WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Virtual Voyage: Friends of the IDF - An Update from Israel’s Front Lines

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

As the Hamas-Israel war continues to rage, Rabbi Steven Weil, CEO of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, joins Abigail to provide an update from the front lines, what could happen if Hezbollah enters the war, and how Israel sets the moral standard for war.Rabbi Weil also shares the story of Sgt. Rose Lubin, a courageous American Lone Soldier who served in the IDF and defended Southern Israel from Hamas terrorists during the October 7th attacks. Last week, Sgt. Rose was brutally stabbed by a terrorist in Jerusalem and succumbed to her wounds. May her memory be a blessing.The FIDF is the Israel Defense Force’s only designated partner in the US, and the IDF has requested their urgent support. During this war, the FIDF is tasked with meeting IDF soldiers’ emergency needs, including temporary field hospitals, intensive care ambulances, hygiene kits, and plasma kits. Donate to the FIDF’s crucial work here.Psalms that Rabbi Weil recommends using to pray for Israel: Psalm 120, Psalm 121, Psalm 130.

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the virtual voyage on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Abigail Snyder. Over a month ago, on October 7th, Israel was barbarically attacked by a terrorist group, Hamas. As the war in Israel rages, I wanted to give you all a reliable update on the situation, especially because you may have seen blatant misinformation and pro-Hamas propaganda on social media or in the media. We have a responsibility to know the truth. That's why I'm grateful, Rabbi Steve Weil, the CEO of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces,

has agreed to join us on today's episode to share more about this war and what's actually happening there in Israel. Rabbi Weil, thank you for joining us here on the virtual voyage. Abigail, it's an honor to be with you, and I'm a huge fan of Hillsdale. So thank you very much for the opportunity. To begin, I'm not sure that all of the time. of our listeners know what IDF stands for. Can you talk a little bit about the IDF and your organization, the friends of the IDF, along with what your job as CEO looks like? Sure. IDF stands for the Israel

Defense Forces. And obviously the goal there was to protect the Jewish communities in Israel. The world voted, you know, first in San Remo, then the situation in the United Nations, where there was a declaration, where there would be a Jewish state. And they set up what was called the Israel Defense Forces. The goal there was to defend the ability, the viability of the state. Friends of the IDF, under regular circumstances, when there's not a war, we are tasked by the general staff, by the Ministry of Defense. We're tasked with funding the educational needs, the health needs, the welfare needs,

the spirituality needs of the soldiers. We're not a military organization. However, over 25% of all Israeli soldiers are coming from poverty. We are tasked with funding their needs, their family's needs while they give three, four, six, eight, ten years of their life to defend the nation. And that's what we do normally. We are the GI Bill for for soldiers of the IDF. We provide probably 10 to 15 different transformational educational solutions that enable them to build Israel when they come out of the army. that enable them to be able to support a family.

And then go on. But what happened is you described October 7th changed everything. Since October 7th, friends of the IDF, we've been tests and we've been on the phone every day with general staff, sometimes three, four times a day. We are funding mash hospitals, mobile hospitals, blood plasma. There were so many that were wounded on October 7th.

It depleted all the resources of blood plasma. X-ray machines, purses, 62 different what's called operational ambulances. What's that? Something that is bulletproof because they were attacked on October 7th. The ambulances were destroyed. The military ambulances are also shot at, and so they're bulletproof. The four-wheel drive, because very often the battle scenes are not paved roads, so they have to go off-road to recoup the wounded, but yet they have to have the chassis,

almost like of a range rover. So if someone's got an IV fluid in them or blood fluid in them, that way it'll be a smooth rive. They won't be rattled. And it goes on and on. We provide the hygiene. We provide the warm clothing.

