Author Archives: Rabbi

Needed: Vision and Leadership

Posted on February 24, 2025 | 2 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)


Life in Israel is an emotional roller coaster. Not long ago I wrote that, aside from the hostages and their immediate families, we should feel not joy but relief at their liberation, and be mindful of the price paid in the lives of our soldiers who pressured Hamas to this point, as well as the lives of our soldiers lost capturing the terrorists who are now being freed. Our emotions range from relief to rage. Nevertheless, those enraged at the sight of coffins of Jewish victims now being returned alongside the jubilation seen in the Arab world at the release of their murderers should internalize that this is what “at any price” look like. What did we expect? This is their plan.

As if to add to our degradation, Hamas is so unbowed and undeterred that it has resumed blowing up our buses. Of course, only fools would release thousands of Arab Nazi genocidal terrorists from prison and not expect a resumption of terror. How did we lose our way? How did defeat take the place of victory – and so suddenly?

Abba Eban famously said that Arabs “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” That is no longer true. Arabs exploit every opportunity they get – to weaken us, terrorize us, murder us, and demoralize us. They know how to manipulate our society, they know that we will pay any price to liberate the hostages, and they know that this winning strategy can and will be repeatedly employed in the future to achieve whatever aims they want. We have rendered ourselves incapable of victory. For all the blather about learning from and not repeating the mistakes of the past, that is precisely what Netanyahu seems to be doing.

Do you know who “never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity”? We Israelis, who time and again, especially recently, have been given opportunities to deal decisive blows to our enemies, and do not.

Hamas was on the brink of destruction and we saved them. In truth, the war was lost when Israel began providing humanitarian aid to our enemies and adopted the fiction that Gazans are innocent civilians, not an integral part of the Hamas terror network. The war was lost when we began (again) the lopsided terrorist for hostages deals in November 2023, validating that strategy.  The war was lost when Hamas was so on the verge of extinction in January 2023 that it was willing to barter hostages for cans of oil until Netanyahu succumbed to more Biden pressure and provided fuel in exchange for literally nothing. The war was lost when Netanyahu first rejected the notion of freedom for our hostages “at any price,” and then began paying that price.

With Donald Trump’s return to office, new opportunities present themselves that we are again disregarding. Trump recently said that “all the hostages must be released or else,” but Netanyahu, listening to the voices calling for hostage deals, failed to capitalize on that free hand, preferring the release of a few hostages here, some coffins there, and a plethora of freed terrorists. Trump is giving Netanyahu carte blanche to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program, which has been met so far with our silence and inaction. At this point it is more likely that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon than that Israel will demolish its capability (I do hope I am wrong).

The problem seems deeper than the recurrent accusations that Netanyahu talks tough and rarely acts. For sure, he is the finest communicator we have ever had as prime minister, and no Israeli politician has ever been unfairly vilified to the extent that he has. It is something else entirely.

All the evidence to date suggests that PM Netanyahu perceives himself (perhaps unconsciously) as a “conflict manager,” not as a “conflict solver.” He seems to recoil from solutions, preferring to nibble at the margins of a conflict rather than ending or resolving it.

Recall that Netanyahu was first elected in 1996 running against the implementation of the disastrous Oslo Accords. Yet, as soon as he was elected, he did not renounce this catastrophic agreement but implemented it, albeit more slowly, but implementing it nonetheless, even withdrawing from the holy city of Hevron. He boasted that “if they give, they get; if they don’t give, they don’t get,” but what they were “giving” was ephemeral and what they were “getting” endangered our lives. Instead of ending Oslo, he tried to manage it, and was voted out of office. Similarly, his vacillations on the calamitous Gaza expulsion – he was for it before he was against it – are part of the same pattern – management, not resolution.

