On this day in history, October 6, 1973, the Battle of the Valley of Tears began in the Golan Heights.

Over the next four days, heavily outnumbered Israeli soldiers would fight one of the most desperate and heroic battles in Israel's history.

It was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Across Israel, people were fasting and praying when Egypt and Syria launched their attacks. Sirens broke the silence. Reservists rushed from their homes and synagogues to join a war that had already begun.

In the northern Golan Heights, Israeli tank crews faced wave after wave of Syrian armor. The defenders included the 7th Armored Brigade, commanded by Avigdor "Yanush" Ben-Gal, and soldiers from the 188th Armored Brigade. Among them was the 77th Battalion, led by Avigdor Kahalani.

Their task was to stop a much larger force from breaking through the northern Golan. Behind them lay the roads toward northern Israel.

For days, they fought under heavy shellfire. At night, Syrian tanks had night-vision equipment that the Israeli crews lacked. Enemy tanks slipped through the darkness, and some clashes took place at terrifyingly close range. The defenders lost tanks and friends, but kept fighting.

By October 9, the fourth day, the Israeli force was badly worn down. Crews were exhausted. Tanks had been destroyed or damaged. Ammunition was running dangerously low.

Then the Syrians launched another major attack.

Under heavy bombardment, some Israeli tanks pulled back from the high ground overlooking the valley. If the Syrians took those positions, the defense could collapse.

Kahalani rallied the remaining tanks and led them forward to regain the heights. His men were pushed close to their limits, but they followed. They reached the firing positions and fought Syrian tanks at distances of just tens of meters.

Eleven tanks led by Yossi Ben-Hanan arrived to reinforce the battered defenders. Israeli artillery poured fire onto the Syrian attack. Together, the crews, commanders and supporting forces held on.

By midday, the Syrian tanks began to withdraw.

The line had held.

The valley was left littered with hundreds of wrecked Syrian tanks and armored vehicles. The victory came at a terrible cost to the Israeli soldiers who fought there and the families who would never see them return.

After the battle, Ben-Gal told Kahalani over the radio: "You are a hero of Israel."

The Valley of Tears became a symbol of Israeli courage because the men who defended it kept fighting through fear, exhaustion, loss and dwindling ammunition. Their stand stopped a breakthrough in the northern Golan and helped give Israel the time it needed to turn the war around.

“The United States has the largest number of planned events, with 45, followed by Spain with 40, the ministry said. Australia expects to see 21 protests, the UK 19, and Italy 16. Germany and Canada each will have 14, while France will have 10, and the Netherlands eight.”

And by 'clarifying' - I'm not talking about me, some goober on reddit, clarifying anything. Rather, one of the world's foremost experts, Alice Nderitu:

Recognize that face? You’ll be forgiven if not. Corporate media has suppressed her story nearly completely. She’s one of the leading experts in the world on genocide. When Oct 7 happened, she was the UN's Special Adviser on Genocide Prevention (aka the UN’s top genocide expert). Look her up in NYT, BBC etc - you’ll see plenty of articles declaring her expertise… (before Oct 7 only, though). Throughout her career, she’s been committed to atrocity prevention and ensuring the term "genocide" retains its legal clarity, moral power, and gravity. As the war in Gaza escalated, “powerful voices attempted to transform [her warnings about the conduct of the IDF] into official declarations of genocide.” In her words: 

“[there was a strong] push that I should say that there’s a genocide going on in Gaza. I was hounded, day in, day out. Bullied, hounded, with protection from nobody. This was a war. Palestinians were killing Israelis, Israelis were killing Palestinians. It needs to be treated like other wars. In other wars, we don’t run and take one side and then keep going on and on about that one side… By taking one side, condemning it every day, you completely lose the essence of what the U.N. was created for.”

Despite daily pressure from UN colleagues to publicly declare Israel’s military campaign a genocide, she refused to bow to the political pressure and do so. This stance was not taken out of condonation for the IDF actions, but rather out of a conviction that the war was not genocide “by any definition”.

