In the few days between Passover, the holiday of our salvation from bondage in Egypt, and our upcoming Independence Day, the holiday of our resurrection, we also mark two days of sadness: Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism. Throughout the generations, the Jewish people were hated as they wandered the world without a home of their own, but even after this home was created, this hatred persisted.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

This is the fate of "a people that shall dwell alone." (Numbers 23:9) In recent years, some have attempted to create a new equation, as if the Arab countries that attacked Israel upon its inception had a rational reason for their actions other than hatred. Nonsense: Just as there was no rational reason for the pogroms or the expulsion from Spain, there was no rational reason for the murder of Rabbi Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref, the first victim of terror, in 1851, struck down by a sword-wielding Arab while he was trying to expand the Jewish community beyond the walls of the Old City to the agricultural fields beyond.

Maj. (res.) Avraham Wolanski, a great-grandson of Zoref, continued these efforts together with his wife, Avital. In 2002, on their way home, they were murdered by "Palestinian" terror. A direct line between the two acts of murder, despite the time between them. Hatred of Jews. Antisemitism.

How could it happen that after signing the peace agreement with the PLO terrorist organization, terrorism intensified to claim the lives of hundreds of unnecessary victims? Because we sinned in shunning the moral imperative not to talk or negotiate with murderers and terrorists, and instead of fighting them to the death and serving as a light unto the nations, which we were in the early years of our independence, we agreed to sign a "peace" deal with Yasser Arafat and other terrorist leaders in Oslo and the White House. And the results? The moment we brought them to our doorstep from Tunisia to Ramallah, they had convenient conditions from which to attack their "neighbors" in the house next door. We paid a heavy price in blood for this.

Dismantle the Palestinian Authority

When "Israel's hand is weak," incitement to terror streams from the Palestinian Authority to the mixed cities inside Israel, which resulted in attacks on Jews and Jewish property during Operation Guardian of the Walls, and has recently continued in the form of numerous terrorist attacks. The waves of incitement wash over these Arab cities and villages like a storm, flooding social media sites and college campuses. These college students have waved the PLO flag, which is against the law. To stop this, and in the memory of our loved ones, we call on the entire defense establishment, the government, the cabinet, and the Knesset to launch a series of steps that will ultimately lead to the dismantlement of the PA, which in our eyes is the mother of all sins.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Our fight against terror that spans generations appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

We need to resettle Homesh immediately, thereby making those who want to chase us out of the area – and all of the Land of Israel – pay.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Terrorist organizations life in hope that through killings and murder they will be able to chase the Jews out of their homeland. This hope needs to be wiped out by building a settlement at exactly the place where they carried out a murder and wounded two other people.

There is no place like Homesh, which was evacuated in the 2005 disengagement, to start making the terrorists and their support network pay. It should be rebuilt on its ruins, right away.

This would be an appropriate Zionist answer, one that is in line with the early days of Zionism, when the Jewish Yishuv was under attacks by Arab gangs and responded by setting up more settlements. It should be continued now. It isn't just a moral response, it's also deterrence and a defense response.

The War of Independence, which began when the enemy attacked the areas that the Partition Plan left us, ended with them annexing the areas from which they launched an all-out assault. We need to do the same thing today, post-Oslo.

They declared a war on the lands left in our hands in Judea and Samaria, after the Oslo Accords gave them Areas A and B, which they turned into bases of terrorism. Now they are violating the Oslo Accords in Area C, which belongs to us – through a well-organized and well-funded campaign backed by the Palestinian Authority and hostile foreign entities. We need to retaliate by expanding the settlements. Israel should begin rebuilding Homesh, which was evacuated in the despicable disengagement, even though it wasn't part of the Oslo Accords, because of its importance as a strategic outlook over the coastal plain region, as well.

When terrorists are tried, the source of their inspiration to murder appears again and again. It comes from the mosques and the Palestinians media, which has morally perverse protection called "freedom of speech." Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to incite against us on radio and TV stations, in interviews and programs that glorify murderers of Jews.

It's time to respond. With arrest operations. They should start with the incitement stations, under anti-terror laws. The radio and TV frequencies they received under the Paris Protocol as part of the Oslo Accords should be shut down. The IDF can do it.

