Yesterday, my husband and I had a meeting in Itamar.
***UPDATED***
Perhaps more on what that is all about another time. But it wasn’t a meeting that we wanted to push off or reschedule, so despite the shooting attack in the middle of Huwara yesterday, where Alexander David Dov ben Necha Rachel was shot in the head at point-blank range with a Carlo machine gun – and BH somehow survived! – we went.
We got to Huwara around 9pm.
There were army all over the place, Huwara was in lockdown, and as we drove through the dark, deserted streets, the only lights on were the ghostly green ‘Ramadan’ lights, that had been wrapped around the turrets of one of the local mosques.
It was such a bizarre experience.
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We drove out, again through Huwara, around 11pm.
By that point, the road had been opened and there were a couple of other cars making the trip.
In the night like that, with soldiers every 100 metres and the place in lockdown, it wasn’t scary at all, to be honest.
They are shooting people all the time at the moment – and not just in Israel, or the Shomron.
(Remember a couple of weeks’ back, when two people got shot outside shuls in LA?)
I guess though, some places it’s easier to live the illusion that you’re in control of your life, and your ‘personal safety’, when you don’t have to drive through a town like Huwara every day just to get your groceries, or to go to work, or to get to other bits of the country.
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BH, they are building a bypass road currently, that neatly skirts most of Huwara and should solve most of the problems of sitting-duck Jews being stuck in traffic jams in the middle of Huwara, just waiting for a terrorist to come and shoot them, God forbid.
That road will be ready in about a year and a half.
My mum tells me it would have been ready a long time ago, except Merav Michaeli froze the whole project when she was Transportation Minister.
But I guess the point is, I have been feeling pretty shaken up the last three weeks, ever since that first shooting attack in Huwara three weeks ago, that happened 20 minutes after we drove through it.
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Honestly?
A bit of me has been having a strong urge to try and run away since then.
From all the terror, the madness, the violence, the pointless arguing and ‘demonstrations’, the lies, the bad middot that is keeping us all trapped in this paradigm of letting fake and manipulative headlines suck us dry of all our energy and empathy.
But last week when we were having a few days up North, God gave me the clear message, again, that you can’t run away.
Let’s not talk about the bomb that our lying government claims was planted in Megiddo by some ‘Hezbollah operative’, who somehow managed to get across the border with Lebanon unnoticed, then drive down the motorway for two hours, before planting a bomb by the side of the road near Megiddo that injured an Arab teenager.
If you believe that story….then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
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Last week, we also went to check out Katzrin, that has a growing Anglo population, is still relatively affordable, and where there is a plan in place to turn it into a proper city, within the next five years.
We got show an off-plan villa, that actually sounds like a really good deal.
It’s so quiet here, you don’t have the same balagan of Jerusalem, and you can own your own villa for the same price as a dilapidated shoebox there!
That’s what the sales guy told us.
He’s right.
We came back home feeling a little confused – and then the reports started up that for the first time in 15 years, our corrupt government is churning our more fear porn about ‘war with Hezbollah’ again.
Hmm.
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You can’t run away, Rivka!
God keeps telling me that, loud and clear.
A few months ago, when the thought started crossing my mind that I had to try and find somewhere calmer, greener, cheaper, quieter to live, one of the prayers from the Rav happened to fall out of some sefer that I was putting back on the shelf.
I picked it up, read it, and sighed a deep sigh.
It was a prayer to spend every day of my life in Jerusalem, and to buy a big apartment with 10 rooms in Jerusalem….
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It’s taken me a few months to really, finally, understand that message, but I think I am finally at the stage of accepting that expensive, stressful, intense and crazy as Jerusalem is, there is really no-where else I want to live.
After all, it’s holiest city in the holiest land, and despite all the stress and madness – or maybe, even because of it – my life here is mostly just so good.
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Today, I went back to my art class with the geriatric protesting grannies.
The conversation turned, as so often it has been, to what is currently going on in the country – but this time, there was a conciliatory note ringing out around the room.
My 79 year old teacher actually came out and said this:
We are all brothers, after all…. it’s good to be a bit flexible with others…and to make peace.