Fast forward to Netanyahu’s tenure of almost 15 years and we see, unfortunately, not much has changed. The PM has been warning about Iran for decades but Iran is closer than ever to nuclear capability. His threats have been eloquent and ominous but nothing much has changed. To be sure, there have been attacks around the margins – delaying the program through the untimely deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists and detonation of some of its facilities – but these resolved nothing, The Mossad operation in 2018 that pilfered Iran’s nuclear archives was extraordinary, but long-term, accomplished what, exactly? Trump in his first term then withdrew from the Iran deal (which he had promised to do anyway) but Biden returned to it, so what was the long-term effect? Proving to the world that Iran has a nuclear program? Everyone knew that already but most nations don’t care. That is management, not resolution.

The Shalit deal was an example of conflict management, not resolution, emboldening the enemy that terror pays. The various Gaza skirmishes throughout the Netanyahu tenure – the “mowing the lawn” operations – are examples of conflict management, not resolution. Netanyahu seems to lack a killer instinct, never goes for the jugular, never strikes a deathblow against our enemies. That he is mocked today in Gaza, not feared, should be worrisome for all of us.

Hezbollah was near destruction, and most of south Lebanon was under Israeli control, until Netanyahu again decided to abandon territory won in a defensive war and again allow Hezbollah to rearm, rebuild, and return.The beeper caper was stupendous, but not a game changer. We let Hezbollah survive. It will bide its time. We will absorb its attacks without fully responding because that is what we do. That is management, not resolution.

Hamas was near destruction, and most of Gaza under Israeli control, until again Netanyahu decided to resuscitate them, and withdraw from territory saturated with Jewish blood, all to fight another day. That is management, not resolution. Our soldiers are killed, and nothing changes.

Most recently, President Trump proposed that Gazans be relocated to a place where they can live in peace (that is conflict resolution, not management), and what has been our response? To laud the proposal as bold – and then send caravans and building materials to Gaza. Why would caravans and housing materials be sent to Gaza if resolution entails resettlement? It is because we have a leader who manages conflicts but cannot end them, who repeatedly caves under pressure (Clinton, Obama, Biden, and to a lesser extent, Trump), and never accepts any responsibility for failure.

Hamas is solely to blame for kidnapping and murdering our hostages – but we should not need to be reminded of the pathological evil of our enemies. We need to know what our leaders are doing about it. The answer seems to be, again, declaring victory and pulling out, surrendering and calling it a “strategic retreat,” and kicking the can down the road. On October 7, we ran out of road, and still, spin and more spin, the old and failed ways have returned, we grieve and the enemy rejoices, nothing changes, and we are again promised that “just wait, victory is around the corner.” 

Count me a skeptic. If Hamas’ goals were to murder Jews and free their terrorists from our prisons, it has already won. And it is truly inexplicable why Israel has not yet enacted the death penalty for terrorists; at the very least, it would preclude the wild scenes of euphoria among the “innocent” Arab civilians who dwell in the land of Israel.

For better or worse, Trump is a conflict solver, not a manager. His Gaza logic – “why would you keep doing the same thing over and over, when it does not work?” – is impeccable, but such logic has always evaded our leaders. Rightly or wrongly, he has tired of Zelensky who has no realistic vision of an end to his conflict, and probably justifiably so, and he will soon tire of Netanyahu as well and his indecisiveness, his irresoluteness, and his failure of leadership and vision. Trump is a problem solver and if he determines that a problem cannot be solved he will walk away. He is almost daring Netanyahu to act, boldly, without inhibitions, against Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen. Yet, as if preternaturally, Netanyahu cannot or will not act. There is always some enigmatic reason for him to remain passive and let the problems fester.

A conflict manager allows unfettered illegal Arab construction in Jerusalem – in Israel’s own capital city – as well as in Area C of Judea and Samaria. A conflict manager allows foreign consulates in Jerusalem to host events in praise of terror and view themselves as embassies and ambassadors in Palestine.  No self-respecting country would indulge such effrontery. A conflict manager talks of judicial reform and does little about it. A conflict manager wins elections not by presenting resolutions but by depicting every opponent as far worse, people who will “divide Jerusalem!” or “establish a Palestinian state!” or “expel settlers from their homes!” A conflict manager talks and talks and talks about annexing the Jordan Valley, or annexing Judea and Samaria, but does nothing about it.