Israel ignores the funds the PA continues to channel to terrorists and their families. If the Homesh terrorists are captured alive, they will be added to the list of recipients of terrorist stipends.

The continued payments encourage terrorism. And when our government looks away or even agrees to them, it sends a message that downplays the seriousness of their actions, that it isn't too bothered by all the terrorist activity or can, unfortunately, live with it.

Although the murdered can't live with the situation and it's hard for the wounded, as well. There is internal incitement, coming from Israel. The government also has to put an immediate stop to incitement by political officials against settlers in the Knesset and in the cabinet. The enemy can do this and doesn't need help from us. We cannot give any sort of legitimacy or justification to the other side. Words have power. Incitement is the ground from which terrorist actions grow, first rocks and knives and now guns.

When the terrorists and their handlers hear the latest remarks by ministers and MKs – not necessarily Arab ones – who talk about murderers and terrorists and settlers in the same breath, the other side realizes that just like they sang in the time of the British, "the government is with them and the Jews are our dogs."

To stop this, Prime Minister Bennett must announce what he declared in the past – that we are returning to Homesh!

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Rebuild Homesh immediately as a message to terrorists appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The investigation into the conduct of two Border Police officers who shot a terrorist near the Old City of Jerusalem on Saturday – preventing further killings – sets a dangerous precedent that may cost the lives of more civilians and soldiers.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Even if nothing comes of the investigation, it might lead to fighters second-guessing themselves in future terrorist attacks. As we know, stopping the attacker as soon as possible saves the lives of those around, especially if explosives or knives are involved.

I was in the area the day police officer Charlie Chelouche was killed by a Hamas terrorist in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Baka in 1990. Chelouche rushed to the scene after Israel Defense Forces soldier Iris Azulai was killed by the same attacker.

Three times Chelouche asked the terrorist to stop, and when he refused, did what every soldier was supposed to do at the time – fired at the attacker's leg. As the injury was not fatal, the terrorist managed to pull out a knife and stab Chelouche in the back, killing him.

Chelouche was decorated posthumously, which was no consolation for his then-pregnant wife – who had just become a widow – or to his family members. He lost his life as a result of the restrictive rules of engagement. Meanwhile, the Hamas terrorist received a lenient sentence. Having served eleven years, he was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange deal and now roams the streets of the Gaza Strip freely.

When the Justice Ministry's Police Internal Investigations Department scrutinizes the actions of two fighters that killed the terrorist, I can't help but think of all the officers that lost their lives fighting terrorism.

The 1990 attack prompted a debate on the issue how to confront a terrorist. We were sure that the IDF and the Israel Police would learn their lesson and change the rules, and that is what the fighters were promised.

The first and necessary conclusion from Saturday's attack is that if an investigation is launched, it should be led by the relevant security agencies rather than the Police Internal Investigations Department. Due to historical reasons, the Border Police reports to the Israel Police, which is not built to deal with terrorism in the first place (which is another matter worth discussing following the events of the latest round of violence with Hamas in May).

The second conclusion is that instead of an investigation, they should conduct a regular debriefing. Also, the incident should be checked as part of the Border Police and not a mechanism set up with the goal of dealing with misconduct on behalf of police officers. Because with all due respect to the Police Internal Investigations Department, it does not know what it is like to be on the battlefield.

What do fighters learn from this development for next time? Hesitance. Therefore, the third conclusion is that Justice Minister Gideon Sa'ar and Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit must put an end to this march of folly.

The fourth conclusion is that the commanders must encourage their soldiers to kill the terrorist in case of an attack immediately. The instructions should be clear – a bullet in the head or a crucial part of the body.

And finally, the government must deter future terrorism. The homes of terrorists must be destroyed, even if they failed to kill. The one who sets out to murder should be held accountable as if he is a murderer.

For those who have failed to notice, we are facing a wave of individual terrorism. Experience has shown that the demolition of houses deterred many from becoming a terrorist.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Home demolitions will deter lone-wolf terrorism appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

There have been four generations of fighters since the 1948 War of Independence, from the late historian Professor Eliezer Bashan who fought and was captured in the besieged Gush Etzion area, up to his great-grandson, Shahar-Yair, who currently serves as a tank commander in the northern theater with the 188th Armored Brigade. 

