Home or Not? Back on Alert

I’m waiting for a phone call to tell me whether Elie will be home this weekend or not. According to most major new sources (and Elie on the phone last night), the army is on alert in the north and throughout Israel. Israelis and Jews around the world are warned to be aware, alert, cautious today.

A year ago, senior Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mughniyah was assassinated in Damascus. Though Israel has not claimed responsibility, has in fact denied any connection. Hezbollah maintains Israel is to blame and is demanding revenge. The list of Mughniyah’s crimes is quite long. According to YNET, “The United States considers Mugniyah to be the man behind the bombing at the American embassy in Beirut and the attack against the US Marines’ headquarters in Lebanon in 1983, which killed over 200 Americans.”

Hassan Nasrallah has vowed revenge and revenge he will have. We don’t know when, we don’t know the extent, and we don’t know where. “The army knows when Nasrallah says something, he means it,” Elie told me a few weeks ago.

And so, Elie may be home today or he may not. I’ve settled back into the calm, back into sleeping and breathing more easily, even with this threat. For all the talk and warnings, Hezbollah paid attention to what happened in Gaza. Whatever we lost in the battlefields of Lebanon a few years ago, we have reclaimed. Why it happened is now obvious to all. It was the incompetence of the Defense Minister and the Prime Minister. One is gone, the other shortly will be.

Our current Defense Minister (who will also likely be leaving his job in the weeks to come) was smart enough to let the army do its work. There is little question the next Defense Minister will be equally as smart. So, for the future, I believe Israel will be more secure in the years to come than it has been in the previous years.

For this weekend, it means that Elie may have to stay up north, on alert, and waiting on the whims of Hezbollah. Or maybe, must maybe, he’ll call me in the next few minutes and tell me he is on a bus coming home.

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