulik - who is so different. He's more social than Elie; he needs that connection. He's quieter and yet more outgoing as well. So similar and yet so different than his older brother. And in this difference, the army too found peace. Shmulik wanted to be in combat. He pushed himself to succeed. What came so easy for Elie, was harder for Shmulik. In some ways, he is physically stronger than Elie, but the discipline was harder, the routine, the "do it because I said so" was tougher for him. It wasn't his desire to lead and when he realized that training for combat was causing him migraines that were more than he could stand, they gave him what he loved doing most. He asked to drive some commander - and they gave him the very commander of the base he was on - still with his friends, and even better...the commander lives in our city so he was home more. Shmulik gained incredible role model as an officer and a person. S. is a man who was severely injured by terrorists - and doctors wondered if he would walk again - today he runs - faster than Shmulik, farther, stronger. Shmulik learned that where the mind wills something, the body listens. They spent hours together driving around and seeing Israel and S. helped Shmulik discovered corners of himself and of the land he had never seen.

There were a few times over the past almost five years that I've been writing that the army faltered. There was the time they wanted to assign Elie to a unit to command female soldiers; and still they handled it well. There was the lone soldier from California who came here to give his all, was injured, and ultimately, the army did not handle it well.

That and other failures prove the Israeli army is, like all institutions of man, subject to the whims and weaknesses of human beings. 

Today, I guess, is another failure to an extent. Shmulik serves in a program called Hesder. It is meant to combine learning Torah and Jewish studies with serving in the army. Before and after the active service, he is still considered within the army and, as such, the army calls these boys for a day or more a few times a year. As religious soldiers, they are often called upon to be in the army for Jewish holidays. In Shmulik's case, he was called for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the calendar, and a fast day.

He and two friends really wanted to be home; they with their parents, Shmulik with his wife. One of the boys, named Chaim (not our Chaim), had a friend who was an officer in the office that handles these boys and assigns them to bases.  The officer told his friend when to come, what to do. The idea was that if Shmulik, this Chaim, and another friend waited while others went in, the army would run out of places to send the boys - they regularly get more than they need; and the boys would get the credit for having shown up and been willing to serve, while still spending the holiday at home.

And this is what happened. At around 3:00 p.m. - after hours of waiting, the officer sent Chaim an SMS text message on his phone telling him he could go - all the places were full. That was more than 2 months ago. Suddenly, about 2 weeks later, Shmulik and his other friend (not Chaim), got a message from the army that they were in trouble for not coming when they were called.

They thought it was all a mistake. They went down to explain - the officer denied everything and they were called to a judgement (mishpat). What Shmulik should have done at that point was call his commanding officer, for whom he drove for so many months. But he thought it was not serious, he was truly innocent, after all. So he went back for the judgement, only to find that the "judge" was the officer who was Chaim's friend. Only he was home sick, so Shmulik and his other friend decided it was better to wait and speak to him the following Tuesday and remind him, rather than go with someone new.

On Tuesday, he went...and the officer denied everything and sentenced Shmulik and his friend to 21 days on base. This is a harsh sentence for a soldier who didn't come for one day of service - so said Shmulik, Elie, and every officer who was told. Shmulik's commanding officer asked him why he waited but still tried to help. 

Shmulik immediately appealed on the grounds that he was not offered an opportunity to tell his side, was not given an opportunity to call witnesses, etc. The officer (a different one), called up the sentencing officer - and he lied again - saying that he had offered Shmulik every opportunity to speak - had even checked off these options in his report.

In short - a set up.

Shmulik reported to base yesterday - wondering if he would not be home with his wife for three weeks. He was sent to a base near Hebron where he found a wonderful commanding officer. His sentence was immediately reduced to 14 days and he was allowed home last night. He went back today, and was told they would try to send him home each day, if possible. He will come home again tonight.

