Our first child was born in early September 1972, just a few days after the Munich Olympic Village massacre of eleven Israeli athletes and coaches. The excitement and joy of our son’s birth was, to a degree, subdued knowing that once again Jews were victims, and more blood was spilled on German soil.

The grainy image of the masked PLO terrorist leaning out over the balcony of Building 31 stung us then and has remained etched in memories. Stephen Spielberg’s film Munich revealed how Israel’s Mossad hunted down the Munich killers. Despite the “even handedness” of the movie, the violent demise of the murderers by the methodical Israelis felt very right.

In retrospect, the flow of Israel’s history feels compressed. Only ten years before Munich, Israel had found, captured and disposed of Nazi henchman Adolph Eichmann. And only twelve years before that the nascent State of Israel fought for independence against seven Arab nations.

Several years ago, we had lunch in Jerusalem with good friend David Raab. In 1970, he was a seventeen-year-old boy on hijacked TWA Flight 741. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine took him and his mother to Amman, Jordan. David shared details how they, as Jews, were separated from the rest of the passengers. It felt like we were there too.

Just recently we were blessed to have a new grandchild. Her baby naming ceremony will occur at a time when Israel, in alliance with America, is conducting an air war over Tehran. We hope that the destruction of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regime will end the forty-seven years of terror that began in 1979. It spawned terror proxies encircling Israel threatening family and friends, and it pursued nuclear weapons and ICBMs that would bring “death to America, death to Israel.”

We pray our grandchild will live in a safe world.

Across the intervening five- and one-half decades – between child and granddaughter – Israel has endured much: the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the rise of the UN’s systemic hatred including labeling Zionism as racism, Black September with Entebbe’s hijacking, Intifada terrorism, absorbing Scud missiles during America’s Iraqi War, Gaza disengagement and subsequent violence, and the October 7th Palestinian horror. In all cases, Israel fought back winning wars, rescuing hostages, destroying Iraqi’s Osirak and Syria’s Arak reactors, and building safety buffers.

In the early 1970s, Israel was applauded for her plucky fight in the Six Day War. On our first trip to Israel in 1971, walking to the Old City’s Jaffa Gate, we climbed over the rubble of Jordan’s “no man land” that divided Jerusalem. On the road to Masada, we took photos standing on top of a burned-out tank.

We all watched President Obama foolishly reward Iran with $150 billion in cash and signing the JCPOA that guaranteed a sunset pathway to nuclear bombs. After October 7th, we witnessed President Biden handcuff Israel with conditional military and diplomatic support as they battled a multi-front war.

Many presidents, until President Trump stood firm with Israel, had kicked the “nuclear blackmail can” down the road. Trump tore up the JCPOA, instituted impactful sanctions, was resolute on both the post-October 7th Gaza War and the 2025 and 2026 destruction of Iranian military assets. The return of all hostages and bodies would not have happened without President Trump’s actions. Ultimately, the resurgence of American strategic presence in the Middle East will blunt what is a dangerous China-Russia-Iran axis.

In December 2023, we traveled to Kibbutz Nir Oz and with the sounds of machine gunfire and artillery in the background, we bore personal witness to the bloody invasion. Last year, on our twenty-fifth trip to Israel, posters showing the faces of hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas greeted us at Ben-Gurion Airport, and four times with sirens wailing we ran for a bomb shelter to avoid rocket sent by Tehran.

Now, Israel is on the offensive flying lethal F-35s along with Americans to defeat a true existential threat. We see the Stars and Stripes wing to wing with Star of David fighting on behalf of the Western civilization. Just maybe the outcome will remove the IRGC, the nuclear and rocket threat, and return the Iranian people to run their country.

It seems that Israel has always been fighting an endless war against an amalgam of Islamic nations and their helpful fools. Looking back, we have watched, from the safety of our American home, how the Munich massacre was a bridge between the Nazi-era past and the ongoing Arab world’s threat to the modern state of Israel.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)