Jews are still much safer in Israel - opinion

On Sunday this week, I walked to the military cemetery atop Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl, which is rapidly filling up in a new Gaza War section with many graves.

I didn’t have to go far because I live a stone’s throw from the grave of Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl – the visionary Viennese Jewish journalist and the father of modern political Zionism who was awakened to antisemitism at the turn of the 20th century when covering the Dreyfus trial – whose remains are buried at the highest point. 

Nearby are the graves of other Zionist leaders who followed, including many of Israel’s presidents, prime ministers, and other great (and some not-so-great) political leaders. On the north side is the military cemetery, which 10 years ago had 3,400 graves of heroic fallen soldiers, policemen, and other security personnel. Who knows how many have been buried since then? 

It’s the Israeli equivalent to Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery, which is the final resting place for many of that country’s greatest heroes, including more than 300,000 veterans of every American conflict from the Revolutionary War to Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The Jerusalem funeral of 32-year-old Israel Defense Forces reservist Naftali Yona Gordon – whom I had never met but who is a cousin of my daughter-in-law, was held in honor of an Israeli hero who had been called up to fight in his tank in Gaza. 

A country in mourning

More than 100 Israeli officers and soldiers in active service and the reserves have died since the IDF launched a large-scale invasion into the Gaza Strip on the evening of October 27.

He was a devoted physiotherapist working for a Jerusalem health fund. He was also the loving husband of Pessie, beloved son of American-born Beatrice and Daniel Gordon, grandson of American-born Dr. Esther Offenbacher and the late Dr. Elmer Offenbacher, and father of two little girls, Libi and Gefen. 

Before the weekend, his loved ones were informed that he had fallen in action in a tank in Gaza.

Some 1,000 people – bereaved relatives and friends, employers, colleagues, Israel Defense Forces officers, and even people who didn’t know him but wanted to salute him – stood silently under a large tent as his grave was filled with earth. Their eyes were tear-stained, and his widow and other relatives wept from anguish during the 90-minute ceremony.

THEY SAID that Naftali had treated with devotion and relieved the pain not only of Jewish but also many Arab and other patients – and he was an affectionate husband and father, brother, son, and grandson, trying to be with his family as much as he could. 

Naftali and all the thousands of others are gone not only due to Hamas but also due to an incompetent, arrogant, divisive, and deceitful national leader who insists he will remain in his job – and others in the military who at least admitted responsibility for ignoring early signs of the impending incursion due to their misconceptions of Hamas.

It is the worst intelligence and military failure since the founding of the State of Israel that makes the even-now-traumatic Yom Kippur War 50 years ago seem like a picnic.

Those who are responsible for it will be judged for what they have done. But from the following day, IDF generals and those under their command have performed bravely and brilliantly to complete their mission of wiping out one of the worst terrorist armies in history. 

Unlike most countries, in Israel, generals and their relatives do not remain behind computer screens or just grant interviews on the safe side of the battlefront. IDF generals have entered deep into Gaza to see events for themselves and raise the morale of the troops even more. 

Retired IDF chief of staff and current war cabinet observer minister Gadi Eisenkot lost his son, 25-year-old Master-Sgt. (res.) Gal Meir Eisenkot, who was killed in the Gaza fighting, and soon after, his 19-year-old nephew, Sgt. Maor Cohen Eisenkot, 19, was killed by explosives inside the Khan Yunis mosque.

Since then, another of Eisenkot’s nephews has been seriously injured. As some 360,000 IDF reservists were called up after the war started, there are large families with numerous sons – even eight or nine – and daughters serving simultaneously in the battle. 

Within just 48 hours of the barbaric incursion of kibbutzim and other places hugging the Gaza Strip by thousands of crazed Hamas terrorists and the kidnapping of some 240 Israelis and foreigners into Gaza, 50 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers were buried on Mount Herzl. From my balcony, I hear, via the public address system, each heart-rending funeral. 

A homeland for the Jews

BUT EVEN during this war, it is still safer to live here than abroad. We can defend ourselves; we are united and highly motivated to protect our families and homes, and we know we have no other country. 

From now on, growing antisemitism and anti-Israeli sentiment have put Diaspora Jews, who identify as Jews, in far greater peril than Israelis. According to the latest poll, 40% of ultra-Orthodox (haredi) Jews in the US are seriously considering aliyah. The men are very visible in their garb, beards, and sidecurls. The women are also easily identified by the way they dress. British Jews are also very worried and many are thinking of leaving the UK. 

There are currently 5,000 Chabad (Lubavitch) centers, including Jewish schools, in 100 countries around the world. As they always welcome outsiders, they are now at the highest risk of being threatened by terrorists. In 2008, their emissaries in Mumbai, India – 29-year-old Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his 26-year-old wife Rivkah – were murdered in cold blood at the Chabad Center by members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic terrorist organization based in Pakistan. Their baby son Moshe survived, saved by his Indian nanny, Sandra Samuel, and they both live in Jerusalem. 

Chabad emissaries teach, run prayer services, and provide kosher meals for local Jews and visitors. They provide a very convenient service for their guests. But now, more than ever, they are needed in Israel. Some of them, at least those in New York and other US locations, should move back to Israel or make aliyah. This would electrify Diaspora Jews and encourage them to make aliyah too.

As Chabadniks feel comfortable interacting with secular as well as religious Jews, they could help to rehabilitate the Israeli families who lost loved ones, homes, and property on October 7 and who now suffer severe emotional trauma.

This holy mission will take years, even decades, to carry out, and they will be safer in Israel. 

The writer is health and science reporter of The Jerusalem Post.