As to the officer that lied, there are still shades of this story. There were three boys in that car - only two were accused, tried and sentenced to any sort of punishment. Perhaps the boys will yet be able to retrieve the SMS message that was sent to Chaim. Even if this happens, if Shmulik decides to pursue this rather than just accept the 14 days and move on, justice will come too late to undo the harsh sentence.

This is where I explain that I believe with complete faith in justice. There is always justice, always a reckoning. Sometimes, it is immediate. I have seen this many times. Sometimes, it is later and one wonders if the years in between are part of the punishment. And sometimes, justice comes in the world I believe lives on beyond this one.

So, for the next two weeks or so, Shmulik is back in uniform and I am again the mother of a soldier on duty. I don't even know yet what he is doing - I guess I'll find out tonight. But it is a sign of maturity in Shmulik that he accepts this punishment - if not as justice, than as something he must do. 

He knows now that he made mistakes - in not calling S. as soon as he got the accusation, in not going in to register as he was supposed to, in not taking a witness with him to the Mishpat, as is his right. These are lessons he learns and really, at 21 years of age, it is a good time to learn them.

Justice has many shades and comes in many forms...but it does come. Perhaps somewhere, there is an officer who will read this and investigate an officer that lied. Perhaps somewhere, there is a young man who will be wiser for having read this. As for Shmulik - it is a very small mountain over which he must climb and with all things, he will be stronger for the climb.

Every year around this time, I look back at the posts I made just before and during the Gaza War. It is like scratching a scab. You know you shouldn't; you know you'll make it bleed again if you do; but the itch is there and you scratch.

The candles are burning in the window - we lit the fifth candle. Elie isn't home. He is visiting the United States for the first time since he was a little boy attending his uncle's wedding. He wasn't home the Hanuka before the Gaza War. It is strange reading back, knowing how wrong I was. In this post dated December 25, 2008 called "Life is Never Boring" - I was sure that Elie was heading up north. Sixty rockets had been fired at Israel in a single day and we were sure war was coming. We were right. I was sure Elie would not be involved. I was wrong.

For those of you who have been me through the long haul, I apologize for reposting. It's just interesting to me to see how life has a way of surprising you. We were days away from the war...days away...

I remember it started in late December with uncertainty and waiting. First the air force went in with greater force to stop the rocket fire. On a single day sixty rockets were fired at Israel, daily in the days before and after, dozens were fired. Schools were hit, houses, a mall. People were killed, injured, terrified. All of Israel knew that the violence coming from Gaza was at a level that even we could not sustain.

I knew or feared war was coming on two fronts - as an Israeli and as a mother. As an Israeli, I knew we were headed to war - where else can a nation go when rockets are being fired daily at cities and you know it won't stop until we go in? Hamas was asking for it...begging for it. Normal people would tell you that the leadership of a country would not want its people to come under fire - but normal governments don't hide themselves in bunkers and taunt other nations to kill their people. We would, I was sure, enter any day, First by air, then by ground. Where artillery would come into it, I did not yet know.

As a mother, at the beginning I was so sure that Elie would not be involved. With the perfect hindsight only living through something can give you, I can almost laugh at myself...almost. Elie was very close to the end of his shift in the center of the country at a check point. They were going to be moving his unit north for training and patrolling. Once north, he would face whatever came at us from Lebanon. From Lebanon, not Gaza. I knew...I knew...I knew nothing, not even that I didn't know.

On December 25th, 2008, Elie was still in the center - the war had started for the air force, but ground forces and artillery were not yet in position. A few days later, On Defense Minister Ehud Barak was unusually eloquent as he spoke for all Israelis:

Some of our holidays are steeped in tradition and law; some are more about joy and fun. They are less serious, less heavy on the soul. Chanukah is a great holiday. On the fun side, it's about greasy foods you try to limit the rest of the year: we eat fried potato pancakes, jelly donuts and chocolate. It's about light and sound: we light an additional candle each night, filling the room with candlelight and song. We gather in the corner of the room. My husband and children each light a menorah and we sing both the blessings and other songs.