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Shahar-Yair was named after his grandfather, the late Maj. Yair Bashan – also a senior member of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel –  who was wounded by Jordanian terrorists during his service. I, too, was wounded in an encounter with terrorists during my service in Meir Dagan's Sayeret Rimon unit, and I am also Shahar-Yair's grandfather. 

There is no time like Hanukkah, the holiday of heroism, to tell the heroic story of our Jewish fighters. And there is no better time than this week, as I commemorate the death of my father Yehiel, my Jewish hero, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Nazi death march, and who immigrated to Israel and joined the Israel Defense Forces to glorify the Jewish heroism that exists in almost every family that survived the exile. 

In the northern theater, where my grandson serves, I fought during the 1973 Yom Kippur War near Gamla and at the foot of Mount Hermon with Sayeret Matkal.

During the 1982 Lebanon War, I fought with the 202nd Paratroopers Brigade, and there, on the Golan Heights, established Sar-el, a volunteer organization with supporters from around the world and from Israel who contribute to Israel's security by assisting on IDF bases in a logistical support role. 

This week I visited the Golan Heights again to visit Shahar-Yair and his friends, the current generation of fighters. 

The way I see it, the IDF has not changed, despite all the criticism against it. The spirit of volunteering has not changed either, only the aging faces of us veterans. I will prove this together with Shahar's uncle, Lt. Col. Israel Gur Arieh, who will share his story soon. 

There is no better time than Hanukkah to visit and see the northern theater as it developed throughout the generations. The landscape on the way to the Golan Heights has remained unchanged, with "Grandpa Hermon" towering above. The winter is almost here. The landscapes hold within them the memories of battles and heroism that took place here during the Yom Kippur War.

We are standing near a military monument near the Gamla stronghold and I share the story of the battle in which I participated. Gamla is directly connected to Hanukkah, for Hasmonean King Alexander Jannaeus conquered the city from the Hellenists in the first century BCE, and brought Jews to inhabit the land. During the Great Revolt against the Roman Empire, Gamla fell following a bloody battle that took the lives of thousands. 

"It is already dark outside, and I am on my way north to look for a unit to fight with on the Golan," I read out loud from my Yom Kippur memoirs, standing next to the monument. "Meller assigns me to a company within his tank regiment. 

"Near Ein Gev, Meller gathers his command staff, and says, 'You should know, the people of Israel expect us to stop the Syrians. The fate of the country rests on our shoulders.' At the crack of dawn, on the way up, we see the defeated paratroopers descending. At night, we were ambushed by enemy tanks next to Gamla. 

"I am familiar with the area as I traveled here before the war. I jump into the company commander's APC. In the meantime, one fighter has already been killed. Now the company is stuck in a 50-meter-radius tank ambush that has split it into two. 

"I look for Bazooka ammo or anti-tank rifle grenades, but there aren't any. None in the entire company! There is nothing we can shoot at Syrian tanks."

It later turned out this was also the case in many other units. The war reserves storage units were empty and the IDF set out to war unprepared. The tanks were finally stopped with small arms, but it came at the expense of two more lives.

"Meanwhile, enemy tanks are moving towards us, firing at the APCs," I continue. "The company commander is busy trying to get tank reinforcements. Meller tells him to figure it out on his own, because he doesn't have any troops available and is busy with the main effort. I make sure soldiers are out of the APCs, because there they are easy targets, and order them to take cover.

"That was a mistake. When enemy tanks began moving after us and firing at us, some of the fighters were shell shocked and did not obey the order to leave the shelters to escape from the area of tank fire.

"Then comes Col. [David] Rokni, who famously led the IDF soldiers in march on the eve of Independence Day at Mount Herzl. I was sent to him from my unit to deal with Gaza terrorism, in order to instill disciplinary standards in the unit. 

"As the tanks continue to fire, I scream for them to 'turn left' or 'jump right.' It's working! Insane, but we managed to get out of there like this."

Near the menorah on the legendary 188th Armored Brigade's base, three generations of warriors and reserve officers. Members of one family. A formation of soldiers in front of the menorah. 

Now it is Gur Arieh's turn to recount the double miracle that happened to the Bashan family and his own. About the same night that he and Maj. Yair Bashan crossed into Jordan with reserve troops in order to ambush terrorists. 

