I think we did at least.
It depends on which channel you turn on here in Israel. On one, it said "Nasrallah chu-sal."
Ma ze chu-sal? (What is chu-sal?)
Google says: Eliminated.
That sounds dead, doesn't it?
Other channels are awaiting confirmation, but the friend who told me is celebrating for the past two hours in a bar in Tel Aviv, and that seems to be the reaction, and why wouldn't it be? This is akin to taking out Osama Bin Laden.
There are many who say that the actual attack plan (as opposed to October 7th) was for a longer-term October 7th multi-front slaughter of all of Israel by 2040, that it would have come from all sides simultaneously, with all terror groups infiltrating at once - but that Hamas jumped the gun and did October 7th, after learning about the Nova party.
If this is true, then it was Nasrallah's plan to wait for 2040 and surround Israel, and this would explain Hezbollah's reluctance to join in with Hamas in the days after October 7th, when Hamas wanted their help.
In other words, they were feuding, these enemies of ours. As a friend said at the time, "The only reason we have survived this long, is that even our enemies can't get along."
As I write this from Kibbutz Hazerim, ten minutes from Be'ersheva, right next to an air force base, they are meeting in Iran - and many here think they will attack us in Israel tonight.
Prior to this news breaking here a couple of hours ago, I went to my first Shabbat dinner at this Kibbutz, having arrived back in Israel a week ago to continue my project writing about the hostages which led me to meeting the survivors from Kibbutz Be'eri.
Staying in Tom Hand's house, whose daughter Emily was taken hostage for 50 days by Hamas at the age of eight, her grandmother last night to stay with me, after her home was nearly hit by a rocket from Hezbollah in Haifa earlier in the week.
In the dining hall this evening, we ate with a lovely couple from Hazerim, Tamara and Clive, who are the family that "adopted" Tom and Emily (welcomed them with a basket of fresh food, including scones and jam so that Irish Tom would feel at home).
I am only starting to learn about all of the work and preparation that went into this incredible process of the community here in Kibbutz Hazerim welcoming the October 7th survivors from Kibbutz Be'eri, to live alongside them after close to a year residing in hotel rooms after their community was massacred, as they wait five years for Be'eri to be completely rebuilt.
After dinner, as we drank a coffee and continued our chatting in Hebrew and English and learned about Emily's grandmother coming to Israel from Romania in her 20s, I saw a man I recognized come into the coffee shop. He was all smiles, and this warmed my heart as I was just at the second funeral for his wife and teenage son at Kibbutz Be'eri the other day.
It was Avida Bachar, and I introduced myself as I know his story well; how he and his family of four battled Hamas in his safe room relentlessly, as two of his family members were murdered before his eyes, his son asking to be buried with his surfboard.
I will not attempt to write his story until I hear it first-hand, which I will do in the coming weeks on Kibbutz Be'eri, but what these residents of the south have endured at the hands of barbaric Hamas, and what the residents of the north have endured at the hands of Hezbollah for the entire year as well, with ballistic missiles from Yemen and Iraq flying at us as well, and Iran meeting now to plot our destruction...Israel's taking out our enemies is nothing but a necessity in this ongoing existential threat from every direction.
Updates tomorrow - and prayers I don't need to change my title.
Shabbat Shalom, from the land that will prevail.
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