Sometimes it's spiritual needs that we're being asked to provide. Tens of millions of dollars for PTSD, for therapies, both for bereaved families who have lost a son or a husband or a father, as well as for families that are suffering in terms of

The shell shock, you know, PTSD was something that in America had a huge effect after Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel has a very sophisticated means they take every soldier out for 24 to 36 hours. They do tests on them. Those were in the battle scenes, literally in the heat of the battle in Gaza. And then the therapies for them afterwards. These are just a few examples. There are four military bases around the envelope of Gaza Strip that were destroyed, were ruined. We'll be fixing those, repairing those.

buildings, et cetera. So we have a big task, and that is to fund anything that's not military, anything that's, how should I say, humanitarian, anything that is medical, and anything that will help ultimately, you know, bring those soldiers home in an emotion in a physically healthy way. So turning to the war itself, one of the common narratives surrounding this war is that Hamas was not unprovoked in attacking Israel. That is, Hamas's barbaric splutter of 1400 Jews is somehow Israel's fault. The narrative says that the Israeli government has been oppressive toward Palestinians and that Israelis and Jews and Israel are colonizers, sitting on land they stole from the Palestinians when establishing the state of Israel.

I'd like for you to respond to this pervasive narrative and discuss the history surrounding the state of Israel and to whom the land of Israel belongs. Hamas is a branch of something known as the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has this ideology of Islamism, cannot tolerate an infidel, a Jew or a Christian, being part of the land that they defined that was once controlled by Islam. So the fact that there are Jews or Christians that control any of these lands means they have to be eradicated and annihilated. And as you know, Israel wanted to give the Gaza to the Egyptians, the famous Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, Manachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel, when they had the Camp David Accords with President Carter. The Egyptians wanted nothing.

They despise these Palestinians. They despise the Palestinians in Gaza. And it was a deal breaker. Egypt would not take Gaza. So Israel oversaw Gaza. Israel under Ariel Sharon was a famous general, became prime minister of Israel. He's the one who stopped the Palestinian Intifada when Palestinians were slaughtering innocent Jews, you know, through terrorism.

He made a decision. He said there's 14 Jewish communities in Gaza. We're going to take all the Jews out. And what we'll do is we'll give the Palestinians who live in Gaza. We'll give them self-automity. There was an election there. They lost in there. Hamas came in.

Hamas started slaughtering in books. butchering the PA, what's known as Fatah for the Palestinian Authority, and they killed them. Israel gave them a whole series of greenhouses. Because they came from Jews, they burnt them down. And from that time on, they've used Gaza as a springboard to attack Israel. The reality is their goal, and they're not shy about this, is the annihilation of Israel, the annihilation of Jews. When they say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, their goal is not only to drive out the Jews, but to slaughter any Jews there. And it was even worse because some of those killed on October 7th were Israeli Arabs, Israeli Muslims.

And we have the footage where they said to these people, you're worse than the Yehoud, you're worse than the Jew because you live with them and you tolerate Jews, and they slaughtered them. They murdered their own fellow Muslims. So it has nothing to do with oppression. It has nothing to do with, you know, with Palestinian rights. And just one thing that we have to make clear. There are very few Palestinians. How do we know this?

The Muslim-Odaman Empire that controlled for hundreds of years that area, we have the numbers. Jews were always the majority in Jerusalem. They were always the majority. There were other parts of what today is known as Israel that for the most part was almost uninhabited. When Jews started moving from the Arab lands, when Jews started moving from Eastern Europe, making Aliyah, meaning ascending or going to Israel, returning to their ancestral homeland,

it provided jobs. Many Arabs came from what is today Egypt. Many, that's why they're named Masri is someone from Nizraim from Egypt. For instance, Yasser Arafat, who's claimed to be the leader of the Palestinians. His family were Egyptians. And that's true with many of them. And many came from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. What is today's Syria? What is today's Lebanon?

