LETTERS FROM ISRAEL

                                                                   

Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot is a book I wrote using all the letters I wrote to my family from 1980 to the end of 1985.  It was published by 1st Books in 2003, 452 pages, now Authorhouse.  

What happens when two middle-aged American West Coast Jewish teachers decide to make aliyah to Israel with their German shepherd without having first vacationed there?  

When I started to read my letters that my mother had saved, I  cried.  She had saved them because they were so very interesting.   I put the letters back in the bag and stuck them away in my closet.  It was too painful to keep reading.  After a few months, I knew what I had to do:  write a book.

Read and find out what it was like to be in Israel during this period.  I was able to meet my illustrious cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, and hear his account of his life in Israel and what it was like to be the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group before Israel was created in 1948.  We were able to meet with my husband's illustrious cousin, also, the rabbi who had started Boys Town.

There was one book written earlier that was given to us to read when we were in the ulpan that told of a different family that had moved to Israel with their children.  Our story is quite different from theirs.

My husband and I and our German shepherd had made aliyah.  We were teachers in Oregon and went through classes in Haifa, where we lived for 10 months, to become certified teachers in Israel.  Danny was an actor from Miami, originally, so we started our own drama group and played in hotels across Israel with our shtick of a Laugh-In style act.   I wrote plays that we put on in Safed.  We were able to take in a lot of tourist attraction visits on weekends.  The most serious time was in being in the 1982 conflict with Lebanon, which was not too far from our home in Safed.

Going from conservative to orthodox in Safed and celebrating holidays like we had never celebrated before was our personal high experience.

The book is available to buy on http://www.amazon.com and other online bookstores.   

Lebanon Shooting Rockets into Northern Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

Sunday morning, which is a good 10 hours ahead of USA time, was the time when Lebanon terrorists shot 2 rockets almost reaching Kiryat Shimona that landed west of this town housing a department store similar to the USA's Macy's.  When I lived in Safed from 1980-1985, we would drive up there which is quite close to the Lebanon border to shop. This town had been hit many times.  It had been attacked by rockets so many times  that our friend from the Teacher's Program, who had gone there to visit, wound up stuck in a bomb shelter for about a week and was unable to leave during that time.  Many Westerners live in Kiryat Shimona.

Now this morning by Israel time, 5 rockets were shot at Israel from this northern state of Lebanon and one landed in Israel.  Usually all the attacks have been coming from Gaza into southern Israel.  It is a sad thing to see this starting up from Lebanon once again.

Israel retaliated as warned the same day.

Resource: https://www.facebook.com/Middle.East.Insights

Wounded Syrians Find Treatment Within Israel's Hospitals

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

                                                  Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel
Having  lived in Safed (Tzfat) from 1981 to the end of 1985 and having been there during the Lebanon War, I know that the hospital on my corner that was across the street from the public junior high school on David Elezar Street was treating Lebanese Arabs that were injured.   Safed is in the northern Galilee and was a stone's throw away from the borders of Lebanon and Syria.

Injured Lebanese were brought in by helicopter, and my students were afraid that their family members might be among the wounded as well.  Most all of our students were traumatized during the war.  I was there and couldn't teach much English when they were all cowering with fear for their dads in the classroom corners, but my droning voice seemed to steady them, for if I stopped talking, they'd cry out to keep on going.

My 9th grade boys were asked to help the hospital by translating and anything else they could do for the staff.  They told me about it in class the next day.  These boys were pretty shook up by the wounds they would see, but glad they could do something both for the patients and the medical staff.

Today, Israel's medical care continues to help wounded Syrians from the Civil War.  They've been doing this since last February when it was reported and it was  ignored by the major news wires such as BBC.

The number of Syrians treated is higher than previously thought and increasing numbers of patients are children.  "Two minors injured in Syrian fighting were transferred to a hospital in Israel on Wednesday, June 25, 2013.  They were boys, 9 and 15 and were transferred to  Ziv Hospital in Safed for treatment, the same hospital near the junior high which I have also been in.  The 9 year old had moderate injuries from shrapnel wounds across his body and he also lost his right eye.  This was reported in the Maariv newspaper.  The 15 year old was in serious condition.

