The Feast of Booths is marked by a biblical command to rejoice, but few can fulfill it this year
It’s a holiday in Israel, the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles). The country clothes itself with booths decorated for the event. Often, municipal competitions will be held for the most decorated booth. The Orthodox will sleep in their booths, hoping it will not rain, many will partake of at least some meals there, and most folk will ensure they host others. This year there is a number of new, hopefully impermanent features to the commemoration of the Feast. First, the Home Defense Agency is urging celebrants to be sure they are within reasonable proximity to a bomb shelter because large tracts of the country are repeatedly shelled by Hezbollah in the north or the remnants of Hamas in the south. No one knows where and when the sirens will wail, and people will need to make haste to shelter. Second, 101 Israelis, among them women, children and the elderly, are unable to share in the festivities. They are held in tunnels, lack food, water, facilities, even clean air to breath. Those in need of medications do not have them and some are dying in consequence. Empty seats, many with photos of the abductees attached to them, will serve as a painful reminder of their absence.
Finally, the Feast of Booths is that special holiday, the one exclusively marked by the biblical commandment to rejoice (Deuteronomy 14:15). But this year few will be able to fulfill that commandment. There is hardly a house in the country not affected, directly or indirectly, by the horrors of October 7, 2023 and its still-ongoing aftermath, few from which a father, a son, a brother, or a sister is not now fighting in Lebanon or Gaza.
Yet another virtue signaling international outcry found occasion with Israel’s treatment on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and of UNIFIL’s equipment. Tasked by the international community with overseeing the fulfillment of the terms of UN Resolution 1701 and required thereby to maintain neutrality in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, UNIFIL did nothing of the sort. Nor is it doing so now. UNIFIL troops were witness to Hezbollah’s extensive armed presence in south Lebanon and to its preparations for an invasion of Israel, yet did nothing. Not only so, but they now allow Hezbollah to lay ambushes proximate to their bases. Israel has called for the UN to remove UNIFIL from south Lebanon, at least until the IDF completes its mission. The UN should heed this request. If it does not, UNIFIL bases and equipment are liable to be hit while IDF battles Hezbollah, leading to the unwelcome consequence that UNIFIL troops are affected. Still, Israel will of course continue to take every possible measure to avoid this happening.
Gaza
The recent furor over humanitarian aid entering north Gaza was justified although threats were unnecessary. The reports were correct: little humanitarian aid entered north Gaza since the beginning of this month (October). However, no one in Israel’s Government or the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) decided to obstruct the entrance of such aid. The chaos of war, the nature of war against a terrorist organization deeply embedded within a civilian population, and the fact that the IDF has repeatedly encouraged the few remaining Gaza civilians in the north to evacuate for their safety to the south, led to the unhappy result that aid was not brought in. Only lower echelons of the military, occupied with the war, were unthinkingly aware of the situation. Once the Authorities’ attention was drawn to this fact, steps were taken to rectify the situation. Israel will never attempt to starve a civilian population, for any purpose. The experience of the Holocaust has sensitized Jewish people to the horror of starvation, not to speak of the horror of genocide.
It is now confirmed, the IDF’s relentless activities in Gaza, north and south, bear valid and desirable results. Steady advance in the discovery and destruction of Hamas’ subterranean infrastructure forced the organization’s most senior leader Yahya Sinwar, out of the tunnels and above ground – in Rafah. This would not have happened if Israel heeded international pressure not to enter Rafah and, once the IDF entered, to vacate the area and to enable the crossing into Sinai to operate, opening a door of escape for Sinwar and the probable smuggling of abductees out of Gaza.
Israel now disclosed that Sinwar was present with or very near the six murdered abductees shortly before they were murdered. There is every reason to believe he gave the order to kill them. At the time of his discovery and death, he was fleeing Israel’s forces, equipped among other things with a toothbrush and $10,000 in cash. Prior to his death, IDF troops were repeatedly very close to catching him but he managed to escape by the skin of his teeth, leaving behind a hot cup of coffee on one occasion.
As is true of Hezbollah in the north, Hamas’ high and middle range echelon of leaders have been eliminated. Contrary to the estimates of some politicians, innocent of a sense of reality, Sinwar’s death is not a sure door to the abductees’ freedom and to ending the war. It just might lead in that direction. But Hamas may well still be standing and there is presently no one in a position to negotiate and to order the release of the abductees, nor will there be one such even if appointed, until he is able to establish himself as the one in charge. Holders of abductees are now liable to kill those they are holding, spirit away the bodies of dead abductees, and try to emerge from their hiding places as innocent civilians. That scenario is as likely as is one in which, disoriented and leaderless, abductees holders concede to Israel’s offers and release abductees or abducted bodies in exchange for immunity and a reward. Nothing less than the complete release of those held by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad should end the war.
There is some possibility that Yahya Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed Sinwar will be given the reins of leadership. Mohammed is not as commanding a figure as was Yahya, who exercised a strong hand over every detail in Hamas.
Lebanon/Hezbollah
The extent of Hezbollah’s preparations to carry out an armed incursion into Israel, with the goal of taking control of the larger part of Galilee, has astounded Israeli troops engaged in ferreting out Hezbollah’s militants near the Israeli border and with destroying the military infrastructure created there preparatory to the intended attack. Thousands of AK 47s, RPGs, Cornet anti-tank missiles, mortars and tons of munitions were found, all earmarked with the names of specific militants; attack shafts leading towards or into Israeli territory were found, with rough terrain vehicles and motorcycles all ready to go. A small but growing number of Hezbollah militants are being captured during the IDF’s spirited engagement with the few militants who chose to remain in the area and to put up a fight. The prisoners report many of their compatriots fled the area following the elimination of Hezbollah’s senior officials, climaxing in the death of Nasrallah and that of his replacement.
Copyright Baruch Maoz. Reposted with permission.
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Baruch Maoz served for thirty-three years as pastor of Grace and Truth Christian Congregation near Tel Aviv and field leader for Christian Witness to Israel. He is senior editor of the Modern Hebrew Bible, coeditor of the Annotated Hebrew New Testament, and founder and former co-editor of Mishkan: An International Theological Forum on Jewish Evangelism.