So the whole notion of a Palestinian people, if anyone just does the historical research, you'll see that most of them came as a function for economic opportunity to work for the Jews, to work with the Jews, to do business with the Jews. And that's very crucial because history and the facts count. As we continue with our discussion about the war in Israel, here with Rabbi Steve Weil on the Virtual Voyage on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, for the first few days after Israel was attacked,

I held out hope. People seemed to be on Israel's side. All over the world, countries were putting up Israeli flags and seemed to support Israel after it just suffered a genocide. But that quickly changed for the worst, and the support for Israel has been especially lacking at American universities. some U.S. college campuses have literally turned into centers to celebrate terrorism. We've seen some horrific atrocities committed against Jewish students on college campuses, along with blatant anti-Semitism. And I don't know if this comes from a place of sheer evil or a place of sheer ignorance or a combination of the two. But let's say some anti-Semitism is rooted in a misunderstanding,

or perhaps a belief in anti-Semitic propaganda. With that in mind, what words of truth would you have to share about the way Israel has handled themselves offensively and defensively since October 7th? Well, October 7th was a disaster in terms of intelligence. But what was incredible is, Israel within 30 hours tripled the size of its army. We'll talk later in the broadcast about why two-thirds were sent to the northern border, because the real existential threat to Israel is Kisbollah. But what happened was Israel, the nation, is totally united.

They understand full well, and I'll use an American analogy. If we say that anyone south of Tennessee has to evacuate and cannot live in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, we see anyone north of Pennsylvania has to evacuate. No one can live in New York, New Jersey, New England. You can't have an America. You can't have an America. people can't live in Michigan, right?

And anyone north of Kentucky has to evacuate. He can't have an America like that. And that's what's happened in Israel, both in the south and the north. And that's why Israel, which is a very robust democracy, it's an incredibly robust democracy. You know, the famous joke, two Israelis, 16 opinions. Well, from the far left to the far right and everything in between, for the first time, you have a situation where mothers and fathers are willing

to allow their own sons and daughters to be killed because this war has already taken over 40 soldiers. It will take, it could take many, many more in the hundreds. It could. And the reality is they're willing to sacrifice their own sons and daughters, their own husbands, because Israel cannot survive. You can't have a country where people can't live in the south, can't live in the north. You have 21 communities that have been evacuated what's called along the Gaza corridor, which is the western Nege of the south of Israel.

you have 28 communities that have been evacuated in the north. You cannot live. Existentially, it's not a viable country. And they understand. If they want to stay in Israel, they're going to have to eradicate the evil. In this case, the Muslim Brotherhood, you know, murderers that we call Hamas. And they're committed to death to uproot their military capabilities, to uproot their ability to control the Gaza Strip.

And look, you see, you know, it's not always put on. the mainstream news, but you see Ghazans who are praying for Israel because they've lived under the tyranny and they've lived under the murder of Hamas. Hamas murders their own people. They just don't, they don't only murder Jews. And just to give a simple example, on day one when Israel asked everyone to go south of the Gaza river, Hamas murdered 70 that we know of, there are many more, but that we can prove and identify, 70 different Palestinians who are trying to flee south of the Gaza River when

gun down by Hamas in order to use the population as human shields. Once Israel started the ground game and once they started entering, now at this point over 95% of all Gazans are south of the Gaza River. And Israel's step by step, even though everything is booby trapped, massive booby traps, they're step by step trying to remove the tunnels. They have to be very careful. This past Saturday, four fathers, you know, we're talking about reservists. who have significant families were killed because the building that they were in was booby trapped.

Two of them were killed from the explosion and two of them were crushed to death under the building collapsing. So there's hundreds of booby trap tunnels, booby trap, building. Sometimes the whole block is booby trapped. And slowly but surely, step by step, it's going to take time. They will undo this infrastructure of Hamas. Now you have a situation in the world where you have, on, campuses, we've got people who've embraced. We're talking about a regime of Hamas, you know, because many in the campuses who champion

gay rights, if a lesbian or a gay were in Gaza, they'd be killed, okay? They'd be slaughtered. They wouldn't just be killed in a nice, simple way. If a woman dresses a certain way, she'd be killed. If somebody were to speak up and speak their opinion against the Hamas regime, they would be slaughtered. There's no tolerance for anyone who disagrees with them. Okay. And this is who they're champing the cause on the campuses. A lot of that has to do with Jew hatred. A lot of that has to do with profound ignorance because people work in very simplistic categories. You're either the oppressor