Today, a wounded Syrian is guarded by either an IDF soldier or by a civilian security guard in order to isolate them  from speaking with unauthorized people who might photograph them or pass on their information to Syria.  This would harm them or their families by exposing them being in an Israeli hospital.  When they would return to Syria they could be killed for being there.  You must remember that there are Israeli Arabs in the hospital as well as Jews.

More than 100 wounded Syrians have crossed the border in recent months.  Some 70 have been taken to Israeli hospitals.  Two have passed away because of critical injuries.

Safed's hospital is not the only one actively treating Syrians.  Patients have also been treated at the Western Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya; Rarmbam Hospital in Haifa  an army hospital, another one I've been treated in; and Poriya Hospital in Tiberias.  All of these medical facilities in the north of Israel have Arabic-speaking social workers, trauma specialists and nurses.

As for finances, in Israel treatment in a hospital is normally paid for by the patient's particular medical insurance company, just like in the USA, but Syrian patients do not have insurance, so Israel's Health Ministry and Defense Ministry agreed to jointly fund the hospital treatment for the Syrians.  No doubt that the UN is not helping out but I think they should.  This is humanitarian care of the finest.

The case seems to me to be that if there's anything good that Israel is doing, it will never make the papers.  Let something be said that is just nasty gossip about Israel, and it makes the world's papers.

In my first year after making aliyah to Israel in September 1980, I wound up in two of these hospitals.  I fell down in Haifa during my ulpan living and was taken to Rambam where 3 doctors operated on my crushed elbow for 3 hours and where I learned the Hebrew words, Koh-ev Lee (there is pain to me, or Ow!  I'm hurting!)  Later when living in Safed, I choked on a chicken bone and finally went to the hospital where I was placed in an astronaut capsule and turned upside down, like in a carnival ride.  Oh, I was there so many times, I can't recall them all.  It was a great hospital.  It's where my doctors were.  Being immigrants, we signed up for the cheapest insurance and never had a moment's worry about paying.  The insurance covered everything.

Resource:  http://bbcwatch.org/2013/07/03/bbc-continues-to-ignore-israeli-medical-care-for-wounded-syrians/
Book:  Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot-on amazon.com

June 1982 War: First Hand Account: Why Israel Went Into Lebanon

Nadene Goldfoot
I, an American teacher from Oregon,  was  living in Safed, Israel  in the northern Galilee at the start of the Lebanon invasion.  My husband and I, with our German shepherd,  had moved to Safed after completing our education in the Ulpan in Haifa in 1980-1981, and then moved to Safed in August where I taught English in the junior high.

During Spring break one of the other students in my Ulpan class had visited Kiriat Shimona, which was north of Safed near the Lebanon border by the Good Neighbor Fence, and wound up the whole duration living in a bomb shelter along with others.  They were receiving so many attacks that they couldn't be out in the open.  On the way to Safed, we passed an apartment building where a rocket had fallen in its back yard just 2 weeks before.  That's when I started to get a little worried.

The PLO had made life in northern Israel intolerable by repeated shelling of Israeli towns a little closer than my city of Safed.  What I hadn't realized was that 15,000-18,000 PLO terrorists were camped out in many places in Lebanon.  5,000 to 6,000 were foreign mercenaries coming in from Libya, Iraq, India, Sri Lanka, Chad and Mozambique.  Our IDF had found enough light arms and other weapons to equip 5 brigades.  Their arsenal included mortars, Katyusha rockets and extensive anti-aircraft weapons.  They had brought in hundreds of T-34 tanks into the area.

Syria had permitted Lebanon to be a haven for the PLO and other terror groups.  They had brought surface-to-air missiles into Lebanon which created another danger for Israel.  Israel was being protected in part by Major Hadad of the Christian Militia whose soldiers patrolled the border.  He was a good friend.

Israel had struck and had commando raids but couldn't stop the growth of the PLO army and could not sit around and wait for more deadly attacks against defenseless citizens.  They had to act against the terrorists.

On June 15, 1982 I was on a bus going down to Haifa to the Rambam Hospital to check on my elbow.  I had fallen and crushed it and had broken the bone as well and it needed  to have the 7 screws taken out.  I noticed a lot of tanks going up the hill which I had never seen happen before, but couldn't get answers from the people on the bus due to my lack of speaking Hebrew well.   I got to the hospital and it was almost deserted which was very peculiar.  This place was usually as popular as a department store sale day. I found the doctor's office and saw all 3 doctors, one of which was from Michigan and looked just like Paul Newman,  who had done the operation.  They  told me they could not help me right now.  We were about to be in a war with Lebanon and they, being an army hospital, would be very busy setting a lot more bones.  I should go home immediately.  Maybe they could do the operation next summer.

