Israel
Jewish director of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities offers staunch defence of Israeli settlements
By BERNIE BELLAN
Sondra Boras is an Orthodox Jew who has made it her life’s work explaining to Christian groups the importance of supporting Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the West Bank or the occupied territories).
On Tuesday, July 12, Boras was the guest speaker at an event organized by Winnipeg Friends of Israel, at the home of Yolanda and Bradley Pollock. There were over 30 people in attendance to hear Boras and, as she explained at the outset of her remarks, she usually speaks only to Christian groups, so to be addressing a mixed group of Christians and Jews was something quite unusual for her.
By way of explanation, Boras was in Winnipeg as the guest of Bridges for Peace, a worldwide organization dedicated to forging strong links between Christians and Jews in Israel. She also mentioned that Pastor Rudy Fidel of Winnipeg has been a very strong supporter of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, an organization which she helped to found in 1995 and of which she has been the director ever since.
Born in Cleveland and educated both in the United States and Israel, Boras made aliyah in 1984 with her husband Edward, a computer programmer, and two children. In 1987 the family moved to the community of Karnei Shomron in Samaria, where three more children were born.
During her hour-long talk July 12 Boras touched on many themes, including the historical connection the Jewish people have to Judea and Samaria; the tremendous strides that settlers have made in developing vibrant communities there; the difficulties in co-existing with their Arab neighbours; and the important role that Christians can play in providing support for the settler communities, both monetarily and politically.
(Ed. note: In the past I have been critical of the settler enterprise, but Boras provided a reasonable defence of Jewish settlements, and this article will report as objectively as possible what she said. For my own views about Israeli settlements, however, turn to my editorial column on page 4.)
Boras is not only an articulate defender of Jewish settlements, she is able to come up with some pithy lines that cut to the heart of an issue. For instance, she declared at one point that “the two-state solution is dead”. In the question and answer session that followed her initial remarks, I suggested to her that the corollary to her observation would be that there might be a “one-state solution”.
While she did say that recently an Israeli journalist has put forth an interesting variation on the one-state solution that would allow for some form of Palestinian autonomy within a larger state that would be home to both Israelis and Palestinians, her own opinion on the matter was that “not every problem has a solution”.
At the beginning of her talk Boras gave a chronological history of Israeli settlements, noting that the very first settlement activity actually took place almost immediately following the Six-Day War in 1967. While there were sporadic initiatives involving settlement activity, especially in Hebron and an area known as Gush Etsion, as Boras noted, the then-Labour government of Israel had “already put forward the idea of land for peace”. It wasn’t until after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, however, that Jewish settlement activity burgeoned.
Boras explained that the Yom Kippur War “produced two parallel movements: Peace Now and Gush Emunim”. Peace Now promulgated the idea that there could be “two states for two peoples”, she said, advocating withdrawal from territories captured during the Six-Day War. The problem with Peace Now, Boras later observed, was not in the word “peace”, it was with the word “now”.
Gush Emunin, in contrast, was a movement of religious Jews which held that God promised the entire land of Israel to the Jews and that Jews had a responsibility to create settlements in Judea and Samaria. The predominant area of settlement activity early on occurred in Judea, which is in the southern part of the territory. According to Boras, each time settlers attempted to establish settlements in Samaria, the Israeli government would force them to leave. The first success was in Shechem, she said, followed by 30 families moving into an abandoned army camp in a settlement known as Kadim in December 1975.
In 1975 Boras herself made her first trip to Israel. Venturing into Samaria she came across young Israeli settlers there. “What these people were doing was amazing,” she said. What they were doing “was changing Israel.” She thought to herself, “How can we dare leave this land?”
When she and her husband Edward moved to Israel in 1984, “one of the first things we did was sign a contract to build a house in Samaria” (in the aforementioned community of Karnei Shomron).
Even by that time the settler community had already become so well entrenched, Boras observed, that a “left-leaning columnist for an Israeli newspaper wrote in 1984 that the number of settlers had reached 80,000 and that the settlement movement was now irrevocable.”
In 2005 Israel ordered the evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza. Boras suggested that “withdrawal from territories, rather than bringing an element of peace, brought us instead, terrorism.”
The situation today, according to Boras, is that there are now more than 400,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria (not including border communities of Jerusalem that are also situated beyond the green-line that defined Israel’s pre-1967 border).