or the oppressed. What they don't do, and I have to give the Palestinians credit because of their manipulation of the media and of academia, if you look at the Middle East, there's 20, 22 Muslim countries. There's one tiny, small little Jewish country. But that's never the map that's shown. The map that's shown is Gaza, you know, in Israel, which is a corrupt map because it's not something that reflects the reality on the ground. And they make the Palestinians into David and Israel with the Goliath. What they never tell you is Israel is the only country where you have female Muslims sitting as Supreme Court justices, where you have a whole population of gay Palestinians who have fled their own people

because they'd be slaughtered and they live in Tel Aviv with freedom. It's the only place on earth where you have 20% of the population is Muslim, but yet 33% of all those in medical school are Muslims. And I can go on and on and on. The reality is none of that matters. The facts don't matter. the truth doesn't matter. If you have a narrative that's either driven by anti-Semitism,

see, because I have to tell you what threatens people about Israel, Israel's rooted in the Bible. And there's an objective standard of morality. There's an objective standard of ethics. There's an objective standard of justice. And that's very threatening to someone who wants their autonomy, who ultimately wants to be able to determine the world should run according to what I think is right. What I think is wrong, Israel and the Jews are very threatening to that.

And it's not a good situation for them. So what have they done? They've embraced, you know, a movement that hates them. They've embraced a movement that defines the very people that have embraced it as the great Satan. When they use the word of the great Satan, America is the poster child of the great Satan. What is the great Satan? It's Christianity. It's Western civilization.

It's Christian Europe. It's Christian America. But they're too stupid. In some cases, they're too evil to just acknowledge the facts and to understand that. Because what these young kids, I'm talking about most of the soldiers in Israel, 18 to 21 year old, the reservists who were called up, most of the reserves are between 22 and 26. What are these young kids doing? They're not just defending Israel. They're not just defending the Jews.

What do you think the real prize is? Is Iran, which has literally raided the wealth, oppressed its own minorities, taking the petroleum wealth, and they have something called the IRGC, the Iranian Republican Guard Corps. The IRGC has created six proxies. The most powerful of them is Chisbala. The Houthis in Yemen with cruise missiles and killer drones. The Shia militia in Western Iraq, the Shia militia in Syria. in Syria, Hamas and Palestine in Islamic Shihad in Gaza, and Hamas, the PFLP in Palestine, in Islamic Jihad,

in Jihad, and Jihad, and Jadaa and Samaria. What Christians and Jews have referred to as Judea and Samaria for 2,000 years, moderns want to change the name of that. They want to call that the West Bank of the Jordan River. Okay. We're going to use the historical terms that have been used, Judea and Samaria. So you've got those six proxies, okay? And what's their goal?

Their ultimate goal is twofold. Number one is to take over the famous religious cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Mecca and Medina have been under the control of the Sunni Muslims from the 7th century till today. The Shia want to take control of that. And how are they going to do that? What's standing in their way? What's standing in their way is the Jewish army, is the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces. They want the richest oil reserves on earth in Saudi Arabia.

If you add Iranian oil reserves and Saudi Arabia, Iran could control the energy resources. They want to take over the natural gas resources of the moderate Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are moderate Sun states. That's their goal. But what's stopping them? What's stopping them is the IDF, are the Jews. So if you can take the Jews down, then you can create a Shia caliphate that extends from the Arabian Gulf.

the way to the Mediterranean. And the IRGC has funded through its proxies this whole movement. It's the first time in the history of the world, the first time in the history of Islam, going back to the 7th century, that the Shia are dominating the Sunni. Just to give you numbers, there's 1.5 billion Muslims on the globe. One point four billion are Sunni. And they always oppressed, they always viewed the Shia as heretics, people who perverted the words of the Quran, perverted and corrupted the teachings of Muhammad. Now the Shia controlled the Sunni because of the Iranians who have funded the revolution, what they call the revolution. They funded it. But step one is to get rid of the Jews. You know what the Jews are? They're the canary in the coal mine. The Jews

are always the first, right? Hitha are murdered six million Jews. But let's be honest, 58 million people lost their lives in World War II. Fifty eight million human beings lost their lives. Once the Jews are slaughtered and please God that won't happen. Next step is take over Mecca, Medina, take over the oil fields and the natural gas reserves, control the world's energy resources. And then step three is ultimately the great Satan, the downfall of Western civilization, the downfall of Christian Europe and Christian America. That's who these 18 to 21 year old Jewish kids are defended. That's the IDF. And they're the young men and young women that we are trying to look after and provide them.

