Sorrow and Hope

Current Issues

Don’t Stray too Far from Home: Iran’s Sinister Method of Attacking Israel

November 9, 2023

For the past several years, Israel has been engaging in a shadow war with Iran. The clerics in Tehran seek to wipe the “Zionist enemy” off the map and extend their influence across the Middle East, while Jerusalem seeks to thwart Iran’s regional and nuclear ambitions. Without an outright showdown on the battlefield, the Jewish

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Turning Children into Terrorists

  Over 50 years ago, Israel’s first and only female Prime Minster Golda Meir famously stated, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” More than half a century later, things have not changed. Meir’s words still ring true today as Israel faces a persistent and ever-increasing threat

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A Storm Brewing in the North

  Israel experienced a heat wave over the summer so extreme that one day in August, flights at Ben-Gurion airport were delayed because the heat was affecting technical systems and control units. But it wasn’t just the temperature that spiked over the summer. Tensions in the north of Israel also spiked with Hezbollah—an Iran-backed terror

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Battling Terrorism in the Biblical Heartland

  Israel’s biblical heartland is facing a big problem. In the land of milk and honey, terrorists have established a hornet’s nest from which springs a never-ending stream of violence. The base is Jenin, a hotbed of terrorism in northern Samaria. Over the past year, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in July, residents of

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“Hatikvah”—The Hope

  There is something wonderfully moving about standing among Israelis as their national anthem is sung. As you hear the passion in their voices and see the tears in many eyes, you realize how the words of the “Hatikvah” (The Hope) have shaped the thinking of a nation and helped keep the Zionist dream alive

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A New Page for Israel

  The new year is traditionally rung in to the soundtrack of well-wishes. In the days, hours and minutes before bidding farewell to the old year and stepping into the new, friends, family and perfect strangers typically great each other with words of hope for peace, love, joy and everything precious and beautiful in the

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To Life!

July 12, 2023

  The images grip your heart. A broken father—grief streaming in rivulets down his cheeks—rocking the lifeless body of his two-year-old daughter after the toddler and her pregnant mother were supposedly killed in an Israeli airstrike. A mother’s tears pooling on the picture of a beaming preschooler—riotous curls framing an angelic face—as she cradles the

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Missing: A Palestinian Partner for Peace

July 12, 2023

  People often talk about the two-state solution to the Israeli­–Palestinian conflict. It’s simple, they argue. Divide up the land. Allow Israel to keep a portion of it, and give the other portion to the Palestinians—including eastern Jerusalem, Gaza and a large parcel of Judea and Samaria. These are actually the terms the Jewish leaders

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How the Media Frames It

July 12, 2023

  In September 2000, the New York Times published an Associated Press picture to give readers a peak at the horrors of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. They chose well. The picture spoke the proverbial thousand words. The image portrayed a dark-haired youth—rivulets of blood from multiple head wounds staining his white shirt crimson; his face a

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Two Ways to Fight: One Way to Win

July 12, 2023

  Israel is a tiny country in a tough neighborhood, surrounded by Muslim-majority states, several of whom would love to wipe the Jewish state off the map. But the tiny Jewish nation in its short 75 years has developed a defense strategy that is defined by the saying: “The best defense is offense.” Deterrence and

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