A leader with vision would accept the Trump proposal for Gaza with a smothering, enthusiastic embrace. Such a leader would not be furnishing homes and allowing the Gaza ruins to be rebuilt but would maintain it as a demolition site to encourage emigration and as an eternal deterrence to our enemies. He would settle Jews in areas conquered from our enemy. He would actively work to implement the Trump plan for Gaza and then apply it to any Arab in Judea and Samaria from the river to the sea who rejects Jewish sovereignty.

If past is prologue, today’s pain and rage will dissipate, we will bind our wounds, find joy in our personal lives, and revert to supporting our political teams even if that demands a suspension of reason and a continuation of the failed policies of many decades. Our glib leaders will persist in exclaiming that “together we will win!” even if they are bereft of any plan for victory. The irony is that our most rabid enemies today are the enemies of most of the Arab countries in the Middle East, and so decisively defeating these enemies – ending that part of the conflict – will promote peace generally. And yet we do not.

Is failed leadership our inescapable reality before the coming of Messiah? Perhaps, but we need not make it more difficult on ourselves by acting irrationally and repeating awful mistakes. But for G-d’s grace, we would be utterly lost, and we thus pray for His compassionate hand that consoles us in our time of distress. May He send our leaders with strength, and integrity, leaders who rise to the challenges of this fateful moment in the history of our eternal people.

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The End of UNRWA

Posted on February 20, 2025 | Comments Off on The End of UNRWA

(First published at JNS.org)

The Knesset overwhelmingly passed legislation last year prohibiting the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating on Israeli territory. It also banned every Israeli from cooperating with UNRWA in any way. Despite an outcry from the anti-Israel elements of the international community, the law went into effect at the end of January, and UNRWA was obligated to cease its operations in Israel. Its social services to residents of Jerusalem, for example, were assumed by the municipality, but it has created a vacuum among purveyors of incitement and anti-Israel animus.

The time has come for the United Nations, once and for all, to close down UNRWA entirely. It has not served a useful purpose for many decades, if ever. UNRWA in Jerusalem provided health care and sanitation services, as well as administered some schools—tasks that, according to residents, performed poorly in all respects. Elementary-school education taught little beyond incitement against Israel, and UNRWA routinely sold its supplies on the black market, enriching its employees and impoverishing its clients. As reported in Israel Hayom, only 2.3% of eighth-graders in UNRWA schools were proficient in reading at age-appropriate levels.

UNRWA’s failure to provide services pales before its active participation in terror, both inside and outside of Gaza. Estimates are that almost half of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza were active members of Hamas, and dozens of UNRWA workers were identified as among the assailants and torturers of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023. A substantial part of the UNRWA annual budget of roughly $2 billion functioned as a grant to Hamas. Terror facilities run by Hamas, including weapons depots and tunnels, were discovered under UNRWA buildings in Gaza, and Hamas has claimed responsibility for repeated acts of terror in Jerusalem in the last several years.

Why does UNRWA still exist? And why must it be permanently shuttered?

UNRWA was founded 75 years ago to deal with the 700,000 Arab refugees who fled their homes during and after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Oddly, another U.N. agency, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was created around the same time to deal with the remainder of the world’s tens of millions of refugees resulting from the wars in that tumultuous decade. Neither agency inquired after the welfare of the 800,000 Jews who were simultaneously driven out of their homes in the Arab world, most of whom resettled in Israel and the West.

More importantly, UNRWA’s singular focus since its origin has been to perpetuate the refugee status of Palestinian Arabs rather than end it through resettlement, which is the objective of UNHCR. This is accomplished in several ways. First, UNRWA redefined “refugee” for its own purposes. According to the UNHCR, refugee status is limited to those individuals who fled a war zone. As soon as they are resettled, they are no longer considered refugees and are beyond UNHCR’s purview.