So let's turn to the north, and specifically the Israeli border with Lebanon. The concern with that northern border is that another terrorist group, Hezbollah, could enter the war. What is Hezbollah? And how are they different from Hamas? Chisbalah and the other five Iranian proxies are Shia Maslom, the Houthis in Yemen, the Shia in Syria, the Shia in Western Iraq. Hezbollah are battle tested. They fought in Syria. Today, the Shia militia control large swaths of Syria. Syrian army is impotent.

It's just ineffective, and Iran is taken over. Nature pours a vacuum. They've sent in Shia from Lebanon, from Afghanistan, from Pakistan. In Lebanon, you have a very, very fragile balance. There are Christians. There are Sunni Muslims, and there are Shia Muslims. in the chisbalah who funded, who took Iranian money, have the power. They are much stronger and much more powerful than a Lebanese army.

They control the ports and they control the government. Even though that there's a balance in the government of Sunni, of Shia and Christians, they're all scared to death and intimidated of the Chisbola. What the Chisbola has that none of the other proxies have, They have that we could, you and I could swear on the Bible. They have 150,000 rockets. Over 1,000 we know from the CIA and from Israeli Mossad, at least 1,000 are precision guided missiles. That means they have the ability to take out the Ben-Gurian airports.

They can take out the Israeli towers in Tel Aviv. They could take out the Leviathan, the gas rig, within 14 inches of accuracy. Those Lebanese rockets are very dangerous. I'll explain to you why. Right now, Israel has a missile defense system of Iron Dome, David Sling, and in the case of the Houthi cruise missiles and the Houthi killer drones, they use the Arrow 3. But for most of the rockets, the rockets coming from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad, which has 40,000 rockets aimed at Israel.

They've used over 9,000 at this point. the Iron Dome and David Sling missile defense system is 93% accurate and it's done an incredible job. There's not enough Iron Dome, there's not enough David's Sling, there's not enough missile defense to defend Israel from 150,000 rockets that come from Lebanon, from the Chisvala. And that's dangerous. if God forbid they took out the Israeli Air Force landing strips, the takeoff, you know, the takeoff strips, then Israel's whole military advantage, the F-35s from Lockheed Martin, F-16s from Lockheed Martin, the F-15s, that's the Israeli's military advantage. And that could be literally cut off if these rockets take out the landing storms.

I'll use an analogy. the miracle of the Six Day War in 1967, Egypt should have slaughtered Israel. What was the miracle of that war? The first hour and a half of the war, the Israeli Air Force, with the exception of 12 planes they left to defend the country, every other plane was sent. They flew under radar. They flew on radio silence. And they bombed and they took out all of the Egyptian landing strips.

The most powerful weapon in the whole Middle East was the Soviet-Nigern. jet that the Egyptians had that would have slaughtered Israel, it became impotent because it couldn't take off. The runways were destroyed. That is the fear that Hezbollah could do to Israel. And if you use all the missile defense to protect those runways, you leave your towns, your cities and your villages exposed. It's a very, very dangerous situation.

It's a very, very fragile situation right now. The generals that I spoke to as of yesterday still think there's a 50,000. to 60% chance that Hezbollah will join the war and will attack Israel. They have attacked already, but not full force. And Israel has to have proportionate responses. So it's a very fragile, it's a dance between the two. The reality is no one can live up north with these attacks. And the other issue is, is that Hezbollah, as I said, is the one existential threat.

Because they've got 150,000 that you and I could swear it's probably closer to 100,000. 180,000 throughout the length and breadth of Lebanon. They've got these missiles embedded in hospitals. That's the way they fight. The same, same disgusting evil way to Hamas that they use Red Crescent ambulances. They use hospitals. They use UN schools. They use kindergartens and nurseries.

