Posts of the Day

I'm still a bit busy, though I've been keeping up with my reading whenever I need a break. However, these two posts are simply too important to pass up.

Chayyei Sarah attended the funeral of Eliyahu Asheri, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists after being kidnapped. Excerpt:

Unbelievably, Eliyahu’s mother found the strength to speak. She didn’t cry while she was talking – all the rabbis had been sobbing through their speeches – but quietly spoke to her son, with incredible simplicity and dignity.

“Eliyahu,” she said. “You always came to other people’s defense. In our home, when we judged others harshly, you always said not to judge, never to see someone based on their outward appearance. So gently and sweetly you came to the defense of others.”

“Now, Eliyahu, come to our defense. Use your extraordinary power of prayer, the prayer that we all admired, to act as our defense in Heaven. Ask God not to judge us harshly. Pray to Him to protect us, and pray to Him to help all of us to know him, for all of the Children of Israel to recognize Him, for He is our father.”

WestBankMama has an incredible post on the chess-like movements of the IDF. Before people complain about their seeming lack of action, they should read this post. Excerpt:

There is no lose in this scenario, because the terrorists don't value the same things we do. If the IDF comes in and kills innocent civilians, which is basically inevitable when the terrorist hide behind them, the terrorists don't mourn - they rejoice. More good publicity. If the terrorists manage to kill IDF soldiers, even if the losses are way out of proportion to their own losses, than they also rejoice - not only because of the pride involved, but because they know that all of us in Israel mourn the loss of even one of our sons, and the left uses this pain as a way to pressure the government to refrain from action in the future.

So how do you proceed in this kind of a war? You figure out how to change it from win/win to lose. You figure out what the other side really values and you go after it.