"Today is day 461, which are 65 weeks and 5 days of the captivity of now 99 hostages living and dead in Gaza."

"The voice of the city that, on New Year's Eve, in the packed-to-the-rafters-with-more-than-8,000-people Menorah Miftachim Arena, hosted the next music festival with Aviv Geffen, Odaya, Omer Adam, Eden Golan, Osher Cohen, and Moshe Peretz."

"The jumbotron high above Moshe Peretz's head flashed a message in white letters against a bright orange background, and a stentorian voice read the words over the public address system, saying, Dear audience, a siren has been activated. We call upon you to sit on... ...on the ground and protect your head with your hands. Do not run. Instead, stay seated in your places for ten minutes until we can return to our routine. After which, for a long moment, an odd silence ruled, and tension spread in the crowd as no one knew exactly what to do next. Now, in order to get just what happened after that, it is important to understand that there are songs, a few, not that many, that have and have happened, that have had a special popularity, especially in Miluim, in the IDF reserves, that, for some reason, has never really gone away in the years, often decades, since they were first on the radio. One of these songs is Mechakim LaMashiach, Waiting for the Messiah, by Shalom Pchanuch, from 40 years ago, in 1985, at the end of the first Lebanon war, and the chorus goes, The Messiah isn't coming, The Messiah doesn't even phone. Another of these songs is called Tutim, or Strawberries, it is by Zev Nechama, and it was a hit, by Ethnix, Zev Nechama's band, that is now, in 1992, the year Rabin was elected, promising to bring peace with Palestinians in Jordan and Syria, and the song's chorus goes, Tutim, Tutim, Strawberries, Strawberries, let us just buy strawberries instead of more machines of war. The song sounds like this. Tutim, Strawberries, Strawberries, To this day, when reporters ask on the radio the famously dour, Moldovan-born, right-wing, former Minister of Defense and present-day opposition strongman, Avigdor Lieberman, how are you? His answer is almost always the same. He says, Tutim, Strawberries, though I guess you'd better translate that as peachy, which is just another case of, you say, stoloniferous, herbaceous, perennial, and I say, deciduous, rosacea, and perennial, let's call the whole thing off, but I digress. During the odd silence after the sirens sounded as tension spread in the crowd, and rightly guessing that the missile on its way did come indeed from southern Yemen, Moshe Peretz started to sing. The words Moshe Peretz sang were Hutim, referring to the Yemeni-Iran-backed Huti militia who've lately been firing the missiles and drones at Tel Aviv from southern Yemen. And the song now went, Hutis, Hutis, let us just buy strawberries instead of machines of war."

"With us today and speaking from TLV1's venerable satellite studio in Jerusalem is a woman who knows more than maybe anyone I know about making lemonade from such lemons as life has given you and about all we see in the bright side of life."

"Linda is also a lecturer in journalism at NYU Tel Aviv and the Hebrew University and not too long ago at NYU Abu Dhabi."

"Now with us today, also speaking for the very first time, if I don't miss my bet, from the newly christened TLV1 satellite studio in Kfar Saba, is a man, and you just heard his voice, whose first novel, Adam Unrehearsed, was, as you know, a finalist in this past year's National Jewish Book Awards."

"When I was maybe seven living in Plainfield, New Jersey, and I fell asleep in bed listening to the Mets game on my transistor radio under my covers."

"Some ultra-Orthodox leaders are so despondent that they are arranging for buses to take their followers to the area of Makabim, and in Eilon Moreh, prayers have become fast days, as evil decree looms over the Gezer calendar."

"This Sunday, Yuval Vagdani, one of four young Israeli men, friends from the same town, traveling through Brazil to clear their heads after spending months in the IDF reserves, got a message from the Israeli consular section in the country saying that a local arrest warrant had been issued for one of the group."

"Another former reserve soldier in Gaza hastily left Thailand, where he was vacationing, after Hindra Job tried to have him arrested there."