We see it every day. Israel's exposing this every day. The Fisbala use the same tricks. And it's very, very dangerous. They are a serious threat to Israel. And that explains why when over 300,000 reservists showed up in the first 30 hours from October 7th in the afternoon to October 8th in the evening, two thirds were sent up to the northern border because Hamas did horrific barbaric things. Hamas slaughtered, murdered, burnt babies and, you know, did horrific things.

But Hamas is not an existential threat. They can't defeat Israel. Hezbollah, with the help of the other proxies, in theory, could destroy Israel. Meaning if they take out the ability of the Israeli Air Force, it's a game changer. And that's why the real threat is Hezbollah. They're more powerful than Iran right now. And that's what Israel has to deal with. So what is keeping Hezbollah from entering this war presently?

The theory, and I'm quoting to you one of the former heads of the Mossad, The theory, if they don't join the war, Iran needs them in the event that Israel has to take out Iran's nuclear installations. What they're doing is enriching uranium to create multiple nuclear bombs. They've got one place called Iraq where they want to develop enrichment of plutonium. They've actually got three active places that we know that Israel has discovered. Ushar, Natanz, and KOMS, QU-O-M-S. these places are actively enriching uranium. If Iran wanted, they're three weeks away from nuclear bombs.

They've enriched it to past 60%. Just to give you a sense, to go from 60 to 93%, we'll take them two to three weeks. The majority of the challenge in enrichment is to get it up to 20%. They're long past 20%. To give you Hiroshima Nagasaki, those bombs were uranium enriched at 80%. percent and we know the damage they did so the iranians do not believe that america is going to strike those installations they don't believe america will take it out their fear is israel and what they're using to protect themselves against israel is chizbollah the threat of chisbola that's the

theory as to why chisbala will not join the war you know what israel doesn't have the luxury of of being asleep on this one because because the damage of chisbaluker do to is existential and i want to say something else israel has fought chamas with two arms tied behind its back let me just give you numbers in the last hundred years there's something known as asymmetric warfare where the enemy doesn't wear a uniform like the viet con against america and vietnam like the chzbollah or chmas against israel they dress like you and i they look like the rest of the population They act out of, as we said, ambulance in schools, Red Crescent, you know, hospitals and ambulances, nurseries, kindergartens, UN institutions, you name it. We just discovered they've got weapons in an amusement park in Gaza.

Okay, they use that. So they operate, that's how they operate. In the last, again, 100 years, because America hasn't fought a symmetric war since World War II, If you keep Israel out of this for a second, come back to Israel in just a second. The best, the most moral battle was Israel conquering Fallujah and Persian Gulf 2. Fallujah is the famous city on the Frides River. 23 civilians were killed for every one combatant. We as Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, 30 civilians were killed for every one combatant.

That's our numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan. And America is a very moral ethical army. That's what happens when you're dealing, you're fighting against people who embed themselves in the population. Let me give you the numbers for Israel. 2012, two civilians for every one combatant. 2014 was a 70-day operation called Suk Eitan. I'm not sure what it was called in English, but it was the summer of 2014, one-to-one ratio. And I'm using Hamas's numbers which are way inflated, one-to-one ratio.

In 2021, in May, there was an 11-day skirmish called Guardians of the Wall. 0.7 civilians for every one combatant killed. Israel is so moral it is off the charts. That's why at West Point and in Colorado Springs, Brigadier General Benzzi Gruber, a Brigadier General from Israel, is brought in to address and to teach this to the graduating cadets, both in West Point and in Colorado Springs. How Israel deals with the ethics of war, their whole ethical code. So the garbage that you're hearing on the campuses and the garbage that you hear out of the

Jeremy Corbyn's and out of idiots like Justin Trudeau and Canada who don't know the facts are ludicrous. Israel fights Hamas with two arms tied behind its back. What I'm saying now is Israel will not have the luxury of fighting Chisbala with two arms tied behind its back. They won't have that luxury because otherwise Khizbollah could destroy Israel. And they've let the Lebanese people know and they've let the Lebanese government know, meaning the Christians, the Sunni Muslims, you got to do what you can do to keep them away. Because if they attack us and if we have to go to a war, we're going to have to send Lebanon back 70 years in history.

