1.
Some will say that this is not a third intifada, just a murky wave that will disappear in a moment and be gone. Some will say that there were difficult days like these, some will say that overall the Arabs are not succeeding in their plans and these are failing one after another, all of them trying to ignore it and walking down the street between the drops, with the area empty of people to their right and left.
In contrast, ninety percent of the population is seen standing and looking out the window of their home, during the hours when they would normally go out to the city center, to shop, to the health insurance company. All of them look death in the eye and remain at home, which is relatively safe, air-conditioned, and fortified.
From those who bravely or helplessly walk the city streets - comes the evidence of the attacks. Authentic photographs of a human animal pulling out a knife, of people who manage to overcome the terrorist by force and trample him with their strength, their feet and sticks, and of frightened people fleeing from their own shadows. These photographs, which are mostly covered in blood, reach every person, every child, teenager and old man, and the conversation of the day is precisely what the terrorist looks like, how old he is, how he did what he did and what the person who was stabbed looks like.
""Did you see how he carried out the attack?" - one asks the other, and immediately pulls out his phone and shows what he may not have filmed himself, but the friend of the friend of the friend saw with his own eyes, filmed and sent so that he too would be in on the matter and no stain would be left outside of them.
We Jews are brothers, we are responsible for each other. We all worry that the blood of the murdered man will touch the souls of all of us. We are all stained by his blood.
2.
For many years I wrote articles in newspapers. I have published my articles in almost all Haredi newspapers throughout its generations. These were not only children's stories, as you all know, but also many articles on educational matters, various interviews with interesting people, field articles, current affairs columns and consumer articles.
Many of my articles were written under different pen names, initially because in those days a woman's name did not come up on the editorial desk, then so that they would not discover that a large part of the newspaper was written by one person, and finally because I did not want to publicly identify with my thoughts, my beliefs, and my principles.
In those years, our newspapers were written in black and white, compact and dense. Photographs were only included in them when the face of a great rabbi brightened them. The children of Hemad, Torah students, shed light on the gloomy page, and the occasion of the introduction of a Torah scroll or the establishment of a new synagogue or yeshiva was honored to find its home on the huge pages.
When I once wrote in a newspaper about the tenth anniversary of the June 1978 attack on bus line 12 in Beit Vegan, Jerusalem, we only posted a burned bus and a photo of a sticker that was distributed at a demonstration that took place immediately after the attack.
Apart from things like that – they didn't put any other kind of pictures or photographs in the newspapers. It's true that there weren't many of those in the general press either, but there, nevertheless, they managed to present the blood in color and clarity.
Over the years, the gloomy newspapers became brighter, illustrations began to decorate their walls, colored pictures were inserted between sections, and women's names, at least in some parts of the newspaper, became commonplace.
One thing was always kept in mind in the Haredi media: not to blacken the face of the world! The name "murderer" never crossed the newspaper's lips, certainly his picture would not appear, and certainly, certainly, the story of a man's murder with its many descriptions and the presentation of his blood-stained clothes was never brought up.
Even in this era, when newspapers were already full of color and life, when newspaper editors were searching with all their might for something to boast about and enjoy, they knew that there was one red line that they would not compromise on, that they would leave human blood far from the page, that they would not mention murder and other heinous acts with any greater force, and that they would not detail things that the mind cannot bear to hear, whether these things happened between Jews and Jews, or even if the things happened between Gentiles and Jews.
The Haredi newspapers boasted of all these things in the eyes and ears of the public, and when asked how the Haredi press differed from its peers, they replied: We will not write about murder, for example! It is difficult for us to hear the things with our delicate ears, it is difficult for us to see the pictures and enter the depths of this ocean. We will write that Jews were murdered, how many were murdered and how terrible the perpetrators were, but we will not touch blood and we will not touch the length of a knife.
And now, in the current intifada, the terrorists have succeeded in shedding our blood. No, they have not succeeded in their war against us. They do set their dogs on us, they attack us with their teeth, they trample us by every means possible, but God protects us at all times.
But they defiled our spirit. They succeeded in changing all the innards of our souls.
Since when do our newspapers and websites show the horror of murder, of a dagger thrust into living flesh, of a vicious attack on a person? Of a shot in a person's heart? We have never 'been privileged' to see these things, unless we squinted in unwanted directions. Since when were the tender souls of our children and their fathers so close to the bloody plate? Since when did our children know how to tell their friends where the knife came from, how it was raised aloft, and where exactly it penetrated? How do our ten-, eight-, and six-year-old children know how to tell where the sons of Belial got the knife and at what length of flame?
The terrorists succeeded in sabotaging one thing: the language of our media. Suddenly our children are reading about murder, hearing about its stages, and seeing the image of the murderer and the image of the bleeding victim.
Suddenly, human blood has become a taboo even in our regions, and there is no one who does not see the murder with their own eyes.
And after the terrorists brought all this upon us, we began to hear that we must be prepared for counter-action. Excellent. Of course, everyone, from young to old, children and women, must be prepared for the Day of Judgment. It is clear that if we are not taught how to defend ourselves, we will never know how to do things. If we do not have an electric stun gun, if we do not have the finest kind of stun gun, if we do not hold on to tear gas, who knows what our fate will be.
But it is not enough that we hold on to the helm of defense, we must also know how to use it, for this purpose the 'Self-Defense Guide' was born. Suddenly all of us, despite our delicacy, which until now knew what a Gemara leaf was, but never knew what a dagger was, despite our delicacy that knows how to caress a baby and never knew how to swatt a fly, together with the delicacy of the speech of the avrech who adds shekel and another shekel and reduces it to tenths, with this delicacy - we must suddenly connect with the instrument of evil, with the power, the roar and the blow.
Yes, until yesterday our boys still knew what a Gemara leaf was but didn't know the look of it, and our girls stroked the pages of the Book of Psalms but didn't know the touch of a knife, and look, what did we have?
Yes, our problem in this intifada is not the victory over our bodies, but the victory of the rioters over the lawlessness of our spirit and soul, because we sold ourselves for our wives and succumbed to the bitterness of Esau's behavior, look what happened to us.
3.
In days when a broom, screwdriver, hammer, and rolling pin are our means of protection, these days we understand more and more what is said in the verse: 'For not by might nor by power, but by my spirit...''
The world is evolving. Fighter jets and long-range missiles are gaining momentum, and here we are, between a shell and a mortar, with the stick of an umbrella.
Who knows if we won't soon return to the days of bow and arrow, a small stone will hit the forehead of an enemy, and peace and tranquility will come upon us forever.
But all of this can happen if we all know that only the One who kept us alive, despite the wolves surrounding us on all sides, only He can beat our swords into spades and make us live safely in our own land.
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