In the early morning on my bike ride delivering coffee to Israeli soldiers, I ran into Daniel Shkolnik. He’ll be 80 in a few months. My husband and I met him in the early 2000s when he worked at Café Carter in the nearby town of Nahariya. He used to grind our coffee.

In August, 2006, Hezbollah—Iran’s proxy terror army—fired Katyusha rockets into Nahariya. The rockets hit the store, with Danny inside. He lost almost all his hearing. He suffered burns on his left hand. He lost his left leg.

He is one of the most cheeful people I’ve ever met. Almost every morning, he walks to the Nahariya Sports Center and works out in the gym. When I saw him two weeks ago, I was pouring coffee for some young soldiers who were on guard duty. (There is a possibility that Hezbollah terrorists might attack from the sea.) The soldiers heard Danny’s story. They looked at him in wonder that he was still out and about. Still smiling. Then Danny joked, “Well, lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice so here I am.”

After he walked away, one of the soldiers said, “Oh, I wanted a photo of him.”

They were up all night guarding and they thought he was brave. He is. He has not stopped living.

This morning, when I saw him, Danny said, “Hezbollah rockets is waiting for us.”

We both looked over our shoulders at Lebanon, about six miles away. Just over the crest of the hill, on the other side of the border, are 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed in our direction.

“My father was born in Israel,” Danny said. “My grandfather was born in Israel. My grandfather’s grandfather was born in Israel. We go back to the 1800s. And we’ve known nothing but war.”

So here we are, unsure when Hezbollah will strike. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has called Israel a microbe that must be destroyed.

And it is the mission of its benefactor, Iran, to erase Israel off the map.

People have threatened to destroy the Jews throughout history. The Egyptians enslaved us. The Italians put us in ghettos. The Crusaders killed us. During the Shoah, they wiped out most of the Jews in Europe. Nazi Germany murdered 80-percent of the Jewish population in Greece alone. On October 7, 2023, Hamas murdered 1,400 men, women and children, wounded thousands, and kidnapped 240 people still being held captive.

But we’re still here. There’s a reason. And our history is proof that we will survive Islamic threats. And Hamas and Hezbollah will be just one more in a long line of barbarians who sought to destroy the Jews. But the barbarians will be relegated to the dark rubble of history while we, the Jews, no matter how much we’re hated, we will continue to be a light unto the nations.

If you want to learn more about what life is like now in northern Israel, you can listen to the Life’s Accessories podcast, where I talk about the situation. Tune in here.

And some of you have asked what you can do to help. Here are a few things:

1. Put up posters of the KIDNAPPED men, women, children and babies being held captive by Hamas in Gaza. They range in age from 10 months to 85. You can download the photos and put them up on billboards, poles or public stations. Act quickly and don’t provoke officials or anyone else. This is the site that you can get more information here.
2. Write to your representatives! Tell them you support Israel’s military campaign to dismantle Hamas, a terror organization that aims to “eliminate, annihilate and murder” Israelis.
3. When people call for a “ceasefire,” you can agree. A ceasefire ONLY after Hamas frees ALL the hostages.
4. Remember that America, Britain, France and their allies went to war to stop Hitler and Nazi Germany. Israel has every right, and a duty, to defend her citizens.
5. Find out where organizations that you support (in the arts, in the LBGTQ+ community) stand on the issue of Israel vs. Hamas.
6. If you graduated from a university or college, you have a voice as part of the alumni. Find out if the university provides a safe space for Jews on campus.
7. Write to newspapers, magazines or TV stations if you see that they are presenting anti-Israel news.
8. Remember that the United Nations is controlled by Russia, China, Iran, Arab countries and other states that are antisemites and anti-Zionists. Since 1948, the UN has never insisted that Arab countries absorb the Palestinian refugees, not even Jordan, which is 75% Palestinian. Do not give any money to UNICEF. Do not believe any “facts” coming from any UN agencies, including the World Health Organization, because they are controlled by Hamas.