We're going to have to turn Lebanon into a parking lot. Otherwise, we will survive as Israel. And they've made that very clear. Don't think that we're going to fight you the way we're fighting Hamas. Where they call off all these attacks, they call off all the hits and the strikes because there are civilians in the area. And Hamas abuses Israel, and Hamas plays that game to do that. You've just seen today Major Conriquez took us through the Shifa Hospital, where they had their military equipment. They have the AK-47s where they were based out of. That's true of the Rantisi Hospital.

That's true out of the UN schools. They've got the tunnels. They've got their weapons in UN schools. And shame on the UN for allowing that and tolerating that. They do it in buildings where Al Jazeera and the quote, it's not free press. It's not such things of free press in Gaza. You do what what Hamas tells you to do or you get killed.

But in the press building, they do, this is how they, this is the evil. And they play on Israel's on the Jewish morality. They play on the Jewish ethics. That's how they work. That's all of the Iranian proxies. One of the sad realities of war is also tragedy. And I know that you probably personally know some of the brave men and women who have perished in defense of the nation of Israel. Are there any stories that you would want to share in their memory?

I'll tell you a story. I have a daughter who's a member of the Israeli Air Force. She's not a pilot. She does cyber defense. Her roommate is a young girl who went to Dunwoodie. High School in Atlanta, Georgia. Dunwoody is a suburb of Atlanta. Girls name is Rose Dubin. Rose was buried a week ago, seven days ago, Rose was buried. I'll tell you this story. She was one of the heroes of October 7th. My daughter and Rose lived on a place called Kiput Sad. Now, one of the

stories that's not told, when the 3,200 terrorists came in, when they broke through the fence in 22 places and they came into Israel, they tried to attack 30 different communities. Seven of them they overcame. 23 of these communities were able to defend themselves. And in every one of those cases, there were more Khmerz with guns, with AK-47s, with Russian guns, than there were Jews trying to defend these communities. One of them was Kiput Sad. One of the defenders was a 20-year-old girl, Rose Dubin.

She's a member of something called Mishmara-Ga-Gavur, the border police. Her job is, it's a hotbed of terrorism. to defend and to keep calm in the old city of Jerusalem, to make sure that when Christians go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, when Christians on Easter do the walk that Jesus did, when Muslims want to go onto the Temple Mount, when Jews want to go to the Kotel, the Western Wall, when Jews want to be able to walk and not be stabbed to death, they're the ones, especially in the worst parts of the Muslim quarter, they're the ones defending in trying to keep peace in the ancient city of Jerusalem.

That's her job. In English, you called the border police. She was home that day. My daughter was on her base. She was on call. She was home that day. She took her gun. And for five, six hours, there was a gun battle.

They protected the people, it's the agricultural community. You got hundreds of people living there, hundreds of children living there. And they were able to defend off at a real, rate of probably one of them for every five attackers from Hamas, a gun battle. They were able to protect it. And she worked a very heavy gate where she opened it up as kids came from the music festival. People came from what's called Kfar Aza, the Aza village, the Gaza village, which is on the Jewish side, the Israeli side of Gaza, which was overrun. She would open the gate, let them come in. She was a real hero, okay? Her and six or seven guys against, you know, 30 terrorists. They held down

prevented the community from being overrun. Four weeks later, she stabbed to death in the old city, in the ancient city of Jerusalem. She was a border police, and it's a tragedy. And her family came from Atlanta, from Dunwoody, Georgia, in Atlanta. They came to Israel to bury her in Har Herzl. That's the Ireland International Cemetery of Israel. That is where she was buried just seven days ago. That's my daughter's roommate.

So that's a very personal story. Rabbi Weil, thank you for sharing that in memory of Rose Dubin. May her memory be a blessing. The Friends of the IDF has done an amazing job of meeting the needs of the Israeli soldiers very early on in this war and on a continued basis. How do you logistically go about understanding the needs of the soldiers and then providing for them? The general staff, there's something called ACA, in English, AKA, it's really the human resources staff. So the various branches of the Army reach out to them

and share with them their needs. And they reach out to me, to us every day, sometimes two or three times a day. And what happens is most of what they need, they can procure. They have their sources. They don't have the budget for it, that don't have the funding for it.

