Dateline Jerusalem — I waited until the last minute to write this week's essay. I have been praying along with others that the three religious Israeli yeshiva high school students, kidnapped by Hamas Palestinians on their way home from school, would be found safely.
They were hoping to spend a peaceful Shabbat with their families exactly one week ago.
Unfortunately that has not occurred. Our prayers are with Gil-ad Shaar (16), Naftali Frenkel (16), and Eyal Yifrach (19).
Naftali has dual American and Israeli citizenship. His grandmother lives in my town. Being an American citizen no longer holds any clout, especially when it takes the U.S. over three days to even condemn the actions of Hamas. Even Abbas condemned Hamas, his partner in their newly formed Palestinian Unity Government, asking Hamas to release these boys. The U.N., its usual biased, ineffectual, anti-Semitic self, claims it has no “independent” proof that the kidnapping even took place! We can forget about the E.U. altogether. It didn't make a statement for five days, and only after increased pressure.
What does this mean? That kidnapping of religious teenagers, stabbing of children, cutting the throats of sleeping babies, rockets and missiles fired at civilians in their homes and schools, have the okay of the world because it is happening to Jews. This is not just an Israeli issue. Jews are emigrating from Europe, especially France, because it has become unbearable to remain there without being attacked.
Some blame these boys for their own kidnapping because they were hitchhiking home for Shabbat. I need to clarify what it means to hitchhike in Israel, not the same as hitchhiking on streets in the States. In Israel, hitchhiking is a way of life for many Israelis. In Israel there are specific hitchhiking stations. They are designated areas for Israelis to get a ride with people going in their direction. These hitchhiking stations are throughout Israel. Hitchhiking in Israel is commonplace, a widely accepted alternative means of transportation. Furthermore, these boys were not hitchhiking alone. They were three boys doing it together as a group.
How many of you are aware that while Hamas called for an intifada against Israelis, and Palestinian rockets were lobbed into Israel from Gaza, the mother-in-law of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was being treated in an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem for cancer? His granddaughter also received Israeli medical care several months ago. How many of you are aware that at the time the three Israeli boys were kidnapped, Abbas's wife was being treated at a hospital in Tel Aviv? Even Israel's enemies request and receive care and medical treatment in Israel.
We are not speaking of soldiers fighting soldiers in most conventional wars. We are speaking of terrorists targeting civilians. When Israel responds to attacks and kidnappings against its civilians, Israel is condemned. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu put it in perspective when he said, “This incident reveals the nature of the terrorism we are fighting. Terrorists kidnap innocent Israeli children, while we treat in our hospitals sick Palestinian children. That is the difference between our humanitarian policies and the murderous terrorism that attacks us.”
There are approximately 35 political parties in Israel, extreme right to extreme left, supporters of every kind of political stance or cause in between. Yet political views have not prevented the Israeli people from pulling together as a nation in their prayers and efforts to bring back these kidnapped children. Perhaps it is because those who live in Israel know that all Israelis have equal freedom to live and worship in Israel whether they are Jew, Christian, Arab, Druze, Bedouin or Muslim. The Druze and the famed Bedouin Arab trackers have volunteered to help the Israeli Army find the kidnapped boys. In their search they found bunkers deep in the ground equipped with food, weapons, supplies, enough to keep kidnapped Israelis and victims of terror for many years.
The Israeli Army, in their efforts to find the kidnapped boys, have re-arrested many of the terrorists who were released from Israeli jails for the return of other kidnapped Israelis or as a pre-condition demand by the Palestinians to enter into peace negotiations with Israel. Israeli intelligence has discovered that those involved in the kidnapping of Gil-ad, Nephtali and Eyal were former Palestinian prisoners. Like many of their brethren, they continue to terrorize Israel, whether by kidnapping, blowing up buses or sending rockets into Israel. How is this for a statistic? According to the Shin Bet (Israel's security agency), it thwarted 30 attempted terrorist kidnappings of Israelis last year, and 14 so far this year. Unfortunately, they were unable to prevent this kidnapping.
Please pray to bring our boys back home alive and safe.
L'hitraot. Shachar