Video Summary - Yair Pinto's My State for August 31, 2024

Hezbollah TARGETS Golan Heights; Israelis EVACUATED Along Northern Border

At the beginning of the video, Tomer picks up Yair to go on a road trip to northern Israel and as they are getting into the car the word comes that the Israeli Air Force launched a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah rocket launchers in Lebanon.

Hezbollah managed to fire about 320 rockets into Israel and Iranian-backed terror groups in Iraq also fired some long-range drones. Most of the incoming ordnance was intercepted but some of it got through and caused some damage. There was also an Israeli Navy sailor who was killed by shrapnel from a UAV which was intercepted above his patrol boat.

It was only the latest attack by Hezbollah into Israel, and specifically the Golan Heights area which is home to 40,000 civilians. Hezbollah has heavily targetted this region, causing 17 deaths of soldiers and civilians, with many more wounded. It has also caused a great deal of property damage and burned over 21,000 acres of forest and agricultural land.

Addionally, tens of thousands of Israeli civilians have been forced to evacuate the region. But not all the residents have evacuated, and that includes the residents of Katzrin, the largest city on the Golan Heights, where Yair is visiting.

He shows us the burnt out ruins of a house that was hit by a Hezbollah rocket, he also mentions the fatalities that have come from other Hezbollah rocket attacks on the Golan Heights. This includes a direct hit on a car carrying two passengers who were both killed and a Iranian-built Flak rocket that his a soccer field in the Druze village of Majdal Shams, killing 12 young people and children, and wounding over 50 other people.

Yair then gives a little bit of the history of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War. The Druze who call the Golan home have become more integrated into Israel recently, and the region encompasses approximately 500 square miles and have borders with Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

The region is disputed territory, but Israel has annexed it and says control over it is essential for defending the country against Iranian-backed terrorist groups in Lebanon and Syria. The US recognizes Israeli sovereignty over this territory.

However, that's all in the modern world. The Golan was referred to as the "Land of Bashan" in the Biblical record. It is also mentioned in the New Testament, as Jesus and His apostles visited the area and it is here, at the site of the modern-day Banias Springs, that they first confessed Him as the Messiah. At the time, there was a temple there to the pagan god "Pan" and today it is a national park.

Archeologists have also found about 25 synagogues that were used by the Jewish community in the region from the 1st Century until the Moslem conquest in the 7th century. It was settled by Druze tribes in the 15th and 16th centuries and then the Ottomon Turks established control over the Levant in subsequent decades.

It was still under Ottoman control in the late 19th century when Jewish philanthropist Edmund de Rothschild bought large tracts of land in the Golan for the purpose of Jewish settlement. But in 1941, the area was ceded to the newborn state of Syria and this is how things stayed until the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel took it back from the Syrians.

The scene in the video then shifts as Yair pays a visit to Yaakov Selavan, deputy mayor of the Golan regional council area.

Yair asks him to describe life in the Golan before the war and he describes a paradise on earth. Since the war started, that's changed, and there were two major points of deterioration in the situation. The first was on April 14th, when Iran launched a large barrage of cruise and ballistic missiles at Israel. Many of them were intercepted above the Golan, and the falling fragments caused some damage.

But in recent days, Hezbollah in Lebanon has escalated the number of weapons it fires at the Golan Heights, especially the city of Katrin. Dozens of homes, schools, businesses and other buildings have been destroyed or heavily damaged, and normal life has become impossible.

Selavan then shows Yair pieces of shrapnel from Katyusha rockets that have fallen on the town, but he says he has another piece of metal that he thinks is more powerful than any rocket. It's a replica of a coin that was minted by the Jewish community in the Golan Heights in the year 67 AD, and it is inscribed with the words "for the redemption of Jerusalem the Holy."

Selavan says that this is a testament to the fact that the Jewish People 1,900 years ago, just like today, knew they were serving a higher purpose and that living in the Golan Heights is part of that purpose, because just like 1,900 years ago, this area is the front line in the defense of Jerusalem.

It is for this reason, he says, that the Golan Heights leadership decided they are not going to evacuate, despite the danger and hardships.

Yair concludes by saying that the Golan Heights is destined to continue to be strategically important for the foreseeable future. With this in mind, he asks his viewers to pray for the residents, the soldiers defending them, the innocent civilians on both sides and for the leaders of Israel and Western nations to have wisdom to know what to do.