I taught with Ned, an American teacher,  who lived in Carmiel, a more modern city nearby.  He was called up to serve in the army a week before at one o'clock in the morning and called me to tell me that he was home for the night and was okay.  Andy, the other English teacher was also home and okay.  Even our dog's vet was called up and was serving as a medic in the army in his period of milueem service.  With these other English teachers in the army, I wound up handling all the classes along with Margolite, the Russian "English" teacher with a very thick accent.  I had reported in at the school on my day off knowing that they would be needing me.  No one had to phone.  Anyway, I lived just across the street from the school.

Avram, who lived in Hatzor, had a birthday and while we were driving there we saw lots of IDF hitchhiking to get to their posts.  Everyone gave them lifts.  It was the patriotic thing to do.  Otherwise, I was at home baking cakes for soldiers who would grab a bite to eat with coffee at kiosks set up along the way.

At this point we had 170 men killed already.  Students in school were hysterical as they all had family members in the army.  Some of my 8th graders were used in the hospital to translate or just to help out, as we had the enemy in there as well and not all nurses or doctors could speak Arabic.  One of my students told me that they saw a lot of things that a 14 or 15 year old boy shouldn't have to see in the ward.  It was quite traumatic for him.

All we knew was that the PLO was finally run out and that it was time something had been done about it.  The UN had done nothing to help Israel while the North had lived in bomb shelters.  Everyone was very upset about the casualties on both sides, but even Lebanon was happy, especially Major Hadad, of the Christian Militia whose men had attacked the PLO.  Little did we know at the time just how they had done  which wasn't kosher.  I was glued to the radio for the short English reports we could hear and read every word in the Jerusalem Post, our English newspaper.  It finally came out that Sharon had allowed Hadad's men to take care of the PLO's, and they did so, as quietly as possible, most likely with knives in their tents.  Sharon received all the blame, being the General.

During the whole episode, the elevator in our building had broken down, and a soldier on leave blew our TV reception accidentally by cutting into a live wire, so we have problems just getting along.  It could have been much worse if our soldiers and Hadad's soldiers hadn't stopped the PLO, I now realize.

Resource: Myths and Facts, a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Mitchell G bard and Joel Himelfarb
Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot

5.9 Earthquake Felt in Israel

Northern Israel around Nahariya and Safed felt an earthquake the most that struck all of Israel Friday afternoon.  It was centered on the island of Crete in the town of Iraklio, a Greek island.  There was no damage.  The Island is 76 miles away from Israel. 

I remember being in my apartment building sometime between 1980-1985 taking part in a lesson on the highest floor of the building when an earthquake struck in Safed.  The building swayed at that height, but we were okay and resumed our lesson.  It was scary, though.  I actually lived on the bottom level and my husband never knew it had happened.

Earthquakes happened in Safed in the late 1800's.  I visited a friend who lived in a beautiful home that had been dug out of the earth that had been swallowed up in an earthquake.  She must have been a home decorator because she kept the influence of the Middle East with bright pillows, and had lots of green plants inside.  It was just breath-taking and so simply done.  Then I had to return to my small lower-level apartment with black bars on the ground floor window in the living room.  I had another friend, Dov Silverman, school principal, author of stories about Safed, who lived in an actual house.  It was exciting to visit him and his house being I hadn't seen one for so long.  Most all people in Israel live in high rise apartment buildings for lack of space, I imagine.  If you're from New York it's not a shock, but coming from Portland, Oregon and home-style living, it took some getting used to.  Out of the 5 1/2 years I lived in Israel, that was the only earthquake that I experienced.  I've felt several little ones in Portland before that. 

Cairo, Egypt also felt the quake. 

Resource:  http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=214767

Kiryat Shimona Under Rocket Attack-1980-1985

Nadene Goldfoot

My favorite town north of Safed received rocket fire from Lebanon again. I remember living in Safed from 1980 to 1985 and this situation happened all the time. Kiryat Shimona was populated by a lot of American Jews and they were in dire need of a psychologist to soothe their anxiety. We were attending a 10 month ulpan at the time, and at Spring Break one of our friends went there to visit and wound up living in the bomb shelter for about two weeks. She was out of communication and we had no idea what had happened to her. The town held my favorite department store, the Hamishbeer, so similar to Meier and Franks here in Portland. I loved that store. When they were under a lot of fire I prayed that the department store would be spared. It was.