By contrast, UNRWA contrived its own unique definition of “refugee,” i.e., any descendant of a male who fled the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948. Thus, refugee status for Palestinian Arabs is transmitted from generation to generation, unlike any other refugee group in the world, and so by UNRWA’s (inflated) count, they now number almost 6 million people. Today, 99% of these “refugees” were born and raised in the country where they now reside. UNRWA is subsidizing its fourth generation of refugees, something unprecedented, and which therefore has no natural end to it.

Second, UNRWA makes no effort to find permanent homes for its “refugees” but has maintained them in refugee camps since 1949. While UNHCR seeks to terminate refugee status, UNRWA seeks to immortalize it. As such, for most Palestinians, their refugee status is never lost, and they remain eligible for UNRWA subsidies. In effect, Palestinians are not required to assume responsibility for their own well-being and resettlement, even though they reside mostly in Judea, Samaria and Gaza or in the Arab world among their co-religionists whose language and culture they share. Certainly, residence in Arab countries such as Jordan, Syria or Lebanon for 60 to 75 years should have resulted in the loss of their refugee status. Those countries should assimilate them.

Third, the desire to maintain the refugee status of Palestinian Arabs forever stems from UNRWA’s primary purpose. It perceives its role as integral to the fight for Israel’s destruction and disappearance. It is not just that UNRWA regularly incites against Israel and has participated in acts of terror. UNRWA inculcates a narrative of victimization and permanent grievance that can never be assuaged except by violence against Israel.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he would halt U.S. contributions to UNRWA, as he did in his first term, which then amounted to 17% of the agency’s budget, or $371 million. It is time that UNRWA be shuttered entirely. To incentivize this, Washington should threaten to reduce its contribution to the United Nations itself for the exact amount the international body spends on UNRWA, which is now upward of $2 billion.

It’s time for new thinking and new approaches. In the wake of the Trump initiative to relocate Palestinians in Gaza elsewhere in the Middle East so they can begin new and productive lives, UNRWA becomes even more superfluous.

As long as UNRWA exists and Palestinian Arabs perceive themselves as eternal wards of the world, they will retain their fantasy of destroying Israel. UNRWA will never disband itself; it is one of the world’s foremost boondoggles. Its disbandment by the United Nations can only help promote a better life for Palestinian Arabs and a more peaceful world.

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The Saudi Seduction

Posted on February 4, 2025 | Comments Off on The Saudi Seduction

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s diplomatic plate is overflowing. His visit to Washington, including the summit with President Trump, must delineate Israel’s impending agenda on several different fronts, most importantly the achievement of victory in Gaza that will defeat Hamas, end its reign of terror on Israel from its Gaza base of operations, and liberate our remaining hostages. Add to that the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacity and these meetings are quite momentous.

According to reports, President Trump is fixated on advancing on the Saudi front, with the goal of achieving normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. To be sure, that is a worthy objective and will jumpstart the Abraham Accords that the Biden administration left to wither. Nevertheless, Israel should enter these negotiations as equals, not as beggars at the trough desperate for recognition at any price. We should be mindful of our national interests – as well as the advantages and limitations of any agreement with Saudi Arabia.

The theory is that any agreement with the Saudis will effectively end the Arab-Israeli dispute. Saudi Arabia has special status in the Muslim world as the custodian of the Islamic holy places. As such, its rapprochement with Israel would be tantamount to a declaration that all Islam should reconcile with Israel, effectively ending Israel’s ostracism from much of the Muslim world. That is certainly consequential.

Yet, similar claims were made when Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979. Removing the Arab world’s largest army from the battlefield was assumed to make future wars with Israel impossible, and an era of peace and prosperity would dawn. It hasn’t quite happened like that. It is true that battlefield wars between Israel and our neighbors have ceased since then but they have been replaced by protracted wars fought against non-state actors, or evil terrorists as they should be known, several times in Lebanon and Gaza, continuously in Judea and Samaria, with the specter of a genocidal Iran looming over the region.

