No one knows better than I do — though all too many Jews (and others) know exactly what I know — that the pain of losing a close dear loved one is inconsolable — forever. It never goes away. Time heals the trauma — perhaps — but it does not heal the wound. If time turns the open sore into an emotional scar, nevertheless that scar keeps piercing open again and again.
My father died of leukemia at his age 45, my 14. I have never gotten over that despite my tough exterior and the passage of half a century. I am still an orphan. And the life-partner who was and remains the love of my life died five years ago of glioblastoma at her age 64, my 67, and my life never ever has been or will be the same. (I am not a complainer; I am an optimist. I still tell people I root for the New York Jets. But what’s true is true.)
I am not alone in my pain, particularly as a Jew. The 1200 families of the October 7 murdered are no different. Holocaust families. Families of those stabbed or shot by Arabs. And even families whose dearest died of heart or lung disease or kidney or liver disease or tuberculosis or hurricane or tsunami or earthquake, the whole Yom Kippur litany of Un’taneh Tokef.
And we all — forever until Messianic times — mourn the burning of our Holy Temples. Visits to the Temple Mount do not alleviate that, and many of us, like me, who assert sovereignty over the Temple Mount, nevertheless strictly observe the rabbinic rulings that forbid ascending Mount Zion and walking on that holy ground. Thus, when we console mourners, we remind them that we all are in mourning . . . for the destruction of Zion and Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Time has not healed that wound either.
I begin with this because I must emphasize the background and context of what lies ahead in this opinion. I look back on all our losses and sufferings, and I see something unique in the Jewish soul and character: We do not despair. We do not give up. And we come out stronger each time — notwithstanding that we do not heal from what we have endured.
It is unacceptable for the foolish to celebrate that the Holocaust gave birth to the country of Israel. But — anyway, regardless — we came out with the country of Israel because a world of non-Jewish antisemites, for just a moment in time, could not all simultaneously look us in the eyes and say “no.” There always were Macrons and Keir Starmers and David Lammys and Mark Carneys and Joe Bidens, Barack Obamas, and Kamala Harrises. But, for a split second in time, they could not all say no. And because of the determined core of the Jewish spirit — and, frankly, both shameless chutzpah and determined defiance from two thousand years of knowing we will not get an even break — it happened.
It did not hurt that Lord Moyne was eliminated by the Two Eliyahus and Count Folke Bernadotte, too. And that the British military wing of the King David was obliterated. That British officers were kidnaped and whipped when the Brits did that to Irgun members, and that British officers were hanged when the Brits did that to twelve Jewish heroes on whose necks the country of Israel was born.
Much Jewish blood was spilled to get our land back and throw out the colonialist imperialist occupiers. Scars remain. Sores remain: visit Acre Fortress prison and see the room with the gallows. But all of it left behind a country of Israel. (My regular readers know that I reject the term “State” of Israel. Israel is a country. Iowa and Delaware are states. And it sounds different — and more accurate — when Israel’s enemies admit they propose a “country” for Arabs in Judea and Samaria, not merely a “state.”)
We lost Jews in Gush Etzion, from the Famous 35 to those left behind to defend against overwhelming numbers of Arab marauders. We lost Jews in 1967 at Ammunition Hill and elsewhere. But United Jerusalem emerged. Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook’s mesmerizing speech only weeks before proved prophetic as we even returned to Hevron, Shechem, and Jericho, and Naomi Shemer’s song also was prophetic, emerging just before the unthinkable happened, and we returned to the pits of water and the Old City. An extra verse had to be added, saying: we returned.
This is our story. Ferdinand and Isabella expelled Sephardic Jewry from Spain in 1492, and King Manuel of Portugal finished the project five years later. The pain, the sores never healed: the torture devices, the auto-da-fe burnings at the stake. But they inadvertently ensured that 900,000 Jews would be in Arab Muslim countries neighboring Israel in the 1940’s and 1950’s, so that, when the Arabs did their thing and expelled all their Jews and confiscated all their property, the Arabs inadvertently guaranteed Israel’s survival and explosive demographic success by populating it overnight with a million Jews.
And the Arabs sent us the best: not Ashkenazi Marxists but G-d-fearing Jews who eat rice on Pesach and never heard of the blight of “Reform Judaism.” Never even heard of it. Thanks to Isabella and Ferdinand, Israel got the kinds of Jews who would protect Israel, in the long run, from the Kaplan Square White privileged Ashkenazi Marxists. They overthrew the privileged Histadrut card holders and, for the past 50 years since the Menachem Begin Revolution of 1977, the act of beating the Labor Marxist Left at the polls has become, for Israel, a national . . . hobby. Beat them and beat them and beat them; that is the national hobby. So we get the Knesset, the ministries, and almost a million Jews in the post-1967 eastern regions of United Jerusalem and throughout Judea and Samaria — and they get Kaplan Square and restaurants that serve pork.