Now it's happened again, and I can feel the angst of the people living there. Though it missed its target and caused no damage or injury, it surely causes a lot of hearts to beat faster and mothers to feel a lot of concern for their children. The rocket came from the village of Houla.

Israel answered with artillery fire at Lebanon. The Lebanese reported that we fired at least eight shells toward that area in response. The border may now be quiet but it is tense.

Both sides accuse each other of violating a UN brokered ceasefire from 2006 that ended a month-long war between Israel and the Hezbollah terrorists. Lebanon is accusing Israel of planting listening devices and to overflight of an unmanned drone surveillance aircraft over southern Lebanon. Israel accuses Lebanon of two recent blasts involving weapons storage depots in southern Lebanon, and two rockets fired from Lebanon at northern Israel last month. A militant group connected to al Qaeda took responsibility for the rocket attack then.

It looks to me like Lebanon is involved with hiding weapons (to use against Israel, of course) and of taking pot-shots at Israel when they so want to, and Israel is trying to use surveilance to find out what they're planning to do to Israel. Of course Lebanon doesn't want Israel to find out, so again with the complaints and shootings.

We used to drive to Kiriat Shimona in order to get to the Good-Neighbor Fence between the two countries. I wonder what has happened to it.

Comment 10/27/09 from Victor Sharpe: The "good neighbor fence" died because Ehud Barak let our Lebanese allies, under General Hadad, down by withdrawing Israeli troops suddenly from the 10 mile wide security zone. He did this dreadful act in response to the campaign of the "Women in Black" who agitated for Israel to leave the security zone in Lebanon, which had protected Israel's northern border. Predictably, the vacuum was immediately filled with Hezbolah, and the Lebanese Christian allies who had supported us were left to twist in the wind. Barak did this and should be covered in shame. Israel cannot afford to lose such good friends. That was the ending of the "good neighbor fence" because we betrayed those neighbors and succumbed to the Israeli leftist "Mothers in Black." Now we have sixty thousand missiles pointing at Israel from Lebanon. Meshugas!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091027/wl_nm/us_lebanon_israel_2/print Rocket from Lebanon hits Israel; Israel fires back

Jerusalem Post's Geography Lesson by David Harris: New Jersey and Israel-Same Size

Nadene Goldfoot

Almost every responsible political leader today expresses a desire to contribute to peace in the Middle East. Easier said than done. A real effort to promote peace requires an understanding of what motivates the parties to the conflict.I can't say I quite get what makes the Palestinians tick. Like the late statesman Abba Eban, I haven't grasped why Palestinian leaders never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.But I do believe that anyone who genuinely seeks peace, or who aspires to be a friend of the Israeli people, should consider four key factors that inform the Israeli worldview.

Geography

The throwaway line these days is that geography no longer matters in an era of long-range missiles. Not so fast.As the late Sir Isaiah Berlin famously quipped, "The Jews have enjoyed rather too much history and too little geography."Israel is a small country, about the size of New Jersey or Wales, and barely two-thirds the size of Belgium. To put it into context, Egypt is approximately fifty times larger than Israel, Saudi Arabia a hundred times.And there's more. Until its 1967 war for survival, Israel's borders, which were nothing more than the armistice lines from the 1948 War of Independence, were nine miles at their narrowest point, near the country's midsection and most populous area.When President George W. Bush first saw that narrow width from the vantage point of a helicopter, he was reported to have said, "There are some driveways in Texas longer than Israel is wide."Topography matters too. When the towering Golan Heights were in the hands of Syria before the Six-Day War, for example, Jewish villages and farms below were regularly targeted by Syrian shelling. Ask my wife. She was a volunteer in a kibbutz there. With the Golan Heights in Israel's hands, those villages and farms no longer have to rush their children into underground shelters.

My comment is that I found this to be so true as I lived in Haifa and Safed from 1980-1985 and saw how very small Israel truly is. That's why I'm constantly amazed at the willingness of our country to divide it up more and give parts of it away continually. This will never lead to peace, only the destruction of Israel. We started with a piece of land bigger, and it has constantly been chopped apart. We gained land in 1967 but have lost other parts since then for peace which has not come. Has anyone learned a lesson here?