Saudi Arabia may be attempting to modernize but agreements between democracies and autocracies are inherently unstable, as the latter are always subject to coups and abrupt changes in leadership. There have been several attempts to overthrow the Saudi monarchy, and we should recall the temporary rise to power of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 2013, which, if not overthrown by current Egyptian President Abdel al-Sisi, could have spelled the end of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

Israel then must be cautious about relinquishing vital assets or compromising our security for tentative gains that might be short-lived. These forfeited assets or hazardous compromises could theoretically include an end to the war with Hamas and withdrawal from Gaza, recognition of a Palestinian state, a freeze on construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, withdrawal from Lebanon, a return to the status quo of October 6, 2023, a ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, et al.

Not one element of this is worth normalization with Saudi Arabia, even if President Trump is enamored with the deal. We are not at war with Saudi Arabia, except in the technical sense. There are no reciprocal claims on each other’s territory. There is no reason there should be any hostility between Israel and Saudi Arabia, there is no casus belli, and no reason peace does not already exist. I have never placed much stock in the notion that these powerful autocracies must heed the “Arab street,” and thus Israel has to make precarious compromises, and Saudi Arabia has to be afforded a fig leaf so as to better sell the deal to its public. Autocracies do not work that way. Perhaps the value of these agreements can be put into better perspective by analyzing the relationship between Israel and its current peace partners.

The peace with Egypt, as well as with Jordan, has long and accurately been described as a cold peace. Trade exists, but tourism these days is almost non-existent. Israelis must hide their identity when visiting those countries and the welcome is not always hospitable. These countries are not our friends or even allies, and they consistently evince open hostility to Israel in international forums including the United Nations. It would seem that we want it more than they do, which is not inherently unreasonable because Israelis feel better without the sense of isolation imposed on us by much of the world, but which should give us some pause as to the risks implicit in these agreements and the tangible concessions we make to procure them.

In both agreements, we forfeited vital territory won with the blood of our soldiers. With Egypt, we relinquished essential assets (oil) and with Jordan, we were somehow cajoled into providing them with water for, it seems, infinity. In exchange, they agreed to… well, not kill us. Both nations benefited substantially from American aid after signing these agreements.

Perhaps even more instructive is the linchpin of the Abraham Accords, the agreement with the United Arab Emirates. We enjoy trade and tourism. I have visited the UAE several times and always felt comfortable there. Yet, there was a noticeable difference on my most recent visit six weeks ago. Public Jewish prayer has ended, even if previously it was informally tolerated. There are no longer minyanim, even if an ornate synagogue was opened in the Abrahamic Village in Abu Dhabi. Jews who used to walk around with kippot no longer do so. There is a plethora of kosher restaurants in the UAE but – aside from the ones with “kosher” in their names – the others cannot be identified from the outside as kosher. There is no insignia, no indication that they are kosher restaurants, and patrons must ask for the kashrut certificate to verify that the establishment is, indeed, kosher. This state of affairs preceded the murder of the Chabad Shaliach, Rabbi Zvi Kogan, Hy”d, in the UAE this past November so it is not just security related.

The sense of “inclusion” that one felt in the early years of the Abraham Accords has subtly changed to a sense of “toleration.” Granted, any peace treaty is better than any war, but the question remains: at what price? Absence of war is a value for all sides, even without a treaty. What must we renounce or surrender for the privilege of being liked or tolerated? All we ask of former adversaries is they commit to not hating us, nothing more tangible. In exchange for that, in the Abraham Accords we postponed indefinitely the annexation of our biblical heartland, Judea and Samaria, and in the Egyptian and Jordanian treaties, surrendered quantifiable resources.

