A few days ago, I met a company of soldiers from the Paratroopers Reconnaissance Unit during an educational program in Gush Etzion. It is hard to refuse when such soldiers ask you to come. At one point, I asked how many of them had lost a friend in the war. Every hand went up. Every one. I asked who had lost more than one friend. Still, all hands remained in the air, including those of the commanders. Only when I reached five or more did some begin to lower their hands. A generation is growing up here that has buried the best of its friends — a generation that has fought in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon in a war that has been very long, perhaps too long.
It is not at all clear that it is over. They are still fighting. So much rests on the shoulders of these young people. In the days after the massacre, when we were a stunned nation overwhelmed with grief, they surged forward. When we felt like a country in post-trauma, they ran toward the enemy, and the enemy lowered its gaze.
When you ask this generation what the war has done to them, what the loss has done to their souls, what they have become, they give a striking answer in its intensity: we have become more committed. The friends we lost made us want even more to win, to understand even more how important it is to fight for this country, to make it better, safer, more vibrant and more prosperous.
He could not bear the destruction of his neighborhood, its total ruin, the complete erasure of his previous life. When he set out to massacre our people, he likely did not imagine the biblical devastation it would bring upon his own home
It is not the same among those who seek our harm. A senior security official once told me about a terrorist captured early in the war who was later taken by special forces to point out where he had hidden the body of one of the hostages. They blindfolded him and brought him to the area near his home where he had concealed the body. When the blindfold was removed, he fainted. He could not bear the destruction of his neighborhood, its total ruin, the complete erasure of his previous life. When he set out to massacre our people, he likely did not imagine the biblical devastation it would bring upon his own home.
Something terrible happened to us in the October 7 massacre, but we will turn pain into strength, while our enemies will face destruction. We have many problems and weaknesses, and much to improve, but we also have a unique Jewish strength that cannot be denied: we know how to rise from the dust. And the wheat grows again. Happy Independence Day.