Research: http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/harris/

Israelis Have Paid Dearly For Israel

by Nadene Goldfoot

Back in 1948, Jews in the newly created state of Israel were attacked by the surrounding Arab nations. We lost 7,000 to 10,000 Israelis in that war. That’s more than one out of every hundred Jews who were living there at the time. The Arabs lost even more men.

During the Six Day War Israel lost only 800 out of a population of 2.5 million. Israel had a greatly well-trained army by then.

For starters, people moving back to the area of Palestine bought the land. It’s been in our oral prayers for the past 2,000 years to return to our land of Israel, and we finally organized ourselves and got there after our long absence. Even though we had legitimate claims to the land, being the original dwellers, buying land from present-day owners, getting the official sanctions from the newly formed U.N., and even facing a holocaust that wiped out six million of us, we were attacked for needing to be there. Amazingly, we won and survived.

Back before 1948, we had no army. We actually were fighting from November 1947 to the invasion of Palestine by regular Arab armies in May 1948. We had defenders, though. One group was the Stern Group, with the Chief of Intelligence Stanley Goldfoot. When the attack of 1948 broke out, we had all sorts of problems to contend with. Jordan, also a newly created state, had a British-commanded Arab Legion who came at us with artillery, tanks and planes but did not know how to use them like we later did. We didn’t even receive arms until the middle of the battle and won due to "an unyielding spirit" more than to military equipment or proficiency. We weren’t about to let such a monumental occasion of becoming a state again after 2,000 years go by the wayside.

Teen-aged Jewish girls and Jewish children of age 10 and 11 fought next to our men. Our Jewish communities were attacked by Arab peasants with no military training as well as their present day armies. Luck or, I would like to think Ha-Shem, played a part in our winning the battle.

There was a Molotov cocktail that struck a leading Arab tank. Whoever tossed it from our side wasn’t even a baseball player. We had problems with our fighters being from so many different countries that they didn’t understand each other’s language so had a hard time following directions. It’s just really amazing that we did win.

One story that came out from Safed, my Israeli home-town is related by Dov Silverman. It's another miracle story. When the Arabs left Safed they really expected to return which their leaders told them would happen. Most took the route of the Wadi Amud which passed the water pumping station built by the British. If they had blown it up, it would have been terrible for the Jews there as it was the beginning of summer and everyone would have had to leave because of not having any water. They had left it alone because they expected to be able to return, victorious and take over the city. That water pump is still in use today.

We’ve gone through a lot to get where we are today, and yet we’re still being threatened. We’ve given so much to the world in the field of medicine and other sciences, but are not the favored child of many countries anymore. Now when we defend ourselves from constant attacks, we are condemned for it. Though the world has become unfair and kowtows to the Arab states who hold much of the world’s oil, we cannot give up hope. We’ve just begun to fight.

Resource: Book: Genesis 1948 by Dan Kurzman
Book: Legends of Safed by Dov Silverman

CNN's Lying About Israel

by Nadene Goldfoot

While watching CNN’s Iranian coverage Sunday night June 21st, the reporters started talking about how American presidents have in the past needed to confront friendly countries they disagreed with. They immediately brought up Israel in 1982 and stated that Israel slaughtered the Lebanese, and that Reagan had to tell Begin to stop and he did.

Five minutes or less later they brought up Israel again with the same subject of presidential interjections saying that Isael slaughtered the Gazans, and was told to stop by the American president. All this was in reference to Obama’s lack of wanting to interfere with Iran’s political situation right now.

I about fell out of my chair, and me home from the hospital after only six days after having open heart surgery. I could not believe what CNN was telling the world; twice relating how we slaughtered people!

I was in Israel starting in 1980, living in Safed from 1981 to the end of 1985, and remember the Lebanon War very well. Safed is in the Northern Galilee and was very close to the Lebanon border. In fact, my favorite department store was in Kiriat Shimona, which was north of us and they drove to many times. I had been to the "Good Neighbor Fence."

That’s not what happened at all, of course. We do not go around slaughtering people. What happened was that Lebanon was made up of a minority of Christians and a majority of Muslims. The Christians were led by a Major Hadad who patrolled the border of Israel and Lebanon, and he was considered our very good friend. In fact, Major Hadad would come to our hospital for R and R, and we had an agreement with him to take his family into Israel if G-d forbid anything happened to him.