And the other protesting grannies made noises like they really agreed with her.
The country is sick and tired of all the hyped-up ‘confrontation’ and drama and violence.
What most of us want, more than anything else, is peace.
Especially, amongst the Jews.
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My daughter also told me that she’s stopped having pointless arguments about ‘judicial reforms’ that are basically all just cack, and won’t help you and me at all.
For example, she told me that the government has apparently trying to pass a law making it legal for politicians to now get paid off directly, instead of having to hide their bribes in secret bank accounts in Panama.
(See below, for more info on this…)
If this is true, how is that meant to be helping anyone, except them?
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There’s a Telegram channel that brings a lot of headlines and news from the grassroots in Israel.
You can see it HERE.
These are a couple of screenshots of what is really going on here:

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Who is really behind all this violence in Israel?
The Americans, and especially the American military and spy agencies.
And the Europeans, and especially the ‘elite’ and the spy agencies.
And our politicians are literally regularly meeting up with these enemies of the Jewish people, to sit and plot how best to stir up the hornet’s nest here in the Holy Land.
Everything else is just a distraction, a puppet show.
And Ben Gvir is the direct Israeli equivalent of Trump, i.e. another actor pretending to be on the side of the small guy, but really just playing a part for his masters, designed to fool the masses into thinking democracy somehow still represents them.
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So.
We can’t run away, however much we might want to.
But what we can and must do, is to continue to see through all the lies, and to continue to see all the tremendous good that exists in our present crazy reality.
And to continue to live, and plan, and move forward, regardless of all the ‘fear porn’ and paralysing, manipulating headlines.
That’s all we can really do.
But it’s plenty.
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UPDATE:
My mum sent me some snippets, about Meirav Michaeli freezing the bypass, and other projects, that would open up the Shomron and make it safer for Jews to drive there:
It’s from a website I usually avoid, because of its links to xtians, but for my mum, I will make the exception:
In 2017, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government approved an 800 million shekel plan (around $220 million) to construct bypass roads throughout Judea and Samaria, including the Huwara Bypass Road between the Tapuach and Yitzhar Junctions, to improve security for Israeli motorists while creating safer and modernized roads for Jewish and Arab commuters alike.
However, under the previous government, Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli, the head of the Labor Party, froze road projects in Judea and Samaria, including the bypass road, a spokesperson for the Samaria Regional Council told JNS.
In October 2022, JNS reported that, during an exchange with an audience member on Channel 12, Michaeli stated, “It’s a shame to invest in a place that, at the end of the day, won’t be part of Israel.”
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And here’s more about the ‘Gift Law’.
This literally could be the whole reason ‘Bibi’ turned the whole country upside down the last few weeks, only to shelve the parts of the Judicial Reform that might have been useful and helpful, while keeping the bits that enable the government – his government – to pass new laws that can’t be overturned on judicial appeal, and to make it legal for politicians to ‘accept gifts’.
Screenshot and snippet from HERE:

But while the full-right coalition government we elected dropped one and a half balls out of the two it was supposed to swish, it is prepared to pass three personal bills – two to save Netanyahu’s hide, one to bring Aryeh Deri back. All three bills will be submitted for a first plenum vote on Monday, with the idea of passing all three before the end of the winter session….
The other two bills the coalition is planning to pass before Passover are both directly about Netanyahu: the incapacity bill, and the gifts bill…
The Gift Law permits public employees, including elected officials, to receive a financial contribution to help pay for legal proceedings or necessary medical procedures.
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Pass the puke bag!
When o when are we going to finally wake up, and to realise that there is no salvation in politics – for anyone, anywhere, at any time?
These people are literally the lowest of the low, with a couple of ‘idealists’ who try to stay the course and get some useful stuff done at the bottom of the ladder, before they too either leave or are consumed by the corruption.
So, save your precious breath banging any more drums for ‘Ben Gvir’, ‘Judicial Reform’, or any other of the whole left/right false paradigm.
Anyone in power is rotten to the core, and bought and paid for by outside interests.
And thanks to these new ‘Bibi bills’, they won’t even have to hide that anymore.
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