On the serious side, Chanukah is about so much more. 

The first year, Elie was in the army, I took my three younger children to the shore on the last day of the holiday. I wrote about it here - A Candle and a Wave (amazing pictures).

His second year, I wrote about his lighting the menorah at a checkpoint in Where you light a candle. This was the Chanukah right before the Gaza War...and he didn't make it home the entire time because tensions were escalating; war was coming.

His last year in the army, I was calm enough to write more about the holiday than about him. I wrote about Chanukah and the IDF.

So - this year, relatively calm still, I'll write a bit more on the holiday, perhaps, and only a little on the army. Chanukah is the story of weak triumphant; of good over bad; of freedom; of principle; of light. An evil king of the Greeks began oppressing the Jews. His name was Antiochus and he used his power to persecute the Jews in their land. He forbade many of our religious practices; demanded that pigs be sacrificed in the Holy Temple.

In an uprising against the ancient Greeks and this persecution of our religion and our lives, the Maccabees, led by Mattathias and his son Judah, triumphed and the Temple was rededicated. There were then, as there are today, miracles that happened - unexplained things that worked one way when they couldn't possibly. A small army defeats a much larger one in battles that contradict all laws of war. A simplified version, but essentially, a small jug of oil - enough for only one day's service was found in the Holy Temple - it would take 7 more days before more oil would be ready...with faith, the Jews lit the oil for the one day and it lasted for all the full 8 days until more was ready. And so today, tonight, we light the menorah.

Chanukah is about triumph, about dedication. It is about our reclaiming our land and living here when evil tried to remove us. It really is, always has been, and likely always will be, as very simple as that.

We are here in our land - we will not be removed. Not by the Ancient Greeks, not by the Ancient Romans. Not by the Ottomans, the British or the Palestinians. Not even by the Iranians, the UN, or Obama. The light of Chanukah that was kindled thousands of years ago and continues to burn bright. It was lit again tonight in my living room, in the windows of my neighbors, in the streets of my city and of Jerusalem. Everywhere, from house to house, the message is there. We live here, in the land of miracles and each day, there are miracles.

Four missiles were found in Lebanon today, before they were able to be fired at Israel. A car was targeted by Arab gunmen near Rechalim; no one was injured. Three firebombs were thrown at a Jewish village and a car north of Jerusalem - no injuries. 

We live in a land of miracles, under the Great Protector, who watches over Israel.

I write too often about the sad and the bad and not enough about the amazing and wonderful. After each Shabbat of down time, one of the first things I do is check the news. I've been a news-aholic for more years than I can remember. The first news I saw was of a terrorist attacking a soldier at the entrance to my city. Two rockets fired over Shabbat.

Only later did I go back and look again. The headlines speak of an Egyptian protester who was beaten to death by the police; of 30 bodies of dead Syrian protesters that were dumped and found; and finally, of a protest in Tel Aviv (peaceful, of course) for women's rights. Someone left a comment (thank you for being honest) saying that attacks such as this one (Ambulance Sirens) are why they are afraid to bring their family to live here.

So, it is time, once again, to explain that despite it all, there is no place I would rather be, no place greater where my children should be raised. The third of my five children is about to get married here. My soon-to-be future daughter-in-law is the first to choose, as we did, to come live here. The other two were born here.

So lest you think, even for a moment, that we sacrifice anything (including our personal safety) by living here, let me tell you the opposite is true. There is no safer place for the Jews than here in Israel. There is no better place to raise our children as fine human beings, as strong Jews, as Israelis - than here.

I have never, in all my life, felt safer than I do here in Israel - as a Jew, as an Israeli, but as a woman too. I can walk outside at night, at 3:00 a.m. without hesitation, without fear. I can send my 11-year-old daughter out - even in the middle of the night, without hesitation, without fear. I know that everywhere my children go, they have eyes on them. Not eyes of evil waiting to attack them, but eyes of protection (and I'm actually not even talking about God's eyes).

