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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Trump 2.0

Posted on January 22, 2025 | 1 comment

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Donald Trump’s return to power and the world stage should presumably benefit the United States, Israel, and the free world while vexing the world’s enemies of virtue and justice, even as we do not put our faith in either princes or human beings (Tehillim 146:3). That being said, President Trump is bound to do many things that please us in Israel and some things that infuriate us. It bears keeping in mind that Trump is President of the United States and not prime minister of Israel, and while the United States and Israel’s interests are often aligned, they are not identical. We are expected to define our national interests and objectives, we are expected to make prudent decisions about our lives and nation, and we should be capable of saying “no” (or “no thank you”) when pressure is applied to coerce us into doing things against those interests and objectives.

If you haven’t yet noticed, Trump can be blustery in his pronouncements and downright tempestuous in his threats. We should also notice that few are carried out, most are uttered for their effect or for purposes of negotiations, and even he isn’t always aware of the ultimate consequences of his fulminations. He threatened “Hell to Pay” if all our hostages were not released by the time he took office, which of course did not happen, and with little prospect of that happening anytime soon. Trump boasted loudly that he would end the Ukraine-Russia war on “Day One,” with “one phone call,” which, do note, did not happen. Perhaps amid all the inaugural festivities, he had no time to place the phone call or maybe Putin’s telephone was busy.

A normal, self-respecting country knows how to say no when its national interests or the lives of its citizens are endangered. We in Israel have not yet achieved that status, and so, notwithstanding our passionate desire to gain freedom for our illegally-and-in-violation-of-international-law-held hostages, our government (again) has committed to releasing into society thousands of terrorists and murderers, all to terrorize and murder again. Suzie Dym of Mattot Arim calculated, based on past ratios of innocents released in exchange for terrorists, that more than 380 Israelis can be expected to be murdered in the coming years by these freed terrorists. Israeli TV generally downplayed the gleeful celebrations occurring in Arab villages in Samaria at the first batch of discharged terrorists; having Israelis watch that would dampen the ecstasy at the release of our first freed hostages. The message our weakness sends to our enemies and the world is that crime pays.

This is not the first time PM Netanyahu caved under pressure and likely won’t be the last but there is no other politician alive today who can put the most positive spin on the most craven surrender. He could depict Custer’s last stand as just a momentary setback on the way to complete victory. Netanyahu has done many positive things as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister but his legacy will forever be marred by the Shalit deal and this, the Netanyahu deal. He could have said no or not yet or not this deal.

Bear in mind that Trump has openly expressed his desire to reclaim the Panama Canal and seize Greenland, to which the prime ministers of Panama and Denmark responded, in their respective languages, “take a hike.” The world did not come to an end, the sun rose the next day, Panama and Denmark are still functioning, and Trump’s threats will go nowhere. (Humble prediction: Greenland will remain Danish, the Panama Canal will not be renamed the Trump Canal, and the US will negotiate slightly reduced passage fees.) What I cannot figure out is what is the American interest in coercing this deal, which, even temporarily, strengthens Hamas and better enables it to remain in power over its quite supportive constituents.

Pundits have opined that Trump wanted a victory on his first day in office, akin to Reagan whose inauguration coincided to the minute with the release of American hostages held in Iran after 444 days of captivity. (The US exchanged or paid nothing for this release, unlike Israel in our current imbroglio.) That reason strikes me as too facile, and even if true, only three Israeli hostages were released – along with numerous Arab evildoers – which is not quite Reaganesque.

Some maintain that this was a good will gesture from Netanyahu to win assistance on the Iranian front or to deflect future pressure, and that could be. But it is even more likely that Trump was testing Netanyahu and his inclination to fold under pressure, which makes it even more dangerous in the future. Strength respects strength and bullies devour weaklings, and it is time that we define our vital interests and protect them at any price.

The good news about Trump is that he comes to most world issues with only one preconceived notion – that he can solve any problem – but no others. He is untethered to the shibboleths of modern diplomacy, especially including the creation of another Palestinian state. We would do well to establish our red lines and soon, or there will be unwanted responses to unexpected events. Yes, Mahmoud Abbas is unlikely to survive the Trump term (he thinks he will be 93 when the Trump administration ends) but Abbas will surely be succeeded by a more polished leader who will beseech the world for the welcoming gift of Palestinian statehood, including the division of Jerusalem, and recite all the clichés the international community wants to hear. We should prepare for that.