Evidently the Palestinian Muslims had gone in and slaughtered the Christians at some point. Sharon was Defense Minister who apparently did not know that the Christian Falange had gone into Sabra and Shatilla camps to exact revenge on the detestable Palestinian Arab PLO slaughterers of the Lebanese Christians. Sharon was blamed for the attack and was fired by Menachem Begin. It was an eye for an eye attack of Lebanese against Lebanese.

Eventually Sharon was exonerated. It was the Christian militia who did the killings and not the Israelis. That didn’t seem to enter into CNN’s reporter’s verbage, though. To me it shows that CNN never did report the facts correctly in the first place or their reporters wouldn’t have said such things in the first place.

I was there living through the whole experience. When it started I was on a bus going down the hill from Safed headed for Haifa to go to the hospital, and was alone. I had fallen in Haifa while at the school where I lived (Ulpan) and had crushed my right elbow which also had broken the lower bone and was scheduled for a talk with the doctors about when they could take the six screws out of my arm that was holding me together. What I saw was Israeli tanks coming up the hill as we went down. Upon arriving at the hospital, I was told to go back home as fast as possible, that a war was starting and the doctors would be too busy to deal with me. They expected lots of wounded soldiers coming to their hospital. Here I was, a West Coast American, in the midst of my first Israeli war.

After arriving back in Safed, I checked out the bomb shelter in our apartment building. Almost everyone lived in apartments. Homes such as I left in Portland were unheard of. The bomb shelter couldn't take in dogs, and we had brought our German shepherd with us. She was my baby and I was not about to leave her in the apartment alone, so knew I wouldn't be in any bomb shelter. Luckily, we lived on the bottom floor anyway. I thought we might be safe.

My job became baking cakes for the soldiers to eat. All these eighteen year olds had to get to their posts, and did a lot of walking to them. Coffee and cake booths were set up so they could eat something. All these teenagers must have been experiencing sugar-highs. It was good, though. It gave me something to do so that I couldn't shake with fear. I was helping.

Being a teacher, I somehow knew instinctively that the school would need me. I reported to school the next school day (my day off) and found all the men teachers in the army, and that I truly was needed. I taught in the city's junior high, which was across the street from my building. The children were hysterical when they heard a helicopter landing at the hospital up the block from our building. All their family; uncles, brothers, fathers, and many women were in the army, and of course they feared for their lives. They'd huddle in corners while I taught English. One time I remember just stopping my lecture and looking at them. They looked back and said, "Keep talking, Nechama." I did. They needed to hear something familiar. So that's what I did during the Lebanon War. It's something that can't be forgotten.

What my 9th graders did was something amazing. They were needed in the hospital to speak English to the Lebanese or Arabic. They were translators. They told me that they saw things they shouldn't have at their age. They did see the need for English, though, as it was a language they used to speak to the Lebanese. After all, we took in anyone who was injured. Our students studied languages a lot. What was amazing to me was seeing the Arab kids helping the Jewish kids with Arabic studies and vice versa with their Hebrew studies. They all helped each other with English.

I saw units of men with white beards patrolling our streets. They were men left behind to protect us. Women stepped in and took over their husband's jobs. Of course we also had many women teachers in our building, and the Vice Principal was a woman who took over for the principal who had to report into the army. You just didn't see hardly any men on the streets. We were a city of women and children.

As for the Gazan war, CNN never remarked that Israel had been under attack for eight years and it was its citizens who were under missle attack. They never reported that finally Israel said, "Enough", and told the world many times that they wouldn’t take the attacks anymore, no matter what Condoleeza kept saying, and that the Gazans would have to stop or suffer the consequences. The Gazans were warned and did not stop. Israel did everything they could to lessen the harm to the Palestinian citizens, even putting their own lives in harm’s way many times. Nothing was mentioned of this-only that Israel slaughtered them. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I’m saddened to see such an international TV station play such a heavy role in discriminating against Israel, and that its reporters have done such a sloppy job. They seem to have no idea of the terrible consequences that can happen when so many people hear these horrid lies about Israel. After all, it takes very little for so many people to turn against Jews; even today. As for CNN-I now have more reason to watch Fox News, and have lost a lot of respect for CNN's reporting skills.