If my child is not sure where she is - without hesitation, she can go over to anyone and ask. Very few children in Israel are hurt or abducted by strangers here. There are no children's faces on milk containers here - not because the companies won't agree, but because there is no need.

My country rarely experiences extreme cold and even the heat is almost always bearable. Even in the winter, there are days like today where there isn't a cloud in the sky, the sun is bright, and the air so comfortable. Every day, we do acts of kindness, often without even thinking twice. Today, I drove through my neighborhood and saw a man who indicated he wanted a ride.

In America is it as stupid to hitchhike as it is to give a hitchhiker a ride. Thankfully, in Israel, this is not true. The fact is, I am very upset with the man who stood there waiting for a ride. In the recent past, he hurt my husband and my family with his insensitivity on two separate occasions, without shame, without guilt, without apologies. I have to admit, I hesitated for a fraction of second before I pulled to the side.

Without the shame I think he should have had, he asked if I was going past the mall. I answered that I was, and gave him a ride. I didn't start a conversation, nor did he. The air was uncomfortable in the car and I felt no reason to ease the short time until we got close and I asked whether he wanted the mall or the front of the city.

He said he was surprised by the traffic - a brief conversation. I let him off at the stop he wanted and he thanked me and wished me a good day. If there is anything that I did wrong, it was in that fraction of a second in which I hesitated. Giving him the ride is typical of Israel and Israelis - little acts of kindness that we do. This is my country.

Last night, the Chief of Staff of Israel's army went out to a restaurant for dinner. While he was there, a woman  experienced a health emergency. Benny Gantz approached and helped her while his body guards stood close by. The Chief of Staff, the highest position in the army, stayed there until the ambulance arrived. An act of kindness - my country.

Last night, Elie volunteered his time, as he does very often, to be on call for the ambulance squad in Maale Adumim. This morning, my youngest daughter took her turn as a crossing guard again to safely help younger children cross the street.

Last night, Gilad Shalit slept in his bed, in his parents' house. What nation in the world, other than Israel, would release 1,026 people - among them hundreds of murderers, for one young man? Today, Israel will release the last 550 of the list - among them more than 370 who were convicted of attempted murder. What country, other than Israel?

Would you trust Hamas to keep their word on anything? I wouldn't and yet Hamas trusted and the world knew that Israel would keep its promise to release the second group. And we are doing it. Should we? Is it in our national interest? Highly doubtful, and yet we do. We'll get nothing for this release. The rockets won't stop and some, probably many, of these 550 will return to terror. It is their way.

I love Israel because we hold ourselves to the highest standards of behavior and though I am continually disappointed that the world does not see this, I know that we do it for ourselves, not for them. This morning, I gave a man a ride to the mall. Ultimately, I did it because I'd rather act as I did, than act as he did.

He will have to live with his actions; but at least I know I can live with mine. A friend recently said to me that thinking back, she is amazed at how many family events we have had in the last few years. It is true and I recognize and thank my blessings every day.

My daughter met and married a wonderful young man - and now they have an amazing baby that just melts my heart every time I hold him. My son married a wonderful girl, the girl he has loved since before the army, before it was really acceptable for them to have made this connection. It was always her and that means so much.

Elie has met and will soon marry a most amazing young woman who took the time to remind me, "I was yours before I was his" because I have loved her almost from the moment I met her last year (and I just realized recently she has blue eyes!).

And my two younger children are blessed with their own celebrations and joys. Davidi has grown so tall - he fulfilled the promise I wanted for him - he's taller than Elie. He's so beautiful...and he has blue eyes too! For someone who never thought having blue eyes was genetically possible - I have two blue-eyed children! And Aliza grows secure and happy and free.

