Friends, the threats surrounding Israel are intensifying once again, and the pace is truly alarming. Yesterday marked the exact one-year anniversary of Bashar al-Assad’s flight from Syria, and the rebel forces now firmly in power chose that moment to stage massive military parades in cities across the country — parades that quickly revealed what many of us feared all along. As thousands of uniformed soldiers marched through the streets, the chants ringing out were unmistakably clear: calls for the invasion of the State of Israel, promises that “from your blood, rivers will flow,” and the chilling refrain “Oh Jews, the army of Mohammed will return,” while in the crowds ISIS flags waved proudly once more, as if the caliphate had never truly been defeated. Standing before his troops, Ahmed al-Sharaa delivered a carefully worded speech about rebuilding a strong Syria “from its north to its south, from its east to its west” that would “support the oppressed and establish justice,” yet the bloodthirsty slogans echoing immediately behind him made his true intentions feel impossible to ignore. In direct response, Israel has just broken ground on an enormous new eastern border barrier that will eventually stretch the entire 500-kilometer frontier with Syria and Jordan, from the Golan Heights all the way south to Eilat. Defense Minister Israel Katz described this project as his central mission from the day he took office, designed not only to protect border communities but to sharply reduce arms smuggling into Judea and Samaria and to block Iran’s dream of opening an eastern front against the Jewish state. At the very same time, the White House suddenly announced it is ready to host a summit between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Egyptian President el-Sisi, with American officials telling Axios that Israel must seize this “huge opportunity” by making a series of concessions — including a major natural-gas agreement — because, in their words, such steps will “create interdependence, warmer peace, and prevent war”… a phrase that raises eyebrows when we are constantly reminded that a peace treaty with Egypt has supposedly been in force since 1979. Yet for many Israelis, Egypt remains the most worrying long-term threat on the horizon, a country that for years turned a blind eye to dozens of smuggling tunnels under Rafah, that reportedly mobilized 40,000 troops in the Sinai this past summer (double the number permitted under the treaty), that extended airbase runways and built underground missile storage facilities in zones where offensive infrastructure is explicitly forbidden — all of which became so concerning that Netanyahu himself asked Washington to urge Cairo to stand down. You would think that after fighting on seven fronts over the past few years Israel might finally be granted a moment of quiet; you would think her enemies would eventually learn that threatening the Jewish state never ends well for them. Apparently neither is happening. Please keep Israel in your prayers — the storm clouds are gathering again.