24 October 2009

Remnant on a Yom Kippur War Battlefield


Leftover from a bad week. A tank long out of service, sitting by itself off a lonely stretch of road on the Golan Heights, exposed to the elements. A gigantic clash of armour--one of the largest clashes of armour ever, took place nearby. Did we do this? Jew from Lvov and Vilnius and Brno and Vienna and Plonsk and hundreds of little towns in central and eastern Europe; and from the Jewish quarters of ancient pre-Islamic north African and middle eastern towns, and even from Britain and Canada and America and Australia and South Africa. The sons and grandsons of black coated, bearded orthodox Jews gathered in ancient Bashan, and hour away from Damascus by automobile, to fight such a great battle in the 20th century--almost 2,000 after Israel was "destoyed" by the Roman Empire? Armoured divisions and brigades grinding across the landscape, with jets overhead dodging Syrian surface to air missiles. Ah but in this war the battle was also fought by small groups of men in tanks, by the ones and by twos. The war was won by decisive action taken by experienced men who could not always wait for orders. And the Hand of God strenghtened those men, and gave them victory.

Not always easy to see that in one derilict old tank--the Hand of God.

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