That Time Hezbollah Directly Threatened My Village - Reporter's Notebook
Read our non-troversial response to terroristic scare tactics. OK, and memes.
A just-released video clip published by the Iranian-backed terror proxy, Hezbollah, has directly threatened a list of Israeli civilian cities, towns, and villages across northern Israel - surprisingly, including our exclusively civilian, utterly staid community of Kfar Hananiya.
The closing text of the video warns: "All residents of the settlements mentioned in this announcement are requested to evacuate immediately. Your settlements have become a place of preparation and deployment for the enemy military forces that are attacking Lebanon. In this way they will become legitimate military targets for the Air Force and missiles of the Islamic resistance."
A number of the civilian localities listed in the video have already been struck multiple times by aerial munitions, none of which, to the best of my knowledge are host to IDF units. In other word: an overt Geneva Conventions-level war crime.
PS: our village (not “settlement” implying a new, imposed colony, according to current Jew-hating usage) is located alongside the cenotaph of its 2nd Century Mishnaic namesake, Rabbi Hananiya Ben Akashiya. So, yeah - we go back a-ways in these parts - and ain't no one going nowhere, no-how anytime soon…
Annually, members of our mixed religious, traditional, and secular community located in the eastern Galilee, meet and celebrate at the cenotaph—reliably dated back some 700 years before the advent of Islam—on the hill facing the village, seen in the upper left.
Commonly, Israelis mock and deride the group's bombastic attempts to sow fear and demoralization in the Israeli population.
As part of our resilience team, I think the official notice to residents responded correctly to the threat (I had no role in the text):
“Residents of Kfar Hanania, wishing you a good evening and a quiet week.
“In recent hours, a propaganda video was distributed by a hostile organization mentioning our community as containing military forces (although the statement is false) and therefore a legitimate target for attack.
“This edited video constitutes psychological warfare, but we do not act according to the enemy's wishes or capabilities.
“According to the instructions of the Home Front Command and the Security Department of the Regional Council, and after dialogue with the professional bodies, the instructions of the Home Front Command in our locality are unchanged.
“Our sitrep remains unchanged.
“Wishing you a quiet good night.” (our village secretariat).
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Warm regards,
David Bender
How nice of Hezbollah to put your village 'on the map,' so to speak (with a vague hint harking back to Tal Brody for those who remember him).
I think one side-effect of all the missile alerts is that Israelis are growing more and more familiar with villages and communities in the north that they have never before heard of.
I had to look up a word you used, I knew of the concept but did not know the name
A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere or have been lost. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although the majority of cenotaphs honour individuals, many noted cenotaphs are also dedicated to the memories of groups of individuals, such as the lost soldiers of a country or of an empire.
Tzfat has one near the mikvah for Ari, correct?
Is the locale for the rabbi's remains known?