Kiryat Shmona

If you as an American remember being shocked to your core by the attacks of 9-11, imagine how it must feel for Israelis, where it's not just an abstraction, something you're watching on television in a city you might or might not have ever visited.

but it's a cousin who's living right on the Gaza envelope, or it's another cousin who's been forced out of their home in Kiryat Shmona or somewhere in the north.

I think there's such a complete failure of empathetic imagination on the part of so much of the Western intellectual or media establishment to understand the trauma of of October 7th, and it's a real failing in the West.

It's a particular failing, I might add, because we are now sliding, slouching, if you will, to use Yates's term, to a world in which something very similar could happen in Estonia or in Taiwan, other countries threatened by the axis of authoritarians comprising Tehran, Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang.

And something that's incredible is that during the war, we had our soup kitchens operating not just open throughout the war, but we added meals that they were producing because so many more people were in need during the war.

And we had two soup kitchens in Israel that were hit by rockets, one in Kiryat Shmona, which is in the north from Hezbollah, and one in Dimona that was hit by a ballistic missile by Iran.

And within 24 hours, We found a different location and made even more meals than before to send a message and distribute them to the people in need in those cities.

And so the fact that we can be feeding the hungry together, Christians and Jews, Americans and Israelis, is something that is bringing so much hope to the people of Israel.

lot of them.

I've met a lot of them from Kiryat Shmona to the Galilee.

And I guess when Israel has that day of reckoning, the fellowship will be able to say, we've been doing this, not just saying it, but doing it for decades.

And that's always what we try to do in the fellowship.

You're listening to Israel Today Ongoing War Report, I'm Noah Levi.

In southern Lebanon, the IDF is conducting strikes, with residents in Kiryat Shmona advised of potential sonic booms in the coming hours, according to local authorities.

The military stated that regular life continues, with no special public directives at this time.

Separately, two IDF soldiers were injured in an operational accident in southern Lebanon due to a grenade explosion.

But the opposite, that they can't get near us, that we're not going to render our people vulnerable to invasion the way that they were on October 7th.

My husband's family lives in Kiryat Shmona.

We were there on October 6th on the last day of our vacation before the end of the holiday that fell on October 7th.

You know, they were all dispatched summarily, you know, leave right now, told to vacate Kiryat Shmona beginning, it's a border community with Lebanon right on the border.

on October 7th.

And they were internally displaced people, internal refugees for, I think, a year and a half before it was safe enough for them to move back home.

And that's why we don't see ourselves having a zone that's demilitarized inside of Israel facing a militarized Gaza, which is basically what we had on October 7th, but the opposite, that they can't get near us, you know, that we're not going to render our people vulnerable to invasion the way that they were on October 7th.

You know, my husband's family lives in Kiryat Shmona.

We were there on October 6th.

on the last day of our vacation before the end of the holiday that fell on October 7th.

And, you know, they were all dispatched summarily, you know, leave right now, told to vacate Kiryat Shmona beginning, it's a border community with Lebanon right on the border.

on October 7th.

And they were internally displaced people, internal refugees for, I think, a year and a half before it was safe enough for them to move back home.

What kind of population is that?

In the beginning of the war, it was people from Sderot, right, from the cities in the south primarily, and then Kiryat Shmona.

It's a mix of people, a lot of elderly.

These are people who were evacuated even prior to October 7th, or you mean at the very beginning?

And the Galilee.

Kiryat Shmona as the gateway to the Upper Galilee and Mount Moran.

Safed, Tizfat, the mystical city with the artist colony and the narrow stone streets.

Beit She'an with the Roman city ruins, which are some of the best in the region.