"The terrorists surprised us and killed two of our soldiers, and critically wounded me with a bullet in the throat, and my major, Yair Bashan, in the leg. We escaped miraculously and when I was lying with tubes connected to my head, my sister came from the kibbutz to visit me. I could not speak, so I wrote, 'Go and see how my major is doing, who is hospitalized in the orthopedic ward.'

"My sister Hannah went to check, and the story ended with a wedding. Shahar-Yair is their grandson. Isn't it a miracle?"

Is the current generation following in our footsteps? Absolutely. Seeing a Hanukkah parade consisting of soldiers of diverse backgrounds is a great honor. The battles of the Maccabees, together with the legacy of the battles of this time, create the ongoing story of Jewish heroism. 

The heroic spirit of the Maccabees is alive and kicking. Seeing my grandson and his friends carry the legacy is proof that Jewish volunteering and heroism persevere. It has always been alive, from the time of Hanukkah miracles to this day. 

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post The spirit of Jewish heroism perseveres appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Since its founding, the Almagor Terror Victims Organization has sounded the alarm over the relaxed atmosphere terrorists enjoy in Israeli jails. We have even issued explicit warnings that this could lead to jailbreaks.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

But our warnings have never been heeded. This has been painful for the families of victims and has also undermined our security.

The message coming out of our prison system was that as long as prisoners did not go on strike, they would be allowed to manage their lives as they saw fit. Conscientious prison guards and officials have repeatedly tried to sound the alarm along with Almagor, but the response has always been that such a policy prevented a larger crisis within the prison system. We even reported on specific prisons where things could go sideways at any moment.

At some point we even approached Gilad Erdan, who as public security minister was in charge of the Israel Prison Service back then. He went on to establish a committee that imposed more restrictions, declaring that the "parties in prisons" must be stopped.

Although there were some fixes and improvements, senior terrorist figures continued to operate out of prison as if they were still in charge.

At the same time, courts decided they had the authority to set restrictions on prisons. One such ruling said that a prison cell is considered to be the terrorist's home and therefore he is entitled to keep many personal belongings, regardless of the size of the cell.Terrorists took advantage of this in order to make life difficult for the guards who now had to conduct a thorough search of countless of items.

Those who wanted to buy peace and quiet in prison saw reality rear its ugly head on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.Here is a solution that is already being implemented in prisons around the world: Inmates should be held in solitary confinement, as many prisoners around the world are, and as Yigal Amir, who assassinated former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was.

From a moral standpoint, those prisoners should have died as their victims did. Some of them should have been given the death sentence, as we have been demanding for years, and as Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman has long called for. This is the bare minimum required in dealings with the terrorists who made families to lose their loved ones.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post The writing was on the prison wall appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

For the past several weeks, senior health officials have been sounding the alarm over the government's conduct; they have lamented its lack of decisiveness. 

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

"The government has not done a thing," one professor said. He warned that "if the government fails to act, the spread of the delta variant could become enormous." 

Various other senior officials and medical staff have been criticizing the government's lack of direction, but the ministers have time and again just kicked the can down the road by putting off a decision on reinstating the life-saving coronavirus restrictions. This could have deadly consequences. 

Not long ago, the man who now sits at the helm – Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – came out with a book called "How to beat a pandemic." In that book, he leveled harsh criticism over his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu, when he was still in office, because of what he considered Draconian measures, even though those very steps made Israel a role model for how a country could overcome this contagion and recover.

So what's going on? Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton has issued new directives ahead of the new school year, only to be lampooned by health officials who said they are riddled with shortcomings that "still have to be resolved." 

Yes, this same education minister tried to make sure gyms would remain open during the height of the pandemic and has even clashed with health experts on live television. 

And there is also Eli Avidar, a newly appointed minister who until recently was all but an anti-vaxxer and even appeared alongside such groups in protests. He considers the private individual's rights to be more important than national responsibility, and many on the Left are like him, including those who refuse to get vaccinated on ideological or anti-establishment grounds. 

They are a well-organized group that has spread their deep disdain for healthcare regulations. They have shown their strength at the height of Tisha B'Av when they staged massive protests in Tel Aviv to resist new restrictions. 