And we provide the funding. There's one scenario where the People's Republic of China boycott, they don't boy, they haven't boycotted Israel, they boycotted the IDF. So there were certain types of clothing that were necessary that we had to procure here in the United States and ship them. But that's the exception of the over $45 million that we have sent to the IDF, we send it daily. Whatever they need, we respond.

Most of that, they have their sources. They get very cheap prices because they're a military that are ordering this stuff. they're ordering 62 of these ambulances, the operational ambulance. It's not like somebody ordering one on ambulance. When they order these field hospitals, each of these tents, massive tents, they're ordering multiple of them. We fund it, they pay for it. So what we do is we transfer the funds to them,

with that one exception that I shared. As we come to the end of our interview, for those of us not in Israel, what is the best way to support the IDF and those brave men and women combating the evil, Hamas terrorists. So those who have the financial means to do it, FIDF.org, friends of the IDF, FIDF, FIDF, dot ORG, unlike during the year where there's a small amount of overhead, the war campaign, the emergency campaign, zero overhead. One hundred pennies on every dollar goes to the needs of

the IDF. We also publish of the $45 million, what was spent on this, what was spent on that, how much for blood plasma, how much for the operational ambulance, how much on EKGs, how much on clothing, how much on, you name it, hygiene kits for the soldiers, et cetera. We publish it. It's there. It's public. And literally every penny on the dollar goes to the IDF for the purposes of their most critical urgent needs. It changes every. day. Today they'll ask for X. Tomorrow they'll ask for Y. It changes as the war changes and as the needs change. And like I said, moving forward, there's going to be tremendous needs for preemptive therapy, for therapy of the most acute PTSD, for therapy for the families who lost a son, lost

a husband, significant, significant therapies. Not to mention, as I said, they're telling us to prepare a significant amount of funding for the rebuilding of the facilities. The Hamas destroyed these facilities on these bases. And that's going to be crucial. If we want people after this war to once again settle in southern Israel and literally fulfill the words of the prophets and rebuild and reestablish southern Israel, they're going to have to feel safe. And that's something we're going to do.

Finally, Rabbi Weil, I can't stop thinking about Psalm 121, as I pray for the IDF soldiers, especially in the verses that speak of God, as the one who watches over Israel and protects his people, such that no harm comes to them. This is my personal prayer for all the soldiers who are fighting for Israel, and I know our audience will also be praying for Israel, and they will want to pray specifically. So how can we best pray for the soldiers of the IDF who are fighting now?

It's interesting. Jews all over the world have been saying some, 120 and 121 since the beginning of the war. There is a beautiful prayer, the prayer for the soldiers. Maybe you can get that online that was composed by the first chief rabbi of the state of Israel, Rabbi Hertzza, whose grandson happens to be the president of the state of Israel now. There's a prayer for the soldiers. Psalm 120, Psalm 121. I would also recommend saying if people have time, Psalm 130.

Rabbi Weil, thank you for joining us here on the virtual voyage. to discuss the current situation in Israel, remember the innocent lives lost, honor the courageous heroes currently serving in the IDF, and learn about the ways we can specifically support Israel. Thank you, Abigail. You know, it's a blessing and an honor and a privilege to be on your program,

and it's a blessing and an honor to be participating with Hillsdale College. Hillsdale is one of the great institutions. It's an institution of substance. It's an institution of thought, and it produces great Americans, great Christians, and great leaders. And we're just very proud to be associated with you. Thanks for joining us today on the Virtual Voyage on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.

I hope this episode has made you more aware about the current war in Israel, started by the terrorist group Hamas over a month ago. And I hope you will join me in praying for Israel and the Jewish people. The Bible shows us time and time again that God is a God who works miracles. He has protected his people for millennia, and against all odds, the Jewish people have endured. This is a time to mourn, and this is a time to be heartbroken. But this is also a time to have confidence that God has not forgotten Israel. He will deliver his people.