Normalization with Saudi Arabia is not worth it if the price is our acquiescence to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the center of our homeland. We should beware of the diplomat’s rhetorical games, of finding equivocal language that might mean this to us and something else to them but ultimately leave us weakened. One of Menachem Begin’s greatest mistakes at Camp David in 1978 was consenting to what was called “the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” then a newly created nuisance on the world scene. Begin resisted mightily, until he didn’t, assuaging his conscience by telling himself that “legitimate” and “rights” are undefined, and so they can mean whatever we want them to mean.

It was a good lawyer’s argument – but has been seized upon by our enemies to mean what they assumed it meant: that Palestinians have “legitimate rights,” not Jews, and whatever they are, the Jews are depriving them of those rights. Add to that the effective declaration in the disastrous Oslo Accords that the land of Israel is not just the homeland of the Jewish people, and we should not wonder why even the horrific massacre of innocent Jews – babies, women, men, the elderly – gained us very little sympathy from the world. Why sympathize with a nation that deprives others of “legitimate rights” on land that they do not consider their own?

We should not beg, grovel, or plead for recognition by other nations. There is something amiss about an ancient and eternal people fawning for acceptance by a nation – Saudi Arabia – that literally came into existence in 1932. We must come as a proud nation, equals. The Saudis want a defense pact with the US? That is fine – but we need not pay the price for it. Arguably, they need normalization with us more than we do with them. The Saudis need our assistance with their sworn enemy Iran – and if Iran is successfully neutralized, how valuable does this treaty then remain for them? The answer is, not much, so why should we concede anything substantive in order to achieve it?

That being said, I welcome a normalization deal of equals. Here is a suggestion: Mutual recognition between Israel and Saudi Arabia including full diplomatic relations, joint military efforts to defang the Iranian menace, trade and tourism (although we should be wary of wealthy Arab countries buying substantial real estate in our cities), Israel’s concurrence to a mutual defense treaty between Saudi Arabia and the United States (including lobbying Congress for approval, a such a treaty is not a done deal) and Saudi assent to the land of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.

And about the Palestinians? Well, if Saudi Arabia assigns less than 1% of its territory – in the area of the desert that is adjacent to Iraq and Jordan – President Trump can realize his creative plan to resettle Gazans in a place where they can thrive. Just 1% of Saudi Arabia – whose borders are not sacrosanct, were artificially drawn a century ago, and are still not finalized today – can fit almost 60 Gazas (1% can even contain almost four “West Banks”). Or the Saudis can draw that 1% from their southwestern coast, so Gazans can live near the beach and next to their friends, the Houthis of Yemen. Build them an oasis in the desert. Let them live.

But let us not repudiate our past, or endanger our future, on the shifting sands of Arabia. No good has ever come from renouncing our homeland. Only good can come from asserting our divine rights – call them “legitimate rights” – in the land of our forefathers to build a holy and godly society.

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Echoes of the Past

Posted on January 28, 2025 | Comments Off on Echoes of the Past

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

One of the negotiators of the catastrophic Gilad Shalit deal (one kidnapped soldier exchanged for 1027 Arab terrorists, including Yahye Sinwar) said something mindboggling on the radio recently. He opined that the Shalit deal “was a terrible mistake, and I would do it again.”  

It is hard to wrap the mind around that level of dysfunction, and yet, that mindset is quite prevalent in Israel today, and I am wondering why. Many people state unabashedly that the current hostage deal demonstrates how much Israelis “sanctify life.” That is true, except when we consider the price we paid in murdered Jews for the Shalit deal and the price we will pay in murdered Jews for the newly released murderers among us. We sanctify life in the present and sacrifice life in the future. We cherish the individual while putting society at risk. It is arguable if such constitutes the sanctification of life or the desecration of life. When we choose to disregard the obvious and inevitable effects of our actions, time and again, we should stop comforting ourselves on the extent to which we cherish life and instead question our wisdom, sanity, and desire to survive as a nation. Arab terrorists recognize that there is no chance we will execute them, little chance they will serve their full sentences, and full knowledge that they will be financially rewarded, and handsomely, by their leaders for their crimes. So why wouldn’t they try to murder more Jews?