Weeks after we'd come to Israel, a 6-year-old Elie was talking to my mother-in-law about living in Israel, "Savta [grandma], I'm so free. I'm free." He said. That freedom is the greatest gift I have given my children by moving here when they were young and by living here all of their lives. There are national freedoms - that allow peaceful protests as happened last night in Tel Aviv and in the last few months in many places in Israel. There is no "Arab Spring" here in Israel because we don't need it.

And if police cross the line into violence as they did yesterday in Cairo and beat a protester to death, the Israeli courts and justice system will deal harshly with them; the government will not protect or excuse their behavior.

These are instances of national freedom - and in this sense, Israel is the only free country in the Middle East.

But more than national freedom, we are free as individuals. We live free of fear in a way that is unimaginable to most Americans. I have stood in the center of Jerusalem with a friend from the States and listened to her speak on the cellphone to her husband and tell him how peaceful it was. Cars honk, people yell at each other for how they drive, a store owner is nasty because the kids are blocking customers from coming in.

And then, a small child approaches the counter and carefully counts out his change to buy some candy. He is half a shekel short (less than 15 cents). The next person in line is just as likely to take out a half a shekel as the store owner is to wave away the money, smile at the child and wish him a good day. That is the Israel I love and the one that will bring me to tears a hundred times a week.

Yes, a security guard was injured at the entrance to my city yesterday. But I live a life time of days in which stories like the little boy come true. For those alone, I would choose again to live here in this beautiful land that cherishes life, its children, its soldiers, the sun and the land.

I love you, Israel - more and more each day, each month, each year.

Despite reality TV shows, the word "survivor" for me is almost always tied to those who walked out of the hell that was the Holocaust. Television is fiction, trying to survive the Holocaust was the reality for millions of Jews; more than six million didn't survive. My grandfather was born in Poland and fled in the early 1920s. He left behind his mother and two sisters - he was their hope for a better life in a place less filled with hatred and oppression. He went to America and worked very hard. 

My grandfather compromised the religion in which he was raised to earn the money he needed to bring his mother and sisters to safety. He continued to eat kosher food, but he worked on the Sabbath, as his job required him to do. Hitler's race to power defeated my grandfather's race to save his family. His mother and sisters died in Auschwitz. Once, he saw a movie - a news reel - of what was happening in Europe and when he saw the dead bodies piled up, he began to sob. My mother remembers him saying, "my mother, my mother." His mother and sisters were not survivors...they did not survive. 

When I stood beside the gas chambers and crematoria there, I whispered to my grandfather's family of the great-great grandchildren and great-great grand nieces and nephews of theirs who live in Israel. I spoke to my husband's grandparents - all four of them, who had been killed there, and I cried for them because they did not survive.

My grandfather suffered the loss of his beloved mother - but he was not a survivor. He was in no concentration camps, no ghetto, no forced labor camps. He was not a survivor, nor was my mother, his only daughter. You either survive something, or you don't. Either way, your children may be effected by what you endured, but that does not make them survivors too.

My mother-in-law and father-in-law were young when the Nazis stormed into Hungary. They survived the horrors of the Holocaust. My mother-in-law was in Auschwitz. She and her brother and sister survived; her parents, a  young sister, an older brother and his wife did not.

All their lives, my in-laws were remembered as survivors, scarred by what had been done to them, by their memories, their nightmares. All their lives, they looked behind them, wondering when the Nazis would come again. They and hundreds of thousands of others who managed to escape Hitler's final plan were the survivors who reminded us what the Nazis had done. But, the thing is...surviving is not "transferable." My husband's parents were survivors. He is not. Our children are not. The child of a survivor - is not a survivor. Like a stone thrown into a pond, the ripple effect goes on, long after the stone sinks to the bottom. But the stone did not hit   all the waves it produces; the children of survivors are not survivors themselves. 