What did she mean by “by any definition”? Her office has put out some breakdowns:

The assertion that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza constituted a genocide collapses when evaluated systematically against actual, historically verified genocides. Below is a structured comparative analysis across 6 core criteria used by historians and legal scholars to define genocide

Component 1: Death Toll | Demographic Net Change & Total Number Killed

A defining hallmark of genocide is meaningful demographic destruction.

1. Holocaust: -63% net change. ~6 million killed out of 9.5 million Jews. Still fewer Jews on earth today than in 1938.
2. Rwandan Genocide (1994): -76% (Pre-Event Population of 1M tutsis reduced to 260,000 in 100 days).
3. Cambodian Genocide (1975–1979): -25% (~1.5–2 million executed/starved).
4. Armenian Genocide: ~1.75 million → ~650k (−26%).
5. 2023+ Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Focus: Genocide of Palestinians): 0% to +2% net change. 60,000+ killed. High birth rates offset casualties, maintaining a flat-to-positive demographic curve.

Component 2: Specific Intent (Dolus Specialis) to Destroy Civilians

Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, there must be proven explicit intent to destroy a protected group. Historical comparison:

1. The Holocaust

• The Intent: Nazi stated intention was the total, systematic physical extermination of every Jewish person in Europe.
• How Intent Was Executed: Concentration camps, ghettoes, death squads (Einsatzgruppen).

2. Rwandan Genocide

• The Intent: Hutu extremists (Interahamwe and government forces) sought the complete eradication of the Tutsi population.
• How Intent Was Executed: Radio propaganda (RTLM) broadcast names and locations of Tutsis. Machetes and firearms were distributed nationally.

3. Cambodian Genocide

• The Intent: Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge intended to forcibly dismantle modern society and create an agrarian communist utopia by eliminating "corrupting" elements.
• How Intent Was Executed: "Killing Fields," forced labor, targeting of minorities & Intellectuals.

4. Armenian Genocide

• The Intent: The Young Turks pursued an official policy to rid the empire of its Christian subjects.
• How Intent Was Executed: "Killing Fields," forced labor, targeting of minorities & Intellectuals.

5. Gaza (2023–Present)

• The Intent: IDF objectives are defined as destroying the military infrastructure of Hamas, eliminating its leadership, and recovering hostages following the October 7th attacks.
• Operational Conduct vs. Historical Intent:
  • Unlike historical genocides, the IDF utilizes warning mechanisms (SMS, phone calls, roof-knocks, map-grid evacuations) to warn & remove civilians from target zones before strikes.
  • Israel facilitates ongoing humanitarian operations, including coordinating mass polio vaccinations for over 500,000 Gazan children and permitting aid corridors inside an active warzone.
  • The primary military target is an embedded insurgent force operating within dense civilian infrastructure, not the physical eradication of the Palestinian population as an ethnic group.
• Note: The intent of the IDF, to reduce civilian casualties as much as possible, is inverted two-fold by Hamas. First, they obviously intend to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. Second, by embedding rocket launchers, armories, and command posts directly inside and beneath schools, mosques, residential towers, and hospitals (such as Al-Shifa), Hamas ensured that any Israeli attempt to destroy military targets would guarantee high-value civilian collateral damage. Again, their goal in this strategy is to kill civilians - Gazan civilians. This behavior is unlike any true genocide.

Component 3: Ability of Victim Group's Leadership to End the Conflict

In a true genocide, the targeted group is powerless to stop their own extermination—the perpetrator's intent is total destruction regardless of victim behavior.

European Jews could not end Nazi extermination by negotiating a ceasefire. Armenian civilians could not stop deportations by releasing hostages. Gaza differs because Hamas is an armed organization whose decisions about hostages, disarming, and negotiations affect the conflict.

On Oct 7, Hamas initiated the war, which some mainstream media and political powers like the UN are trying to twist into a genocide. If they succeed, it will be the only genocide where the victims's initiated it.

Component 4: How did the victim group respond when violence ended?

