Family of survivors?

It's always been a little weird to me that I come from an Ashkenazi background but don't actually have any Holocaust survivors in the family. They all left Eastern Europe before the war. Zaidy's family immigrated from Hungary to the US through Ellis Island in 1921, Bubby's family from Poland to Canada also in the 20's, and Saba's father came to Vancouver even earlier, at the very beginning of the 20th century. Only Safta's family was still in Europe. She was born in Berlin in 1933 but in 1936 her mother moved with her to England (her father worked in Poland so he would travel back and forth). In 1944 Safta and her mother joined her father in Vancouver after he had made his way there through Japan.

Safta says she doesn't remember much of the war, just that during the London blitz the kids would go out and collect pieces of shrapnel. That always sounded quite dangerous and strange to me, but here I am eighty years later picking up Iranian aluminum off the streets of Givot Eden, so hey.

Iran

So I'm just now in a zoom meeting with an Israeli fighter pilot and a man who's an Iran expert, and let me tell you this is fascinating.

The pilot described his experience a little, which is truly insane. He literally flew over Iran and watched missiles being launched - he says that from the air you don't actually know whether those are anti-aircraft missiles aiming at you, or ballistic missiles being launched at Israel or any of the gulf countries. And the planes were definitely targeted with AA missiles. He also said that Iran looks beautiful from the air and that if we ever have a peace agreement he'd love to go visit.

The Iran expert then explained the goals of the war as he sees them. He says it's about disabling Iran's capabilities for long range missiles, and of course nuclear warheads - basically the things that are an actual threat to Israel. He doesn't think the war is going to take down the IRGC, and he doesn't even think that's the goal, which I thought was interesting. As in, of course getting rid of the Islamic Regime would stop the motivation for such weapons, but the regime can be stopped even if it doesn't collapse. He also explained how this outcome can be reached militarily or through diplomatic negotiations (although he doesn't trust the American diplomacy to actually get us there).

The last important note was that Israel needs to make sure that Hizballah isn't included in any sort of ceasefire deal with Iran. Hizballah is a threat to Israel regardless, and we can't expect the USA to take care of them for us. Also, if the war does resume after this short ceasefire, Israel needs to put most of its resources towards Lebanon (like literally send fewer missions to Iran and more to Lebanon). And the current diplomatic talks with Lebanon are a good thing that might actually lead to peace.

Of course, since this was a Q4 zoom, Yoav Heller started the talk with his own little 'motivational' speech. He said some things that are obvious to me but maybe not to everyone? 

1. We're still fighting the war that started on Oct 7th, 2023. It's about the existence of Israel as a sovereign state.

2. We Israelis need to stay focused on the north. This is obvious to me because Yossi has spent most of the war up north so I'm very aware of what's happening with Hizballah.