Category: Featured Articles
B R U C E B R I L L | I ended the previous installment by raising some burning questions that still need to be answered. All of these questions came to a head as I approached the end of my tour of duty as a Middle East intelligence analyst for NSA, the U.S. National Security Agency. I was still at my permanent assignment at Fort Meade, Maryland, when I, finally, received my honorable discharge.
B I N J A M I N ( B E N ) C A S E Y | Recently, Your Jerusalem’s Binjamin Casey visited the devastated communities of the Gaza Envelope to see the destruction — as well as the hope and rebirth — for himself. In part 2 of this two-part series, Ben tells of his trip to Kibbutz Alumim, to the site of the Supernova festival and to the car graveyard near Netivot, and of the lasting impact that it had on him.
B R U C E B R I L L | In my role at the NSA as a linguist and military analyst in the early 1970s, I was given information, two days before it happened, that — for a certainty – Syria and Egypt were going to invade Israel on October 6, 1973 – Yom Kippur. Therefore, I was astonished to learn that, when the Yom Kippur War broke out, the Israelis were caught with their pants completely down. The critical intelligence I had been informed about should have been passed on to our ally, Israel; but it was not.
B I N J A M I N ( B E N ) C A S E Y | Recently, Your Jerusalem’s Binjamin Casey visited the devastated communities of the Gaza Envelope to see the destruction – as well as the hope and rebirth – for himself. In part 1 of this two-part series, Ben tells of his trip to the Erez Crossing and Sderot, and of the lasting impact that it had on him.
B R U C E B R I L L | The interrogator said, “You’re having a problem with that one.” I was. I don’t know what exactly the needles on the lie detector told the interrogator, but the machine had clearly caught me in a lie. I was an American soldier working as a Middle East intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland, and I was being interrogated by an NSA security officer.
S. F R A N K L I N S P I R A | On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched terror attacks in Israel resembling historic pogroms, coinciding with the Sabbath and Simchat Torah. These events evoke painful memories of the systematic persecution culminating in Kristallnacht, which spurred the author’s family’s emigration from Austria to America. In this article, S. Franklin Spira recounts those harrowing days and the details of his family’s escape from Austria.
D A N I E L P I N N E R | Since Israeli independence just over 75 years ago, the Gaza region has been a consistent source of conflict. Why has Gaza remained disputed? Why has it never become part of Israel? The answer goes back to a massive strategic blunder committed by Israel 75 years ago, towards the end of the War of Independence.
This article is reprinted from the April, 1998 edition of Your Jerusalem. “With the sound of this coin dropping, the exile officially ends,” declares Reuven Prager dramatically, as he holds one of the newly...
THROUGHOUT THE LAND — BIBLICAL TRUMPETS AND SHOFAR There are numerous references to both a shofar and a trumpet being sounded in heaven above as a reflection for sounding the shofar or the...
(MENN – Sderot, Israel) On Tuesday morning, as I was getting ready to leave my home, a woman’s voice said “Tzeva Adom! Tzeva Adom! Tzeva Adom!” over Sderot’s public speaker system. I had already...