As the years have passed, moreover, there has “been a complete change in Israel” regarding the consensus about settlements, Boras claimed. “The majority of Israelis now believe that any more withdrawals would be a complete mistake.”
As far as Palestinian opinion is concerned, Boras suggested that both Jews and Palestinians have come to the conclusion that “like it or not, we are both here”.
Further, as far as forcing Palestinians to leave their land goes, Boras said that “when we came in, we came in with the full intention of not throwing any Arabs off their land…We wanted to live in peace with the Arabs but we were greatly disappointed,” she added.
Still, when violent attacks against Israeli Jews began taking place beginning around September of last year, Boras noted that “most of the terrorist attacks were not in Judea and Samaria – they were in Jerusalem.”
The reason for that, she suggested, is that “the Arab population was asking itself: ‘Who was most harmed by the second intifadeh?” (the violent outburst of attacks by Palestinians on Jews living both in Judea and Samaria and the other side of the green line as well, which occurred between 2000-2005).
“The last few years the Arab economy (within the Palestinian territory) has been soaring,” Boras claimed. “There have been very few roadblocks” impeding motor transport – unlike the situation during and immediately following the second intifadeh. “There have been many new (Arab) homes built, many new businesses,” she added.
As a result, “the average Arab says, ‘I don’t want to go backward,’ “ Boras suggested. Arabs have also come to the realization that “the Jews aren’t going anywhere”.
At the same time, Jews living in Judea and Samaria “look around at the Arabs and wonder, ‘Can we have friendship with the Arabs?’ “, Boras said. In truth, she admitted, for the longest time, “Jews living in Judea and Samaria didn’t notice the Arabs – but that’s changing. Now they say to themselves: ‘They’re not going anywhere, we’re not going anywhere.’ ”
Further, according to Boras, in private conversations with Arabs they will tell you, “We want the Jews to stay. We don’t want to be governed by the present (Palestinian Authority) leadership.”
In addition, by promoting the BDS movement as it has, the Palestinian Authority has hurt its own population more than it has hurt Jews. Jewish businesses can pick up and move elsewhere, if need be (as with the case with Sodastream, which moved from Ma’ale Adumin to an area near Beer Sheba. The real losers in that case were the Arab employees of Sodastream in Ma’ale Adumin, all of whom lost their jobs when the plant moved as a result of Sodastream’s being targeted by the BDS movement.)
During the question and answer session, Boras was asked whether it was true that the settlers are “all Ashkenazie Jews”?
Boras said that it’s a commonly held – and quite mistaken stereotype, that the majority of settlers “come from Brooklyn”, as she put it – and which is how media typically depict the situation. “Middle Eastern Jews are rooted in the settlement enterprise,” she insisted.
The reason that media generalize about settlers, Boras explained, is that when reporters go looking for settlers to interview, they naturally seek out English-speaking settlers because the “journalists don’t speak Hebrew”.
Further, “not all the settlers are religious,” Boras noted. “At least half the settlers are not religious.”
Asked what would lead someone who isn’t religious to want to live in Judea and Samaria, Boras explained that part of the problem in explaining the settler enterprise is the mindset promulgated by “the state of Tel Aviv” – a very liberal mindset typified by Haaretz newspaper, but which is not at all typical of the mindset held by most Israelis. As proof, Boras pointed to predictions prior to the last Israeli election that Netanayhau would go down to defeat at the hands of Labour. Further, Boras claimed, “most Israelis believe in God” – contrary to the kind of leftish attitude popular in Tel Aviv – and Tel Aviv alone.
Boras went on to say that “we’ve built a wonderful place to live” (in Judea and Samaria), yet another reason Israelis want to move there. “We have community life, you know your neighbours, there’s a sense of community.”
Pointing to the mass upheavals that have enveloped most of the Arab world since the Arab Spring, Boras suggested that many Arabs themselves are less concerned with Jewish settlements than they are the threat of the chaos that would ensue should Israelis withdraw from those settlements. “Israel is an island of stability within the Arab world,” she said.
“Any territory we withdraw from will revert to Hamas first, then to ISIS,” Boras warned. The truth is that the “Palestinian Authority is dying for Israel not to withdraw” from Judea and Samaria.
Turning to the Christians who were in attendance, Boras said “what I’d like to see is the international community coming to Israel and saying, ‘What can we do to strengthen you?’ ”
Finally, Boras was asked how she would compare Arab-Jewish relations in Judea and Samaria with Arab-Jewish relations in Israel?