Hizballah Captured West Beirut

Israel Doesn't Mix In

Hizballah just took 5,000 men from the South and captured West Beirut. Israel was urged by Washington to intervene in Lebanon's civil conflict, but stayed out of it. For once, I am glad that Olmert and foreign minister Tzipip Lvini decided this. We are seen as conquerors of Palestinians and are not when we simply defend ourselves. We were not being attacked. That may come soon, but I believe it's much better to stay out of it at this time. Now Hizballah, the Shiite militia, Iran's surrogate army waltzed in unchecked for its second victory in two years.

American intelligence estimated that Hizballah could retaliate against northern Israel with 600 missiles a day. That would have hit my old city of Safed for sure again.

USA is mad at us if we do and mad at us if we don't. Right now they're very mad at us for our passivity. They wanted us to surprise-attack by bombing their positions in South Beirut. In fact, we have been very passive, not doing much to stop the daily rocket and missle attacks on our civilians these past years. Bush asked the Middle East Countries to confront Hamas and isolate terror-sponsors Iran and Syria. Doesn't he know that all these countries except Israel are in cahoots with the terrorists? USA wouldn't come to our aid, just as they didn't in the last melee with Lebanon. I ask myself what Golda Meier would do, and my answer is just what Olmert did this time. Not mix in; not yet.

Reference: Debkafile: Exclusive Report

IS THERE A MELTING POT IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

Nadene Goldfoot
What is exciting about being an American is learning to live with people of all colors and all nationalities. I found the same thing happening in Israel. Though the country is unimaginably tiny, the diaspora of Jews have returned from every corner in the globe along with non Jews as well from exotic countries. Blacks from Ethiopia moved into the apartment building across the street from me in Safed. There were many English friends with various accents living there, also. My boss was from Morocco. My neighbors were from Arab countries. Many Arabs are living in Israel and are citizens. They have representation in the Knesset with their own party. Others I met spoke French or Spanish. It was an exciting place to live and to meet people. Besides all the people one can meet, the television is full of programs from other countries. I enjoyed viewing movies from Lebanon and Egypt as well as oldies from the USA. England had racier programs than I had ever seen in the states. People in Israel thought you were uneducated if you only spoke one language. One appreciated differences there.

I am taken back with the fact that the West Bank in now governed by Palestinians, and we only have about 500 Jews living in Hebron with thousands of Arabs. These few Jews have just suffered from the Peace Now Movement who demonstrated that they should get out of there. Is there no tolerance for somebody that is not an Arab? That this is happening in what is part of Israel is showing that they have no understanding of a democracy. If Arabs live in Israel, why can't Jews live in the West Bank?

Now days a Jew can be a tourist in Egypt. Jews cannot go to any other Muslim country, however. The odd thing is that Jordanians have been coming into Israel to work, but we can't go there. There is no give and take. It's all take and no give, yet they except Israel to bend over backwards on all accounts.

Safed Israel, My Home

Nadene Goldfoot

The year is 1980. This is the Rimon Inn in Safed, Israel, where I lived for almost five years. This inn was marvelous. We went here for special dinners. All the food was kosher and delicious. We came to Safed on a field trip with our school in 1980 and later moved here in 1981. The brochure says that Safed is high in the mountains, and it is at the same level pretty much as Jerusalem. We had dry, cool mountain air in the Spring, and it was hot and dry in the summer. You could sit out at the inn amid gnarled olive trees. People came here to explore this medieval city of Jewish mysticism. 

 The Cabbalists lived and prayed here. It is written about in James Mitchner's "The Source" with the chapter about the Saintly Men of Safed. Nearby is the Artists' Quarter which called to me as I do oil painting. The Rimon Inn is one of the fine hotels in the IRH Israel Resort Hotels chain. It was damaged in the recent shelling from Lebanon.

My Safed Apartment in 1981

Nadene Goldfoot
This is my apartment in Safed, Israel that I moved into in 1981 and moved out of at the end of 1985. It was at ground level and was a very high building with an elevator. Notice that the barred window also has a metal shade because terrorists could come in if it wasn't this way. All ground level buildings and stores had protection like this on windows.

I'm sitting on an extra bed in our living room in September. It is night. It's hot and I'm wearing a caftan. We had just moved in and were yet to buy furniture. There is no air conditioning, only a fan that we bought.

Updated 3/27/19