‘In Spite of Our Pain’

Stand for Israel | December 13, 2019

JERUSALEM-BIO-RABIN — Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin looks pained after addressing the Knesset on December 15, 1992 on the death of the kidnapped Israeli border guard. Rabin said that "in spite of our pain we will continue along the path of peace..." The body of Sgt Nissim Toledano who was abducted by the Islamic fundamentalist movement Hamas, on December 13, was found in the West Bank. AFP PHOTO PATRICK BAZ (Photo credit should read PATRICK BAZ/AFP via Getty Images)

While Hamas uses many different tactics to spread terror across the Holy Land, one of their most vile is kidnapping. In 2014, of course, Hamas terrorists kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens, ultimately resulting in that summer’s Operation Protective Edge. And in 2011, Hamas at last released IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped five years before and held in captivity that entire time. But today we remember an Israeli hero who lost his life in an eerily similar Hamas plot.

Before the sun rose over the Holy Land on the morning of December 13, 1992, IDF Border Policeman Nissim Toledano was walking to work. That’s when a squad of Hamas terrorists nabbed him. The terrorists demanded that Israel release their leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was serving a life sentence for terror attacks that included the murder and kidnapping of two IDF soldiers during the First Intifada. Israeli authorities would not negotiate with the terrorists, at least until they received proof that Sergeant Toledano was still alive.

But Toledano was not alive. His body was later found bound and stabbed, murdered at the hands of the terrorists he’d sworn to protect his homeland from. Israel mourned her hero’s death. But Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, seen grieving above, promised that “in spite of our pain we will continue along the path of peace.”

Even as she longed for peace, Israel responded to Sergeant Toledano’s murder. It took months, but his killers were apprehended and given life sentences. Israeli authorities also arrested many Hamas members, expelling more than 400 to neighboring Lebanon. Lebanese authorities, of course, didn’t want these murderers, either, and refused to allow them into their country. In limbo, the terrorists set up a tent camp between the Israeli-Lebanese border, and in doing so received much attention from the biased anti-Israel media, with many then returning to either the West Bank or Gaza.

But for those of us who stand for Israel, these murderers’ terrorist acts will not be forgotten. And neither will brave Sergeant Nissim Toledano. May his memory be a blessing.