Her answer was: “Very different – Arabs in Judea and Samaria are under the civilian authority of the Palestinian Authority. It’s a crime for an Arab to sell land to a Jew. There are still good relations between Arabs and Jews when they meet in the workplace, but it is illegal for a Jew to into an Arab community.”
Israel
It’s Not Over Until It’s Over
By ORLY DREMAN (Jerusalem, Nov. 16, 2025) When the live hostages were returned a stone was lifted from our hearts. It was like going from Memorial Day to Independence Day. It is a relief after two years of sadness and worry about the hostages being tortured. With the ceasefire it feels good not to think every ambulance alarm is a siren and that we must run to the shelter. I would like to take things out of the shelter- like mattresses, chairs, water, first aid kit, a generator, flash light, batteries, games and canned food and put back the stuff that was there before when it was just a storage room, but it is not over. I do not see tranquility in the horizon. The children used to ask the grownups to take money to the shelter in case the house is destroyed and they will have nothing left. They also ask if they will have to be soldiers when they grow up and if they might die. We want a better future for our children. My two nieces, one from Tel Aviv and one from the center, plus several good friends whose houses were hit, can now return home.
In days of turmoil it is important to build hope and strength. The whole country was one big family due to our Jewishness, comradeship, the connection of each one of us to each family in Israel. We missed the days of quiet and freedom. Now you see more people shopping at the malls and going out to restaurants without feeling guilty; we would like to be bored.
We are living with uncertainty. It is not a question if Iran attacks, but when. Our people have gone through so much and lost so much. Living in existential stress, we are now going back to routine tension; however, now we already have chronic sleep disturbances. The reservists got out of the war, but the war will never leave them – what they saw and experienced – the trauma and the thoughts that never leave. Therefore, many soldiers, as well as survivors of Oct 7th, have committed suicide. The reservists are also those who paid the highest prices, not just on the battle fields, but also when they returned to civilian life. Because they served in the army during such a long war, they were fired from their jobs or lost their businesses and they are in debt.
Early in the morning we wake up to hear the news. There is no good news – only the names of those who were killed (even during the cease fire). We check if any dead hostages were returned. These are the values we were raised on; we do not leave anyone behind. Hamas is returning them slowly, one every few days. The relatives of the fallen who are still in Gaza are going through a storm of emotions. We cannot heal until everybody is back home. Then come the funerals – which are heart breaking, but it is a closure for those bereaved families. Hearing about Jews being attacked somewhere in the world is already considered normal. I recommend reading a book by Eli Sharabi called “Hostage.” After being tortured in captivity he returned to find out that his wife, his two daughters, and his brother were murdered. He tells about the starvation, the darkness, the loneliness, the physical and mental pain. He is a very brave, strong, optimistic man who chose life.
In the last few weeks there have been many reports about Iran, which is rushing to develop missiles for which they are getting the components from China and North Korea. Hamas and Hezbollah we cannot believe; they are already rearming. For every terrorist that is killed hundreds of new ones arise. We believed them in the past and then came Oct. 7th.
The ceasefire is not significant to Hamas. Only this week they returned an Israeli hostage who was taken into captivity eleven years ago during a ceasefire. If they do not return all the bodies then we feel in our hearts that it is not over. They suck hatred from birth. They are incited at the mosques and at school. Killing Jews is the most grand thing for them. They say out loud that there will never be reconciliation. Peace talk for them is a weakness because if you have talk then you cannot attack and they want to attack. Whatever we offer them – they want more and more. They know how important the holiness of life is to us, so they use it to demand more all the time. Maybe Hamas did not defeat us militarily, but they did beat us politically. The situation of Israel in the world is the worst it has ever been. We are isolated economically and socially. We feel like a child who is excommunicated by bullies.
Once again we still have hope that the words of the prophet Isaiah will happen: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”.
Israel
Israeli Parliament Advances Death Penalty Bill for Convicted Terrorists
The Israeli parliament has advanced a bill that would mandate the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists convicted of killing Israeli citizens, with some lawmakers believing it would prevent future prisoner-release deals.
In a vote held late on Monday – the first of four needed for the measure to become law – the bill passed with 39 in favor and 16 against, out of 120 lawmakers.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben–Gvir had called on all political factions to back the bill, which he has said was aimed at creating deterrence against “Arab terrorism.”
