Moses Ezekiel was born into the Bene Israel Jewish community of India’s central-western coast, and eventually became the principal of a college in the Gujarat province. His granddaughter describes her discovery of a book he wrote about his coreligionists, titled History and Culture of the Bene-Israel in India.

The slim book was published on October 4th, 1948, on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, 5709. He mentions, and I quote his words: “I had visited many remote villages in the Kulaba district, for the sole purpose of collecting detailed information about this little community to which I happen to belong.” My copy of the book is very old, and the first page is torn. I think the back page, or pages, are also missing. I have now covered the book with a thick white cover to preserve it for my children and grandchildren.

At the end of the book, . . . he adds a list of education institutions run by the Bene Israel community. Among those is the school for underprivileged children, founded and run by my paternal grandmother, Diana M. Ezekiel. The school was called Vijay Vidyalaya. Loosely translated, it means “home of the victory of knowledge.” . . . I had accompanied my grandmother when she started the school with three students, renting space in a Hindu temple when it was available.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.