Hermon - part of the State of Israel, or disputed occupied territory?
Ours, or the Damascus refugees?
Israelis will say: of course ours.
There is a consensus on the Hermon.
The Israeli tribal bonfire is warmed by the light of the snowy shoulder at least once during the children's puberty.
Such an initiation ceremony.
The snow in Hermon is a consensus
The Hermon site
You don't always notice that on the way up to the site there are memorials to the soldiers of the IDF, who sacrificed their lives so that we could have a site to surf, enjoy, freeze and complain that it is better in Austria. Near the lower parking lot there is a monument to the memory of 82 Golani soldiers who fell in the battle of Hermon during the Yom Kippur War. Next to Sgt. The Israel Defense Forces engraved the names of the fallen, and an excerpt from a poem by Haim Hefer in their memory. Not far from there, another monument - in memory of 17 soldiers from the 19th Battalion of the Golani Brigade who fell in the battles on Mount Hermon in the Yom Kippur War. A huge rock from the Gilboa reminds them, and a verse from a poem by Yitzhak Shalev.
On the way to the cable car - stop with the kids.
Even when you go down.
It doesn't scare them.
This develops inner resilience, patience, Zionism and commitment to the country, and sometimes also to parents (TLH).
wraps in mercy
The song "Snow on My City" (they call it "Fifty Fruits") was written by Naomi Shemer about Jews in the Diaspora, 15 in a tribe living in some snowy European city and tasting fruits from the Holy Land, and their hearts melt with longing. Longing for what? After all, they didn't know the districts The physical ones they longed for. The Jews who were waiting for the delivery of fifteen fruits (Tu Beshevat) were in love with the Zionist ethos: "Snow on my city / Snow on my face / And in the fruit all my longings".
Tamar and Tana are like a letter from a lover who has no name, when you are rooted in an anti-Semitic environment and nurture a fantasy about freedom and security.
IDF soldiers in Hermon, photo: Dror Artzi / Gini
In this tribal month, Hermon embraces the snow, and the symbolic time, and the heritage, which forces us to look at the unbearable numbers of those who fall on the altar of our children's future plastic sleds, and those who are falling now in the Gaza Strip.
In the Israeli reality, it takes special courage to compare postmodern or post-Zionist Israeli responses to the obviousness we attribute to the battle for the occupation of Mount Hermon - and the lack of obviousness we attribute to the battle to occupy Gaza.
We liberated Hermon in stages.
We started small in 1967, and on the night between October 6 and 7, 1973 (God, what do you have with this foreign date) the Syrians conquered, and a specific battle began on what is known as the "Peak of Hermon".
A campaign that continued even after the ceasefire, and only ended when the separation agreement was signed with the Syrians, in July 1974. So much blood on the eyes of the country.
If we had put on the anxious and sometimes forced good glasses of today, we might have chuckled and said: for what?
Enough of these monument soldiers fell there, let's retire on a high note.
The snow in Hermon.
Archive, photo: Gini Agency
Otherwise, I have no explanation for the fashion in this for anyone who dares to tell the truth: once the Gaza Strip was a beautiful, flourishing and touristic strip of land.
It is true, sector-wise, there are people who went to both Hermon and Katif Beach, and there are people who ideologically did not even agree to see photos of the hotel in Neve Dekalim, and not only because they vacated it before the invention of booking.
Part of the cleansing of the mind is the ability to process data without political bias, and to look at the equation created by the evacuation of Gush Katif: loss of deterrence + fatal damage to security.
If Jews had lived in the Gaza Strip, and the State of Israel had not aspired to the rape drug of the voluntary self-transfer - "then my situation would have been different", as the poet wrote.
Even a basic IQ can digest the food chain we are dragging from Camp David '82, through secession in '05 to the massacre of '23.
Obviously, it takes time to look the concept in the eyes, but until that happens - you can at least keep quiet.
Gaza tourism
There is a new fashion: whoever encourages settlement in Gaza and Gush Katif is the enemy of the people, and a parent who wants to return to his home in Otaf is the enemy of his children.
The public still watches television and looks up to the broadcast leadership, which embraces the residences of the Otaf people in the horizons and the unbearable hotel tag of the evacuees who become immigrants.
Evacuees from the kibbutzim in Otef in one of the hotels in the Dead Sea, photo: AFP
An intolerable reality gives rise to harsh media fads, but just as Netanyahu's goals in the war contradict themselves - so does the seemingly mainstream media line: it is impossible to condemn the government for not being in control of security, and at the same time mock those who propose the solution of occupying Gaza and settling Katif, or About the one who takes his fate in his hands and decides to rebuild his life.
If Gaza is Israeli, we will sleep peacefully in the Gaza Envelope.
If they take the initiative in Otef, the country will be forced to line up.
Those who are familiar with the situation in the evacuated hotels know that there is an annual trip, but there is no "trip year".
A vacation may turn into a prison, and children in the lobby of a hotel is a recipe for mental ruin.
But when "Yediot Ahronoth" journalist Matan Tzuri is interviewed by a panel on News 13 about the fact that there is no escape, and that despite the impossible situation and the gun under the pillow he chooses to return to his home in the Gaza Strip - the decidedly left-wing panel is shocked by the parental lawlessness.
Returning home has a Zionist, economic and moral value of the highest order.
A burnt building in the Gaza Envelope (archive), photo: Yossi Zeliger
And when the Likud ministers (where are you really, cute) participate in a conference on settlement in the Gaza Strip, the ricochets fly: "Miki Zohar wants us to lose in The Hague," says a News 12 reporter, and another celebrity responds: "A bill - an elected official who calls for settlement in the Gaza Strip will be obliged to live there himself with his children and participate in the emergency room."
It is a shame that the above mentioned did not mention that she also earns a living from real estate in Greece, and is not synchronized with the opening of emergency classes in the Sharon area.
But let's focus: the Hermon could have been an ugly battlefield, the black and white sheep, just like the Gaza Strip.
Why do we insist on doing bad PR for Gush Katif palms?
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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