“This is how we fight terror; this is how we create deterrence,” he said in a statement after the initial vote. “Once the law is finally passed — terrorists will be released only to hell.”
SOME PARTIES BOYCOTTED MONDAY’S VOTE
The bill will now move to a parliamentary committee for further debate before a second and third vote. It is not guaranteed that it will become law, with several key political parties having boycotted Monday’s initial vote.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid was quoted by Israeli media as saying that he would not vote in favor of the bill.
The PLO, the Palestinian national umbrella political group, condemned the vote, with Palestinian National Council Speaker Rawhi Fattouh calling the draft law “a political, legal, and humanitarian crime”. The vote was also criticized by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Israel abolished the death penalty for murder in 1954, and the only person ever executed in Israel after a civilian trial was Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi Holocaust, in 1962.
Ben–Gvir has argued that imposing the death penalty would deter anyone considering an attack similar to the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and resulted in 251 hostages being taken to Gaza.
Israel stopped its ensuing military campaign against Hamas last month, when a tenuous ceasefire was agreed that included the release of 20 remaining living hostages held in Gaza, plus the remains of deceased ones in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
PRISONER RELEASE DEALS
Israel has released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees since October 2023 in exchange for the release of the hostages that were being held by Palestinian terrorists.
Most of the hostages have been released except for the remains of three deceased Israelis and one foreigner.
Tzvika Foghel, a member of Ben–Gvir‘s Jewish Power party and chair of the parliamentary national security committee, where the bill will now be debated, said imposing the death penalty would mean no more prisoner deals.
Palestinians who have been released have included many convicted of serious crimes, including murder.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the October 2023 attack on Israel, was released in 2011 as part of an exchange of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli soldier held in Gaza. Some Israeli politicians such as Ben–Gvir have, during the war in Gaza, opposed the release of Palestinians who were involved in the killings of Israelis.
Ben–Gvir handed out sweets to fellow lawmakers after the initial vote passed. Critics noted that, in Gaza, some Palestinian militants had handed out sweets to the public after the October 2023 attack.
Israel
Israel report by former Winnipegger Bruce Brown
10 minutes
(Posted Dec. 24, 2024)
02:11 AM: Sound asleep.
2.11.01 AM: Wide awake. Awoken by a blaring missile alarm. Incoming. Took me no time to react. Ivan Pavlov would be proud. I quickly scooped up my dog. Grabbed my glasses. An inhaler. My phone and power cord. And sprinted to the safe room. Right across the hall. My wife overseas on vacation. So did this one alone. Er with my dog. We have 90 seconds to reach safety so no real panic, relatively speaking.
2.11.09 AM: In my safe room. Slid shut the heavy steel slabs across the window. You can hear this happening throughout the building. Kinda like a horror movie. Screech. Slam. Screech. Slam. Screech. Slam. Then mine. Screech. Slam. Next I jumped across the room and slammed shut the heavy, reinforced, steel door. It also makes a slamming sound, a really loud one. Then slumped down on the couch with my dog. With some level of relief. Where is this missile coming from. Can’t be from Gaza, they don’t have the capability anymore…I hope. Nor Lebanon, living too far south…I hope. Yemen? Possible. Those dang Houthis?
2. 14 AM: Oh oh. Need to pee. Like really bad. Once in the safe room, you should stay there for ten minutes. Unless there is another siren. Each siren requires a ten minute respite. Respite? Odd choice of words as you are not really resting. Way too tense. Especially as you can occasionally hear the booms of intercepted missiles up above. Kind of unnerving. Back to my need to pee. Its quite dangerous leaving the room during this period. Should your place be hit by the missile or falling debris from the sky. You don’t want to be caught with your pants down, literally, hovering over your toilet. And condos have been hit in Rehovot with some death and much destruction. Hmmm. To pee or not to pee. That is the question. Whether tis better to suffer the pangs of having to pee or the missiles of outrageous fortune. You get the point.
2.14.10 AM: Peeing in the bathroom.
2.14.40 AM: Back in the safe room. With my dog. Sitting on the couch. Fiddling with the remote control. I work in hi tech. The semiconductor world which can be pretty complex. But I simply have not mastered the remote. Really want to see what’s going on. Where is the missile from. Are there more attacks elsewhere in the country. Pushing this button and that button But the TV still off. Okay. Will check my cell. Although the connection sometimes comes and goes when shuttered in the heavily reinforced concrete and steel safe room. Works! Ya! Showing three bars. Sometimes four. Checking my feeds. But no news yet.
