UPDATE – March 16, 2026
I was not planning to do an update this week (for those keeping track today is 15 weeks since my departure from LAX) but I felt compelled to respond to several messages that I’ve received recently.
First of all, thank you to everyone that has reached whether with a question or a worry or just a comment. I truly appreciate hearing from my friends and family back in America. One dear old friend messaged me simply “are you ok?” Another wrote a longer message “Are you ok? I heard that Iran is really amping up attacks . Our news is not really covering it. Please stay safe!”. Several people sent me links to a post about a supposed “Israeli Journalist” sharing the “news” that Iran was winning the war and thoroughly destroying destroying American bases and Israeli cities asking “what did I think about it”. I will respond to all.
But my absolutely favorite, came from my second cousin that I barely know Nathan Ringle who e-mailed me that he had enjoyed my posts and had told his mother Suzanne Ringle that I had made Aliyah and she (now almost 93 years old) she had said “I want to visit Alan”. (here’s the shout out I promised). Cousin Nathan please share this with your mom. Cousin Suzi was the one of three daughters of Malka and Nathan (Malka was a sister to my grandmother). The three young girls were smuggled out of France (both of their parents were murdered at Auschwitz) and eventually they came to America as orphans. They were all granddaughters of Shifra and Naftali Kleinman both of blessed memory who were my father’s maternal grandparents so they were my dad’s first cousins.
I never really knew Suzie the way I knew my father’s other first cousins mainly because she moved out of New York and had her own family in Ohio but I my mother always ADORED her. She periodically came to family events and even made it out to Colorado for the bar and bat mitvah of my children. So this is for you, cousin Suzie. I’m thinking about you as I sip my morning coffee in Zichron Yaakov, Israel.
First of all I am fine. But again thank so much friends for asking and worrying about me. In Zichron it is a strange sense of being at war. Periodically still, (but nearly as much as previously) there are warnings on the phone that missiles have been launched by Iran. Every now and then there is an explosion in the air as a result of the destruction of an incoming missile. Mostly though, the noise that I am aware of are planes that I can only presume are IDF jets heading the approximately 1000 miles to drop more bombs on Iran. The simple fact is that Iran has no defense to the American and Israeli jets (it was already destroyed previously and completely on the first day of the war). Among the unknowns is exactly how many missile launchers Iran still has but it is clear that it is a greatly diminished number.
I don’t know exactly what news sources you all are seeing in the US but reports of Iranian “victory” are absolute propaganda. This is not to minimize the economic consequences to the United States of all of the money spent on weapons and the disruption of the flow of oil and commerce through the Straight of Hormuz. As always (every war in modern history) the question remains who will pay for it. In Israel there is almost unanimity that the cost is worth it because Iran posed an existential threat to survival by their clear intent to develop nuclear weapons that could be delivered by their missile systems along with their financial support and encouragement of Hamas and Hezbellah (not to mention their continuing threat to destroy Israel if able). Nobody knows for sure how long the peace (when it finally happens) will last nor can anyone predict what will come next in Iran (if and when the theocratic dictatorship falls) but it is absolutely clear that in the short term Israel will no longer be threatened by Hamas, Hezbellah and Iran and will have an extended opportunity to invest in building an even better Israel. Politically I am sure that the best (and perhaps only) argument that Netanyahu will make in the next election is that he was in charge when all of this happened. I am in a bit of a bubble but nobody that I speak with expects his coalition to win the election.
I won’t give publicity to the so called Israeli Journalist that several people asked me about (the one who reported the great Iranian victory) but a little google research identified him to me as someone who was indeed an Israeli who had apparently suffered traumatic brain injury and I found his substack posts where he wrote of a “western coalition of Zionist pedophile whores”. Need I say more. There appears to be an enormous propaganda machine trying to pretend that Iran is winning the war and has not suffered an enormous blow. Please check your sources. By the way the same recent substack post (by the so called Israeli journalist) reported that “Iran’s military capabilities and chain of command are 100% intact”. Believe that dribble at the risk of your own mental health. Please check your sources.
What I can say definitively is that the number of incoming missiles from Iran has been reduced dramatically. I have travelled in the past week to Haifa twice (to complete my purchase of a car) and to Tel Aviv (actually outside of Tel Aviv) for a medical appointment and I have seen no signs of any destruction. I seriously doubt the same could be said for most of Iran.
Politically, this war is very popular in Israel. In my opinion it was also supported by International War because Iran was in fact already at war with Israel and had declared it intent to eliminate Israel if allowed the opportunity. For Trump and the United States it was not even a close call. Trump’s attack on Iran was in direct violation of the United States Constitution and the War Powers Act as well as in violation of International Law. Sadly, the United States is now run by a corrupt demented sociopath who is being advised by a group of incompetent sycophants.