The other bit of good news is that Trump is surrounding himself with a foreign policy team that is strongly pro-Israel and a welcome relief from the condescension of the Obama-Biden staff. The dark cloud in this is that Trump sees himself as master of foreign policy and likely will sideline his formal advisors (think FDR ignoring Cordell Hull and Nixon snubbing William Rogers). If so, the real variable is Steve Witkoff, fresh off cramming this horrible deal down Israel’s throats.

He is an unknown. In truth, there is an advantage to an outsider bringing fresh ideas into the staid foreign policy establishment. We benefited greatly from that in Trump’s first term, especially the decoupling of the “Palestinian” issue from other regional relationships which then engendered the Abraham Accords. Sages such as John Kerry, frozen in their outlooks (especially their cold contempt towards Israel), deemed that impossible. It took new eyes to see the possibilities and act upon them.

Yet, it is striking that the three primary architects of the Abraham Accords – Jared Kushner, David Friedman, and Jason Greenblatt – were all Orthodox Jews who possess a particular world view grounded in both realism and a sense of Jewish destiny. By contrast, Witkoff, a successful real attorney and developer, is typical of the secular American Jew who possesses a (thus far) tenuous attachment to Jewish tradition and a paucity of Torah knowledge.

That is a world of difference, illustrated by the attribution to him soon after his appointment as Trump’s Middle East negotiator, that Witkoff sees the conflict in Israel as a “complicated property transaction,” in which, presumably, each side wants something – land or money – and you try to find the middle ground through negotiations. Witkoff has certainly been involved in numerous real estate projects involving complex and acrimonious negotiations. And as a native New Yorker, I too know that New York can be a tough environment in which to live and do business.

Nevertheless, it is highly doubtful that Witkoff has ever been involved in a “complicated property transaction” in which the prospective buyer tortures, mutilates, rapes, and murders the sellers or their tenants. It is most unlikely that Witkoff ever dealt with buyers who routinely blow up the buildings they seek to acquire or kidnap the children of the sellers and hold them in torturous captivity only because these “buyers” are cruel, evil, Nazi-like psychopaths coddled by much of the world. Has Witkoff ever negotiated with malicious ghouls who murder and then hide the bodies of their victims? I think not. Even the New York real estate field is not that tough. Instead, we are in a war of ideas, of conflicting visions about life, human purpose, and destiny, and not in a war over condominiums v. co-ops v. commercial development.

Perhaps Steve Witkoff can learn a little more about Jewish history and Jewish destiny. He would learn that the Bible prophesied our exile from Israel if we sinned, and then our return to the land of Israel at the end of days. He would learn that our struggles in the land of Israel have little to do with territory and much to do with Torah, faith, redemption, Moshiach, and the revelation of G-d’s kingdom on earth. He would learn – many Israelis should learn this as well – that our rights to the land of Israel were given to us by the Creator. No nation and no international organization have the right to compromise that. Those nations that support us in the endeavor of the reborn Jewish state on this holy land will be blessed and those who try to frustrate our destiny will be cursed.

In the meantime, the Trump years will bring us moments of elation and others of deflation. We should not expect him to be everything we want. We should appreciate him as a relief from the nasty rebukes of the Biden years, Biden’s unbridled pursuit of policies that harmed us, and his sale of weapons to us just enough so that we should fight but not enough that we should prevail.

Most importantly, we should remind ourselves that decisions about the destiny of Israel must be made here, by us, by our government, and not by outsiders (or, for that matter, by our Supreme Court). We can listen to our friends and allies – and then decide what is in our interest. Above all, that means internalizing that, as King Shlomo put it (Proverbs 29:18), “when there is no vision, the people will lack restraint, but one who keeps the Torah is fortunate.”

We need to articulate a Jewish vision for the future. People with a strategy will always run circles around those without a strategy – and leaders without a strategy eventually wind up with Oslo Accords, expelling Jews from Gaza, repeated wars in Lebanon and Gaza, incentivizing hostage taking by rewarding the kidnappers, and conquering Gaza with no plan to reassert sovereignty and reestablish Jewish settlement there. Our enemies have a vision; we could use one.