They marched to Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz's home and reminded him that they are his voters and demanded that he torpedo the government's new restrictions through his powers. They have every right to protest, but the government ministers have no right to forsake Israelis' personal security and disregard the professional advice of experts just because of political pressure. 

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Inaction can be deadly appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Unlike Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who sees antisemitism as a general problem of different nations intent on killing one another, my parents, both survivors of the Nazi extermination camps, had no doubts as to the essence of antisemitism. "Non-Jews hate Jews," my father concluded in one of his short and sad conversations with me about the Holocaust. My mother, who was separated from her parents at the age of 14, had no illusions either after her relatives were burned in the crematoriums. They both made aliyah, neither seeking to rehabilitate themself in other countries after the war.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Unlike bloody territorial disputes between different peoples, many of which are temporary, antisemitism has accompanied this ancient people throughout its existence, beginning with the exodus from Egypt and continuing till this day. Antisemitism has its own literature and ideological substrate. Incitement to the murder of Jews has accompanied the Jewish people in their Diaspora in the East and the West throughout history. It appears in Muslim and Christian literature as well as the Nazi literature that led to the Holocaust. There was no diplomatic or territorial dispute between Germany and the Jews, and yet they destroyed the Jews. And the world was silent precisely because they were Jews.

Explanations for antisemitism are wrapped in attempts toward its practical justification: They are rich, they steal the land, they lend money and charge interest, among other charges. In the end, though, there is something mystical about the hatred of the Jewish people. It is because we were chosen to deliver God's message and the Torah to the world. This is what established a polarity in which the Jews are situated on one end and the world on the other.

President Chaim Herzog also declared this in front of the representatives at the UN. He and his brother Michael, who served as director-general of the Prime Minister's Office, did not make the same distinctions as Lapid when he turned antisemitism into yet another bloody conflict between peoples. No, they understood the depth of the hatred for the Jewish people. Their father, Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, instilled them with this understanding from our Torah and generations of experience.

What led Lapid to turn antisemitism into a cosmopolitan problem? Was it a political agenda? Even if this was not Lapid's intention, his words could provide ammunition for Palestinian propaganda efforts to revoke our rights to the Jewish state.

The Holocaust transpired against the background of the UN resolution on the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. The Palestinians used slanderous anti-Israel propaganda, claiming the Nakhba – the "catastrophe" of the displacement of Palestinian refugees during Israel's establishment - was a Holocaust perpetrated with the world's support and the Jewish state is therefore illegitimate and has no right to exist.

Lapid must issue a correction and rectify the situation. He owes it to the memory of Holocaust victims, including his own relatives, and the memory of all victims of antisemitism throughout the generations.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Lapid emptied antisemitism of meaning appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref was the first terror victim. He was murdered in 1851 by a sword-wielding Arab, in the days of resurrecting the land as one of the leaders of the Jewish Yishuv. His grandson Yoel Moshe Salomon continued his legacy of expanding the Jewish settlement.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter 

Captain (Res.) Avraham Volonsky, a great-grandson and descendant of the family, continued these acts of settlement and resurrection with his wife Avital. Together they redeemed a desolate hill (Eli Tet) in Samaria, settling on it with other young pioneers. On their way home, they were murdered by Arab murderers, a descendant of the murderers of Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref. A direct line is drawn between the murders despite the difference in years.

Avraham Volonsky and his wife Avital and his forefather are casualties of the revival of our people in Israel. They have a special place in the Hall of Souls in the heavens as those who fell for the sanctification of God, the people and the homeland.

Anyone killed by enemy shelling or traveling around the country is a fallen person in Israel's wars. The man could have lived abroad. The choice of the Jew to immigrate to Israel or to live in this good country despite its risks is a conscious choice, including the cost. Sometimes that price is a life, or injury. Therefore, the Memorial Day for Israel's fallen should include those who were killed and murdered for its resurrection, even if they were civilians.

This is another opportunity to raise the demand of the grieving families of terror victims to transfer the handling of the issue to the Defense Ministry, thus ending their sense of discrimination as if their sacrifice was less significant. After all, the more meaning there is for the victim, the greater the comfort.

