My husband and I have been best friends for exactly 44 years now!!! (Oh yeah. We were babies when we met) We very rarely fight over things. The teenage years in our adventures in parenting came with their incredible challenges, but we got through them. We never really screamed or yelled at each other – except when we’d be on the road. In the middle of New York; on the Washington DC beltway; downtown LA. John would hand me a map and say, “get us to….” I would spend 5 minutes trying to figure out the right side of the map, then decipher where we were by looking out for landmarks. John would yell, “Which direction? What route do I take? Right or left?” I was directionally challenged. The writing on the map was always minuscule. The colors!! What do all those different colored roads mean??? “Dadgummit!!!!! We missed the freeway overpass !” he’d yell. I’d holler back at him. Followed by his, “Crrrraaaaapppp! We went the wrong direction! You said left.״ I’d yell back (at this point crying), “I said left. I meant right. I can’t do this. And you are driving way to fast!!!”

How did we all SURVIVE before the Israelis invented Waze? Or before Google maps. Last week we were trying to find our way to a new doctor’s office in a Haifa suburb. I could get to Kiryat Motzkin just fine, but once I turned on my map…

My Waze came up blank in Arabic. Nothing doing. No maps. No nothing. I tried Google maps. It put me en route with beautifully mapped out directions in Limassol on the island of Cypress. My weather app had us at the Beirut International Airport. Yikes!!!!! What the hell???? We no longer have GPS tracking and all internet mappings of Israel have been jammed and shut down!

Was this a hack job by our enemies? What gives? Train schedules and bus schedules are taken down. This is nuts!!! As it turns out, I’m thankful that our car has wonderful Atlas maps of every area in the country, easy to navigate (if you read Hebrew) and large print, section by section. Whew! Israel has removed all traces of itself on maps so our enemies won’t know which roads are blocked, which towns evacuated, where borders are or where major routes and large cities, army bases, factories, hospitals, airports are. They won’t be able to program missiles or attack drones laden with explosives. There will be no directions for them to see. No bus schedules. No targeted bombings. (We do have local schedules, but it was more challenging for Max to get a bus and then the train to come home today).

What else is new here? Let’s see. Yesterday was Yom Kippur. Yup. The holiest day of the year, usually comes in September/October. Well yesterday in Israel it was declared to be YK2. A day of fasting and prayer. Thousands of people, many secular Jews who don’t really ‘celebrate’ the holy day, came to the Western Wall in Yerushalayim to repent of all their sins (slichot), to fast, to pray, to blow the shofar, to cry out to G-d – literally. All of the different rabbis from all denominations were there united in prayer together. I heard it was the most incredible, unbelievable experience. At the end, everyone there joined arms to pray for the hostages and the soldiers, to ask comfort for mourning families and to sing Hatikvah, The Hope (the Israeli national anthem).

Three days ago a video was released by Hamas of 4 young women, seated against a wall, hands tied behind their backs. They all had disheveled hair. They all had bruises and slashes on their faces and dried blood and looked frightened and helpless.

The nation is grieving. We are still in shock, yet we continue. Without our men. With friends and family missing. Without maps to guide us, fully relying on G-d to go before us. We are still numb. Some are angry. Most are exhausted. We are all determined. To live. To love one another. To come out more than victorious. To help out. To excel. To be strong.

And yet there are so many distractions. South Africa has filed charges against us in the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The crime: Genocide. Because Israel is trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Because we are trying to extinguish every Palestinian life. As I write this, our Supreme Court justice is leading the defense. Telling of the horrific atrocities Hamas committed against us; their training of children to be machine gun carrying militants. They are testifying that the young children of Gaza are being used as human shields and as spotters. That suicide belts are strapped onto elderly only women in wheelchairs in the middle of the road. It happened last week and 5 of our soldiers were killed in the blast.

And as a further confusion, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was here again this week. He says certain, specific things to our Secretary of Defense; other conflicting things to Netanyahu and our members of Knesset; then meets with Mahmoud Abbas telling him Israel agrees to a Revitalized Palestinian Authority in control of Gaza, and that it was agreed that 150 more truckload shipments of aid per day will be allowed into Gaza. None of this was discussed or agreed upon or passed by Knesset. When in a speech he stated more incoming aid to Gaza and renewed Palestine upon leaving the country, all members of the government were stunned.

Israel has opened up 2 border crossings , Erez and Keren Shalom. The Rafa crossing in Egypt has been opened. Currently 250 trucks per day cross into southern Gaza with shipments of flour, oil, rice, water, hygiene items, cook stoves, coffee, medicines, salt, sugar, produce… tents, cots, blankets, portable showers, portable toilets.

Most of the shipments are hijacked at gunpoint before they can ever get to the people. They are taken by Hamas or dumped into pits (I have photos). There are so many shipments that not even half can be thoroughly inspected. So far bags sent in by UNRWA marked ‘coffee’ have contained bullets. Inside tent poles have been missiles. Many found marked from N Korea. Do you hear about this in your news???? I’d really like to know. I can send you documentation and evidence… photos.

There are fears that the “empty “ trucks exiting Israel through Egypt will contain Hamas and PIJ terrorists escaping to freedom or, worse yet, some of the hostages, smuggled and trafficked to G-d knows where. There are still 110 hostages in Gaza. Including 4 year old Ariel Bibas and Kfir Bibas, who just passed his 1st birthday in some hellish tunnel.

Reports of incredible eyewitness testimonies from the Nova festival and from the cities and kibbutzim raided by the terrorists have described brutal rapes, gang rapes, mutilations- with a machete, cutting the genitalia off men and the breasts off women (I saw and downloaded this film 7 Oct as it appeared live on Memri). The released hostages are describing how some were branded with hot irons, fed 1/2 pita a day, tortured (pre-teens), raped. Some women were raped so forcibly that their pelvises and hips were crushed. One 52 year old woman was gang raped, shot in the leg so that her bones just shattered, then burned alive. Forensic results verify all this.

I can’t imagine the horrors.

Today I really planned on an uplifting story. I wanted to leave you with some really really funny things to jumpstart the weekend. I had great recipe for brownies- gluten free, low sugar, fudgy brownies made with tehineh. But you have to know what is actually happening here. The world has to know.

Think!!!!! Look!!!! Reason!!!!

Who is disrupting the world by blocking roads and bridges throughout the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa? Who is graffiti painting signs, buildings, monuments and storefronts? Who is rioting on campuses, chasing the Jews away into hiding?? Who is shouting “intifada intifada?” Who is shouting “From the river to the sea?” And do you really know what that means? Why has there been a 370% uptick in antiSemitic violence worldwide?

Who is defending themselves at The Hague and UN for crimes they didn’t commit? Who was awakened by machine gun fire and grenades thrown into their homes at 7am on a Saturday morning? Who is being held against their will in underground tunnels? Who is demonstrating peacefully? Who needs armed guards at their schools and houses of worship in America and Europe? Whose cemeteries are being vandalized with headstones knocked over and spray painted?

There is a difference. One side builds bomb shelters to protect their citizens. The other uses their citizens as human shields. There is a difference. Wake up.

I pray for a peace filled weekend. A lazy Saturday. A sunny Sunday. I pray for peace.