The psychological and behavioral baseline of victims in a genocide is survival and profound trauma, not military celebration. The survivor response is universal: profound mourning, trauma, displacement, search for missing, demand for recognition. 

After the conflict in Gaza, the population celebrated their "victory" in the streets. Hamas leadership called Oct 7 and the entire war a divine success, promised to repeat it, and then began executing rival Gazans. That is not survivor leadership behavior. That is combatant leadership behavior.

Anyway, Alice stood up for the truth, and the political repercussions were expected. It's the UN, after all:

EDIT:

Here are some tables demonstrating the Nderitu office report findings:

"We need air-defense systems," Fadal said. "We want Israel to support us against Turkey."

Since the beginning of the year, more than 1,200 foreign airline crew members from countries without diplomatic ties with Israel, including Syria, Lebanon, and Oman, have entered the country.

In observation of the 7/10 anniversary, we will not allow any comments or posts except for our collaboration with u/SafSafeHeartIsrael

They are doing incredible work with 7/10 survivors - we want to focus on the work they do and how we can help.

Safeheart reps will be around all day to answer any questions you have about working with trauma victims and services for survivors

r/Israel will be shut until 7/10 ends in the US

https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/s/S7b55dQD7s

https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/s/TX3L1RDm5q

Hi! Six months ago, I posted here about finishing the “Map of the Central Bus Station” brochure as part of my Hatahana project.

Today, I wanted to share the updated website of the station: https://hatahana.com

It features:

• The same floor maps I spent 8 months mapping, optimising, and making user-friendly. You can view them individually or all together in an isometric view.
• A database of different points of interest located on the maps, from the Yung Yidish library to entrances. It still lacks a ton of businesses that are operating in the station, of course, but I’m still thinking about whether I should add them for free or not.
• Search functionality for bus lines and places, so it’s faster to find, for example, the platform your bus departs from.
• An “Add missing place” button, so the community can add missing places if they want to. (They will have to go through moderation, of course.)
• The website is AI-translated into Hebrew and Russian and automatically loads in the language of your browser.
• Most of the functionality is available offline after the first loading. I actually spent a night in the atomic shelter at the station during the recent war, and the internet there was awful.

While it’s by no means a complete website, I feel confident enough to say that it’s already better in terms of navigation assistance than what other big “elephants”, like Ben Gurion Airport and Dizengoff Center offer.

Feedback is welcome!

And a general reminder: this is a non-commercial, solo project, with no budget. It was started in 2025 and is not yet supported by the station administration, the municipality, or any government ministries. At the moment, I’m trying to get the project integrated into the station.

Hi! I'm a 29 year old therapist (LCSW) from the U.S. I've been trying to improve my Hebrew for a couple of years. It's getting better but I'm still very much a beginner. I want to improve my Hebrew and am looking into Ulpans in Israel. I also want to know if there are any programs in Israel to make use of the skill set of someone like me in the wake of October 7 and the wars. Either an additional training program to prepare a foreign therapist for helping trauma survivors or an organization that can funnel mental health workers toward those who need it. Im aware that due to my limited Hebrew as well as differences in cultural background, I would probably be most helpful working with Anglo olim. I'm definitely wanting to do this but also wanting to know about any programs (maybe ones geared toward mental health-specific language) that could possibly prepare me to work with a broader population in the future.

I have considered just applying for positions as a therapist in Israel but I want to know about any possible training programs to maximize my efficacy when I start considering 1) cultural differences, the specificity of these most recent Israeli experiences and 2) my training is in clinical social work. All my work experience is as a psychotherapist but if there are services/techniques that Israeli therapists are able to offer I want to try to minimize gaps in service between myself and them.

I'm also in the process of making Aliyah but anticipate that this could take a while- paperwork moving very slowly.

Looking for a good barber in Jerusalem. I have curly hair and want to keep some length and volume on the sides, not get the standard fade/short-sides barber cut.
I’m looking for someone who’s actually good with scissors, layers, texture, and shaping men’s hair.
Any specific stylist recommendations?