In recent years, attempts have been made to draw a new equation, as if there is no attacker and no attacked as if there are no victims of Arab murderous terrorism in the face of Israeli defense. We must end the laundering of words that try to produce a postmodern equation as if this were a banal conflict in which there is no right side and wrong side. Attempting to make this comparison leads to the following step: self-blame. From there one easily finds oneself at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which set up to deal with Nazi criminals but now in a moral and historical distortion, blames the victims of terrorism defending themselves against terrorism.

No two sides are equal. There is a right side and a wrong side. And this is why the line that connects between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day runs through the Jewish people murdered throughout the generations.

As the son of Holocaust survivors whose families ascended to the heavens from the crematoria of the Nazi enemy and were not privileged to see the resurrection (apart from my parents, who were privileged to be buried on the Mount of Olives and observe from there their descendants fighting and redeeming our beloved land), we have a mission. Not to rest on our laurels. Fight for the righteousness of the path. The righteousness of the path of the Jewish people is Tikkun Olam. "And all the peoples of the land saw that the name of God was called upon it."

And for the families of the victims of this resurrection – there is consolation and comfort. They find it in the building of the land, in the return to Zion, exactly according to the Jewish verse that says to the mourners of Zion, "In the building of the land you will be comforted."

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post A legacy that endures appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

While building roads on Mount Ebal, near Nablus, the Palestinian Authority destroyed part of a 3,200-year-old wall on the biblical site of Joshua's altar. Joshua was the successor of Moses, the leader of the Jewish nation who brought them into the Land of Israel after their exile in Egypt.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The authority acted with deliberate intent when crushing the ancient stone from the site's exterior wall into gravel to pave the road. It even made use of stones from within the site itself.

The PA has been doing things like this since it received our lands under the Oslo Accords, even though it made a pledge to preserve Jewish heritage sites. It also promised to refrain from carrying out terrorist attacks, while still receiving weapons from us. Using those same weapons, it opened fire on a group of hikers on Mount Ebal in 2000 and murdered Rabbi Binyamin Herling, the son of a Holocaust survivor.

Taking an Israeli life was not enough. They now have their eyes set on our sacred heritage sites.

While IDF Civil Administration dares not make a peep due to pressure from foreign countries, the PA is slowly destroying ancient sites all over Judea and Samaria. This way, history will be erased from our territory as well as our memory.

Construction waste from the Temple Mount is being dumped into landfills along with Jewish artifacts, leaving Jews who want to preserve these sacred antiquities no choice but to look for them among all the trash.

The trucks that were destroying the very first altar that the people of Israel erected upon entering the land should have been stopped by the soldiers at the nearby military post. I know that the role of the outpost is to guard sensitive communication facilities on the mountain, whose physical placement is strategic due to their height, but an army must surely also know how to protect the history of its people.

Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to lose their homeland. History constitutes a lens for our future, but in the absence of such lenses, the nation will pay a heavy price. After returning to our land following a 2,000-year-long exile, it is our duty to re-sanctify that very first altar that the Palestinian construction equipment has defiled.

 Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Learn from the past or risk losing our homeland appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The first two temples were destroyed because of power struggles that eventually morphed into a civil war. During the Second Temple period, even as Jerusalem was under siege, its residents were at each other's throats. Our enemies seized on this and made sure to exacerbate the divisions.

 Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

In modern times the rivalries between pre-state militias were very much in play leading up to Israel's independence.

In the first big test of unity, in 1948, then-Irgun leader Menachem Begin made sure that his militia would not turn its weapons on the state in retaliation for Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's decision to fire on the Altalena ship, which carried weapons for the Irgun.

Some ridiculed Begin, but it turned out that he made the right call. He prevented a civil war that would have nipped the new state in the bud.

It is incumbent upon the Left to restrain its own people this time. Democratic elections have just been held and the Left has to accept the people's verdict.

Over the past several days we have heard threats from the Left against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "We are not afraid of you, we will continue to fight you until you are out of the Prime Minister's Residence," Opposition Chairman Yair Lapid recently said.

In one comment online, one user said, "Netanyahu must be toppled by force; dictators are taken down with a bullet to their head."

Even as Iran maintains its aggression on Israel's northern border, there are some who want to exacerbate our internal strife. Tisha B'Av should be a moment for introspection. The Right must allow the Left to vent, but without letting our guard down on coronavirus restrictions.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Don't make our fragmentation worse appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.