Dear friends and family, shalom,
Today, like yesterday and the day before I should have been guiding a family group from LA and these days we should have been in the Galilee.
Well as you know, nobody's there, excepting the inhabitants of the area taking shelter from the terrorist rockets raining on them.
My family of tourists went to Eilat, which they're visiting instead of the dangerous Galilee. They'll be back another time, to visit there, when the danger has passed.
In the meantime I did my Wednesday Walk on the Walls of Jerusalem.
I was fortunate to be accompanied by two lively tourists. Actually, one can't really call them tourists because they are here visiting their family, living in the Israeli town of Ephrat, in the ex West Bank.
Most "real" tourists have left the country. Although I confess seeing two tour groups on the Via Dolorosa today.
Jewish town, like Ephrat, Kiryat Arba (near Hebron), Pisagot (near Ramallah) and others in the ex West Bank, have for the last 6 years of the Palestinian Intifada, been considered very dangerous places to be.
This is because all the above mentioned places are surrounded by Palestinian terrorists, who have the same objective of destroying Israel, as the Hizbullah in Lebanon.
Amazingly they are now very safe places to be, seeing that the Hizbullah aren't like to rain rockets on their brothers in arms.
The Palestinian enemies of Israel call the Jewish towns in the ex West Bank, Jewish "settlements" and the inhabitants "settlers".
I assume that these words remind them of the early settlers of countries like America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and others, who took away the land from the native inhabitants, the Indians of America and Canada, the Aborigines of Australia, the Maori of New Zealand and the Zulu, Xhosa and other African tribes of South Africa.
Of course I don't agree with the Palestinians and others who have this view.
But I did support Sharon's plan of disengagement and Olmert's plan of consolidation, which involved the dismantling of some of these towns as part of an Israeli, humanitarian gesture to help the Palestinians achieve their own independent state in the boundaries of the Land of Israel.
Even though, historically, the Jewish People were formed into a nation in this territory more than 3000 years ago, by our kings like David and Solomon, and we never gave up the hope of returning to our ancient homeland in the course of the last 2000 years of dispersion, I was in favor of giving part of it to the Palestinians.
We the Jewish People, who have suffered for such a long time and so badly feel sympathy for suffering people, like the Palestinians who don't have an independent state to call their own.
In view of the present Palestinian and Hizbullah atrocities (Kasam rockets raining on Jewish towns in the Negev, Katyusha rockets on the Galilee), I've changed my mind. All I can say is thank God Olmert never had a chance to carry out his plan.
The Palestinians and the Hizbullah have made it frighteningly clear that the total annihilation of the Jews is their goal.
With towns like Hebron, Nablus, Jenin totally under their control, which was the plan for the so called future Palestinian state, they would achieve that goal.
Giving them an independent state is now totally out of the question. It would bring about the end of Israel.