A group of volunteers from Israel has been helping Ukrainian Jews as they make their way to the Holy Land. Cole Aronson writes about his Shabbat with refugees in the Moldovan capital of Chișinău (formerly Kishinev):

Tonight is different from all other nights. “Stand and leave the tumult; too long have you lived in the valley of tears” reads the third verse of L’kha Dodi, the central hymn of Friday night’s liturgy. Tonight, God has brought these people to a safe waystation between war in Ukraine and a Jewish nation free in its land.

A man in his early thirties standing next to me knows the first few lines of the sh’ma, the central Jewish prayer recited twice each day, which he says, eyes shut, while holding an infant son. After he finishes his own recitation, he gestures at me to say the rest of my own prayer louder, so he and his child can hear what our ancestors have said for thousands of years. After the sh’ma, we continue: “He is the Lord our God, there is none besides Him, and we are Israel His people. The One who saves us from the grasp of kings—our King, who redeems us from the hands of tyrants . . . ”

In Kishinev, these lines aren’t a memory but a description. My sh’ma companion, his son, and the others are traveling to new lives under the guard of a Jewish army, itself much of the answer to two millennia of dispersal and powerlessness.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.