By Jonathan Becker
Psalms 104:21 – The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.
The son of an old and dear friend of mine is also an old and dear friend of mine. I’ve known him since he was around 9 years old. He’s in one of those super-duper special forces units of the IDF now. I watched him grow from a mildly goofy, very likable little kid, into a teenager who loved blues and rock and girls and parkour and juggling and capoeira and partying and testing himself physically the way teenagers will, into a soldier in (ahem) the best armed forces in the world, and furthermore in a unit that represents the best of the best.
He is a serious young man now, and i rarely get to see him. Here’s something I think few know about him: he has a philosophical bent. A quality which i humbly submit that i had something to do with the nurturing of.
Anyway…if you look at a map of the Gaza strip, you will see at the southern point the juncture of Israel, Gaza and Egypt. there is a dirt road there that no one but military personnel ever sees. We had to pass through 2 checkpoints just to get there. Not your regular checkpoints, either, which I am of course plenty familiar with.
At the first one, a couple of cute, smiling girls from a Bedouin unit took our names and i.d.’s, so that if we were kidnapped or killed they would know who we were. Then we got a tour of the kibbutz and some of the recent rocket damage it has suffered, handed out the gear we were handing out, and headed for the 3-way border (basically just so I could see it- thanks, Marc!).
The checkpoint here was different than any I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. No roadblock, no amenities for the guards. a small shack, and in front of it 4 of the most impressive human beings I’ve ever seen in my life, all kitted out identically with the latest gear, a little scuffed up. Four young men, all of about the same age, height and build, the same confident manner. They seemed to be standing on the balls of their feet. They were built like young cheetahs. Like lightning poured into human form. Not intimidatingly large, like so many American special forces guys seem to be, but rather, compact. fast. They obviously were a team, not a random collection of soldiers. Very catlike- I mean the big cats who hunt in packs, not house cats. They were practically purring.
They were like aliens. and yet, the first thing that struck me about them was that they were EXACTLY like my young friend who I described above. In another 6 months, he will fit in perfectly among them.
They didn’t have the hollow eyes of those who have seen too much, or the blazing eyes of the cruel and fearful, or the distracted eyes of the bored, or the dead eyes of slaves, or the spooky, disturbing eyes of the brainwashed, or the impatient eyes of the overworked, or the darting eyes of those who have more important things to do. They were calm. They were like race cars, idling. Ready for anything. Respectful, but giving no ground.
One of them approached our jeep, casual, in no hurry. not wary. Alert. His buddies licked their fur and checked their claws non-nonchalantly and regarded us coolly from the side. I felt like we were being sniffed by a lion on a safari.
“Good day to you” (yom tov l’chem) he said, and I replied the same. and thought of my friend, the philosophically-inclined soldier, and how this young jungle cat, too, was, not long ago, a high school student with many interests beyond the most immediate here-and-now. and it was not a bad thing. It was an awesome thing. And i thought “How great are your people, o Israel”.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. There, I said it.
Jeremiah 5:6 Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, [and] a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities:
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