The irony is that Hamas made a huge tactical error in murdering so many Jews on October 7. It cost them world popularity, at least in the short term. For a brief moment, Israel was graciously granted the right of self-defense, if only for a brief moment. In due course, Jew haters and their Western enablers recovered their evil equilibrium, and almost instantly, branded Israel as the aggressor, perpetrators of genocide, and other canards. Undoubtedly, our enemies’ future raids will focus less on murdering Jews than on kidnapping Jews because they realize that our society cannot handle it and will literally pay any price, even in ever-escalating torrents of our own blood. Surely Hezbollah has received that bloodcurdling message loud and clear.

It is interesting that, to my knowledge, Donald Trump has not mentioned the release of thousands of Arab terrorists and the attendant consequences of that folly, past, present, and future. In his mind, the deal is ceasefire for innocent hostages, including Israeli withdrawals from territory we repeatedly won at the cost of our soldiers’ lives. The exchange of innocents for terrorists is the humiliating part of the deal, effectively equates the two groups – in itself, a moral obscenity – and, as we have seen, is the face of victory for the Arabs. It may be painful for us to accept this truth, but presently the Arabs are happy with the outcome of their invasion and massacre. They murdered Jews, the Jewish army is being forced to withdraw from Gaza, they do not care about their own loss of life or destruction of property, and they have won freedom for their imprisoned murderers, now free to murder again.

Those Israelis who associate the release of our hostages with “victory” are deluding themselves, and many intentionally because of their hatred of our government. The release of our hostages is not the face of victory. It is the face of “status quo,” merely restoring the situation that existed on October 6 when they weren’t hostages. If the world perceives – as it does – an exchange of “our prisoners” for “their prisoners,” we only have ourselves to blame. Instead of the raucous celebrations trumpeted in the media, we should feel much like the recipient of a heart transplant. The patient lives, and the family rejoices, but someone had to die for that patient to live. It is indeed heartwarming to witness their freedom – they all have been given a new lease on life – but many did not survive, many died trying to free them and secure our future, and many will die in the future, G-d forbid, as a result of this ill-fated deal.

So why do we never learn from the past? Why do keep making the same mistakes repeatedly?

We rely on certain shibboleths in this society, among them how much we cherish life. There are others. We will pay price to bring a Jew to a Jewish burial, except when we don’t, as with Elie Cohen or Ron Arad. We will never leave anyone on the battlefield, except when we do, as with the aforementioned or Jonathan Pollard. Israel will not negotiate with terrorists, true decades ago but demonstrably false since the days of Oslo. Israel leads the world in negotiating, and negotiating poorly, with terrorists. Yet, I believe that our irrational response to these trying times is rooted in something far deeper than the catchwords that soothe our pain.

The State of Israel arose out of the ashes of the Holocaust. To be sure, the movement for Jewish statehood began long before the Holocaust, but it is undeniable that the Holocaust was a prime catalyst for Israel coming into being when it did. In essence, Israel was created not just in response to the Holocaust, but in the self-definition of the founders, Israel was the anti-Holocaust. The new Israeli Jew was the diametric opposite of the exile Jews, who were slaughtered in the millions without much resistance, passively, helpless.

Israel was supposed to be the antidote to the Holocaust, the promise that “never again” would Jews be gunned down en masse, forced to hide in closed rooms, attics, sheds, trees, bushes, and ditches. “Never again” would Jews be vulnerable and defenseless, tortured and incinerated, carted off by gleeful and malevolent foes to their deaths or at least an uncertain future. Never again! A functioning Jewish government with a powerful Jewish army would protect Jews from the helplessness that typified the exile Jew.

