If you would like to contribute a piece to Iron Words, please click here.
Shiva in the Pessach home is unique. Visitors stream in and out, and a special warmth exudes throughout the house. Behind me, an enlarged happy family photo takes up a large section of a wall. Along the same wall stands a small table displaying the photo of Netanel
(21 days after being called in to Gaza)
To anyone who is even considering the option of ever making the move to Israel, to those who have never fathomed such a crazy proposal, to those who are seriously weighing the pros and have started packing their bags, and to those who know of someone who fits into any of these categories:
Erev Yom Ha’atzmaut (Eve of Israel Independence Day)
Usually we’d be celebrating after commemorating and remembering those who fell on Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s Day of Remembrance for IDF soldiers) the day before.
A new dimension of pain, grief, intimacy and even regret fills the atmosphere of Israel this year.
October 2023
“Signing off for now, love you all so much and please God we will do Am Yisrael and the world proud, this is my time to give all I’ve got for our beloved country and people.
We will strike them harder than ever, all off us are a part of history and the importance of this war is immense,
(After five weeks in Gaza, on the way home for a short break) Tzahal is doing a fantastic job in the war so far. Many terrorist facilities have been neutralised, and we are edging ever closer,
At the corner of Kaplan and Ibn Gvirol,
you stand next to me waiting to cross,
a tower of olive with dust on your boots,
and I barely subdue a primal urge
to wrap my arms around you.
Most of the soldiers in my company are not religious. As a commander, I have a squad of soldiers working close to me – a driver, someone in charge of communications, and a navigator. They are not religious, but they know that I’m strict about putting on tefillin every day. Even if I don’t have time to daven, I always put on tefillin – every single day.
Through smoky dawn,
a soldier stands,
in Israel’s land.
Courage demands,
he treads on ashes,
October’s ashes,
the fallen’s remains.
Without a chance
without being asked
Still they ask
They insist
Declaim “this”1
Before the mountain man2
before the voices3
before three stars4
came us5
In the picturesque landscape of Israel’s Galilee, where the soothing hum of our Neshikha beehives now mingles with the buzz of air force drones and echoes of distant aerial and artillery cross-border warfare, a recent quotidian journey to the annual beekeepers’ conference at the Volcani Agricultural Institute in Rehovot, in the country’s center, turned into an unexpected snapshot of Israel at war.