What this means is that the number of survivors dwindles each day as more and more pass away. The last of the generation - most only children in those final days of World War II, are in their 70s and beyond. This is recognized throughout the world - by Germany, Israel, the United States, and Jews everywhere. Too soon, there will be no more survivors. What is the great truth of the Holocaust? That there are very few survivors left and the burden of remembering has already passed to my generation and beyond. My sons carry the names of  those who died in the Holocaust; my grandson carries the name of one who survived.

And now, another discussion of reality versus fiction.

In 1948, the Arab population of what was then called Palestine, chose war over statehood. They rejected the United Nations Partition Plan that ended the British Mandate over Palestine; a plan that would have seen an Arab and a Jewish state established. The Jews, including many survivors, agreed to the Plan and declared the re-establishment of the State of Israel after 2,000 years in exile. Five Arab armies promptly invaded - Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and units from far beyond. 

During the fighting, a bit before, and most definitely after, hundreds of thousands of people fled in many directions, from and to many countries. Some fled to get out of the way of the fighting (Arab armies broadcast to local Arab communities that they should get out of the way as the Arab armies came to "push the Jews into the sea"); others fled in the midst of battles; others, like hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Arab countries, fled an expected wave of persecution, arriving in Israel with little more than the clothes and the few packages they were allowed to take with them.

The Jews who came from Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and beyond, were refugees. They were put in tents until apartments were built or found for them. Within a short period of time, measured in months or perhaps even years, all were resettled and absorbed. Today in Israel, there are no Jewish refugees. In the house next to mine are Jews whose parents came from Yemen and Morocco. Across the street, from France and Russia. Some who are many generations in Israel, even one who can trace her roots back two thousand years - unbroken in this land.

The Arabs who fled the conflict settled in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and beyond. They were refugees. They were put in camps...and kept there. Their Arab brothers made no attempt to absorb them, to find them homes, to build them apartments. They reveled in their poverty. When these refugees had children, the Arabs proclaimed that their children were refugees as well. Their grandchilden, great-grandchildren, and beyond.

What is the great Palestinian refugee truth? There are very few Palestinian refugees who are still alive - and those that are alive, are in their late 60s, 70s and 80s. You cannot transfer the "title" of survivor; nor can you transfer the mantle of being a refugee. Those born in Jordan are Jordanians - even if the Kingdom of Jordan denies them the right to vote so that they can maintain the fiction of being a Hashemite kingdom - one whose population is actually more "Palestinian" than "Jordanian."

King Abdullah of Jordan was born in Amman - he says he is Jordanian. Queen Rania was born in Kuwait. She says she is Palestinian because her parents were born in Tulkarem, an Arab city in Israel. She is, in truth, Kuwaiti, as those born in Jordan are Jordanians, those born in Saudi Arabia are Saudis, even if they are denied the right to work or vote or purchase land. There was no government in Palestine - only the British Mandate and before that Ottoman control.

What you have is not a refugee problem - but hundreds of thousands of people who have been denied from birth the right to live as equals in the nation of their birth - no, not Palestine or Israel - but all the nations to which they fled - Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and beyond.

The Jews who came from Yemen are Israelis, as are their children. We are not a nation of Iranians, Lebanese,  Egyptians, Syrians, etc. - we are a nation of Jews and Israelis, many of whom have roots in these other countries. The Jews who live here do not have Yemenite citizenship, nor do their children or grandchildren.

What an amazing abuse of history to systematically lower the number of survivors of the Holocaust while hypocritically increasing the number of Palestinian refugees with each generation and each passing day. If a child born in Egypt is a Palestinian refugee, than my husband and my children are all Holocaust survivors.

Will Germany now pay reparations to each of these children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren as victims of the Nazi regime? Will the United Nations create an organization to see to the needs of these new "survivors." Will the Poles return the land of my great-grandmother to me? Will the Czech republic return my husband's grandfather's shoe store and home to him?

No - only the Palestinians, it seems, get to wave their hypothetical flag of suffering before the nations of the world, and only Israel is expected to pay for it. How truly lame.