2.17 AM: Seriously. I need to pee again. Like really bad. Dang prostate! To pee or not to pee. That is the question…. You get the point. I chose to pee. This time I don’t actually slam shut the heavy, reinforced, steel door. And my dog follows me out. This could get complicated. But first things first.
2.17.10 AM: Peeing in the bathroom.
2.17.40 AM: Chasing after my dog around the condo. Poncho!!! There he is. In the living room. Like master. Like pet. He too is relieving himself. Probably the tension. Dogs can sense these things. “Faster Poncho!. Faster!” I encourage him.
2,18.02 AM: We’re back in the safe room. The heavy, reinforced, steel door slammed shut. And then I start worrying. What if I have to pee again. Its really dangerous out there. Idea! I’ll bring a cleaning pail in here. And if worse comes to worse. Well, I am alone. Sans my dog.
2.18.22 AM: I dart for the cleaning cabinet in the bathroom to grab the pail. Making sure the heavy, reinforced, steel door is shut less my dog run out again. Wait! As it dawns on me at 02.18.22 AM. This is not the smartest thing to do. At least I could have combined grabbing the pail with actually having to pee again. Like maybe I could hold out for the next three minutes or so in the safe room. No urgent need for the pail. But I am already there….
2.18.25 AM: Grab the red cleaning pail
2.18.28 AM: Back in the safe room. The heavy, reinforced, steel door slammed shut again. Siting on the couch with my dog again. Red pail glaring at me from the side of the room…daring me. But my bladder is relaxed. I try the remote again. I feel like my 85 year old mother who often complains about getting her remote to work. I console myself thinking that it must be the batteries. Hmmm. Maybe a mad rush for the utility room to get some new batteries. But that would be mad. I’ll take care of it in the morning. Only a few more minutes and I can safely leave the safe room and go back to bed.
2.19.45 AM: I pour myself a glass of mineral water. This I store in the safe room per Homefront commands. Fresh batteries not, hrmph. As I down the water I realize this is probably not the best idea. Less it creates the urge to pee…. Alas no. Start surfing my feed again. The intercontinental missile was fired by those crazy, dang Houthis from Yemen. All of central Israel sent to their safe rooms. Dang Houthis! The next couple minutes go by pretty smoothly. Although seems like an eternity.
2.21 AM: Back in bed. Albeit sleep comes slowly as my adrenaline starts to reside.
As it were. Israel bombed the dang Houthis that night. For the third time since the outbreak of the war. In retaliation for them firing over 200 ballistic missiles and 170 drones at Israel, which fortunately had not resulted in much damage. We struck them with over 60 bombs in two air raid sorties. Destroying mainly military targets as well as ports and energy infrastructure. Maybe that will teach them for waking me -and a million other Israelis- in the middle of the night.
As it were. Falling debris from the dang Houthi attack landed on a school in central Israel, forcing its collapse. Fortunately and thank G-d it was the middle of the night. Sometime between 2:11 AM and 2.21 AM. So no casualties. Can’t even imagine the tragedy had this strike occurred mid-day.
As it were. I changed the batteries in the remote. It works just fine now. And I left the red cleaning pail in the safe room….just in case. But I hope the dang Houthis finally learned their lesson. Although probably not.
As it were. Two nights later. Another 2:00AM missile from the dang Houthis. . They just wont let me sleep….
As it is. Please continue donating to the Israeli war and revival efforts. You may have given earlier. But give again. The financial costs to Israel are and will be billions. Billions! Sderot and Metulla and Tel Avi and Haifa are Israel’s front lines. Israel is the diaspora’s front line.
Bruce Brown. A Canadian. And an Israeli. Bruce made Aliyah…a long time ago. He works in Israel’s hi-tech sector by day and, in spurts, is a somewhat inspired writer by night. Bruce is the winner of the 2019 American Jewish Press Association Simon Rockower Award for excellence in writing. And wrote the 1998 satire, An Israeli is…. Bruce’s reflects on life in Israel – political, social, economic and personal. With lots of biting, contrarian, sardonic and irreverent insight