We now need to consider all the above as we confront the next moment of possibility. October 7 can never be forgiven, and its sores will never heal, not even with time and the razing of Gaza. The godless who do not observe Shabbat or kosher blame it on G-d. “Where was G-d on October 7?” G-d was in shul because it was Simchat Torah. G-d, Who is omnipresent, also was looking for Ronen Bar. He was looking for Hertzi Halevi. So leave G-d alone.
And October 7 never ever could have happened if not for 10 Av 2005, when Ariel Sharon expelled 8,500 Jews from a part of Eretz Israel, Gush Katif in Gaza. So Sharon did his part, and the Leftist Deep State media refused to cover massive demonstrations of hundreds of thousands, and arms linked across the country in snake lines to Jerusalem. Instead, they highlighted a few bad apples in tandem with the Deep State Leftist section of the Shabak (Shin Bet) who planted Avishai Raviv and other provocateurs to make the political right look detestable and to be the personal handler of Yigal Amir, encouraging the fellow to assassinate Rabin.
Just as Shabak botched October 7, they botched instigating and inciting Amir, and ended up creating a direct line between their Agent Provocateur, Avishai Raviv, and the assassination of Rabin — a Shabak mess truly tied with October 7 as the Number One All-Time Shaback Botch.
We now are in deep pain from October 7. Men, young boys and families, except for those Haredim who will not serve in any capacity based on a new interpretation of Judaism, have been wrenched from home for 600 days, living in chaos, families split by a very long war that now seems to be geared militarily in the direction it should have been before, if not for the Biden-Harris embargo.
The world is more overtly against us than it has been in decades. Pressure is everywhere, except from Milei in Argentina, Orban in Hungary, Trump in America (really), and a few opposition leaders like Polievre in Canada, Badenoch in England, Le Pen in France, and Wilders in Holland. But, if you have been reading this far, let us put this on the line:
Macron, Starmer, and Carney are threatening bad stuff. Most Arabs never mean well for Israel, and forget about Putin, Xi, and Kim. Even Germany has gone back to its real self, as if a leopard ever could have shed its spots; as long as the Germans are not putting their Israeli expatriates into ovens, we are ahead of the game with them.
But this massive push for an Arab sovereign entity in Judea and Samaria opens one of the greatest opportunities in Modern Jewish history. If the Country of Israel emerged, in part, from the Shoah — but only in small part — and if the Spanish Inquisition ensured that Israel would be populated by one million North African Jews from “Edot HaMizrach” while paving the way for Columbus to discover the Exile that would become the greatest “resting point” haven for Jews along the road to returning to Zion, now is the time to get prepared to annex the rest of Judea and Samaria.
This war — what I call the Ariel Sharon War — has prompted the greatest breakthrough for annexation since 1967: the emergence worldwide of the chant “From the River to the Sea, [expletive omitted] Will be Free.” It finally, finally — finally! — is out in the open, that which so many of us — and Arafat and Abbas — have been saying since Oslo 1993: They don’t want a shared two-country solution. They want it all, one country.
And, in great measure, they are right. The land is not suitable to two tiny states like Delaware and New Jersey. From the River to the Sea, there is land for but one country. It now is out in the open. They don’t want two countries, and more than 80 percent of Israelis and their Knesset members don’t want two countries either. That is the great blessing of the Ariel Sharon War. Even half the blind lemmings in Kaplan have figured out that, although they want to give the Arabs a country in Judea-Samaria, they just can’t because, if the Arabs get sovereignty there as they got it in Gaza, then the Left will not be able to gather safely anymore in Kaplan Square without getting blown up every week. That is the blessing.
It is time to annex. If Israel needs an “opening,” let it be the moment Macron declares France recognizes an “[expletive deleted] State.” Israel should immediately annex the Jordan Valley. Yes, eventually all of Judea and Samaria, but the Jordan Valley will gain the most internal support at the outset, even from the Marxists who live there and work that land. Netanyahu previously ran an entire campaign on annexing the Jordan Valley.
When Macron declares, then annex the Jordan Valley. When anyone else next declares, annex Ariel, a city of more than 20,000 with a university and a strong mix of non-religious and religious, Israeli and Russian/Ukrainian and Anglophonic Jews. Annex those two — the Jordan Valley and Ariel — and we actualize the Jewish Narrative of History: they cannot break us, and even the worst tragedies serve as our springboards to become stronger and to hasten the day when G-d’s ultimate plan will unfold on the mountaintop of Zion.
Adapted by the writer for Arutz Sheva from a version of this article that first appeared here in The American Spectator.
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