That Israeli self-image was shattered by the Hamas invasion of October 7. That day was the Holocaust reborn, if only, mercifully, for one day. Sure, there were no death camps – but before the Nazis constructed the death camps, the Einsatzgruppen – the SS paramilitary squads – rained their terror on Jews, going from village to village and house to house searching for Jews, ultimately murdering more than one million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

The Einsatzgruppen in the guise of Hamas terrorists were reincarnated for one day – October 7 – even as we know from their own words that they would love to do it again and plan an encore. On that day, Jews hid by the thousands in barns and sheds and any place that would conceal them from the ravenous wolves who pursued them. Thousands of Jews ran for their lives from the bullets and bombs of our enemies, and hundreds were gunned down in cold blood. Many were tortured, humiliated, violated, and kidnapped. We even had our partisans spring into action – Jews by the thousands who raced down to Gaza on that holy and sad day to save their fellow Jews, repel the enemy, and defend the nation of Israel. The Arab-Nazis demonstrated the same frenzied hatred of Jews as did their German-Nazi antecedents, their efforts lacking only scale and the capacity to murder even more Jews. The evil desire was exactly the same.

What was missing on October 7 was a functioning government and a functioning army – the very tools that we created in order to preclude another Holocaust. Every institution of society collapsed and left us vulnerable to the predations of the enemy, precisely as happened during the Holocaust. The government and the army began to function again in the days after October 7, with purpose, resolve, and direction, if not always with a precise definition of victory and a clear plan to achieve it, notwithstanding the slogans. Hence, the army leadership ruled out the traditional demarcation of victory – conquest and retention of enemy territory and expulsion of a hostile population. Having dismissed that outcome, it left the government incapable of withstanding American pressure – whether from Biden or Trump – and left us susceptible to this recent craven surrender to terror.

The blow to our self-image – Israel as the antithesis to the Holocaust – was so intense that it led us to surrender to terror and, at least for now, undo the successes of the war, all to remove the stain of October 7 through the release of our hostages, notwithstanding the devastating price in blood we are bound to pay. It is as if the specter of the Holocaust weighs so heavily on our minds that victory and a strategic change in our relations with our enemies is superfluous. It was sufficient that we redeem Jewish honor by inflicting massive and deadly force on the enemy and devastating their territory. For many Israelis, not including the families of the hostages, this outcome revives their faith in Israel as the refuge and haven for Jews, the only place on earth where, in their thinking, Jews are safe, as risible as that sounds. This thinking is short-sighted.

The “Israel as haven” trope has been a staple of Zionism since its founding and always a major incentive for Aliyah. Is it time to retire it? Certainly, Israel is a haven for Jews, and unlike during the Holocaust, Israel enabled us to take the war to our enemies and show them our righteous ferocity in defense of our lives and homeland. Yet, the Torah never promises us that we will be safe in Israel, only that “if you obey My statutes and observe My commandments… you will dwell safely in your land” (Vayikra 26:3,5). G-d gave us the land of Israel not so we should be safe but so that here we will create a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Safety is not the purpose. A holy state in a holy land is the purpose.

October 7 was such a shock to the Israeli self-image and awakened in all of us the latent insecurities of exile Jews that it has rightly caused many Israelis to turn inward, to seek a deeper connection to G-d, Torah, and the Jewish people, to find meaning amid the chaos, corruption, and cruelty. Our self-image has to change. The world offers us no sympathy for being victims. Indeed, more people than we can imagine delight in victimizing Jews. We do not yearn to survive only so that we might survive; we yearn to survive because G-d has given us a life of purpose, a message for mankind, and mandated that we prepare the world for His kingdom. We are an eternal people not because we say we are but because the Eternal G-d has willed it, and because His Torah to which we are faithful is also eternal.

When we realize the nature of our destiny, we will no longer consider the Holocaust as a burden or the State of Israel as the Holocaust inverted. A people of destiny will make better decisions, spiritually and politically, and we will merit to hasten our redemption and the redemption of all mankind.

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