The purported suggestion that Gazans will relocate to another country and Israel retain security control over that tiny, doomed territory, is a good start, far more encouraging than the hostage deal. And Donald Trump will respond more favorably to a nation with a vision that can simultaneously further American interests in the world for peace and prosperity (or vice versa) than a nation that lurches from crisis to crisis, groping in the dark for a way forward because it eschews the light of Torah.

We need a clear vision because Trump is mercurial, temperamental, transactional, and unpredictable. He wants concrete accomplishments and not just diplomatic babble, deeds and not talk, but like many others, he considers an “agreement” and a “signing ceremony” to be an accomplishment, regardless of its enforceability or future hazards. Like many in politics, he can be a “stage one thinker” as well, never contemplating the longer-term effects of any action. As such, our vision, and our commitment to implement it, are indispensable.

If we ascertain and solidify our vision, the Trump years can be a boon for Israel, the region, and the world. If our leaders cannot figure that out, then we need new ones, faithful ones, and soon.

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Has Anything Changed?

Posted on January 17, 2025 | 8 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

For all the government hype, spin, and bluster since October 8, 2023, in the end, has anything changed? The current hostage deal would seem to indicate that the conceptziya is alive and well. This is not the agreement of either a victorious nation or a nation poised for victory in six weeks. Hamas is not defeated. Gaza will continue to pose a security threat to Israeli citizens, and all the hostages will likely not be released. For why would Hamas release all of them? Hamas is evil but not foolish. The hostages are Hamas’ best asset, because Hamas knows its incarceration of Israeli hostages leads our people and government to act emotionally, which is to say self-destructively and recklessly.

There will be joy at the release of the freed hostages, at least by the families of those released. I will feel relief, not joy. The joy will appear on the faces of the Arabs who have once again seen their psychopath-terrorists murder Jews and literally get away with it., They will be whooping it up, handing out sweets, and plotting their next massacre of an “unwise and foolish people” (Devarim 32:6). Indeed, I imagine this is the same feeling that Jews had after the Holocaust when the survivors were liberated – not joy but relief. How can there have been joy, knowing what they suffered in captivity, knowing how many did not survive?

Relief, not joy, but at least when the Holocaust survivors were freed, the Nazis were defeated. Here, in our case, we have empowered these Nazis to fight and murder us another day, we have even emptied our prisons of more homicidal Nazis so they should be able to resume their life’s work of murdering Jews. Imagine winning the release of survivors by granting freedom to Goebbels, Goring, Hoess and Eichmann. That is our choice, and our fate.

Today, ours is not the face of victory. Have we squandered the lives of our precious soldiers just to restore the status quo of October 6, 2023? Have we elated our enemies just because we think that now Trump and the Americans will give us a free hand to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities? Most importantly, if the war resumes after the end of the cease fire, how many our soldiers will be killed once again conquering the same swaths of Gaza, now fully booby-trapped and mined? Why would any soldier want to go back there, especially knowing how ephemeral are any gains we make and how permanent is their loss of life?

For all the talk, we will still be prolonging the war and strengthening our enemies by lavishing even more provisions on these “innocent civilians,” not one of whom embraced Israel’s offer of $5,000,000 and free passage in exchange for information leading to the return of our hostages. The war is still managed by defeatists in the General Staff and the intelligence services, who still want to mow the lawn and prepare for another battle in this endless war, despite Hamas now on the brink of defeat. Just like in the Second Lebanon War, we are still sending our soldiers – our finest youth – to be killed and maimed seizing territory on Monday that we will surrender to the enemy on Thursday. For what? For what did they die? And we wonder why Haredim refuse to serve in an army that, too often – it is painful to say – is cavalier about the lives of our soldiers, refusing to bomb from the air buildings where no civilians should be, forcing our soldiers to serve as sitting ducks for the enemy, and still refusing to cut off food, water, electricity, and internet from our enemies.

We are still being lied to by our government. As I wrote during the first week of the war, defeating Hamas and freeing all our hostages are both worthy objectives but they are incompatible absent a miracle, and yet those goals are still being trumpeted as realistic and impending. The opposition, meanwhile, is still focused on toppling Netanyahu, with victory over our foes and freedom for the hostages merely secondary considerations. The streets are still filled with protesters who contrive fears of a Netanyahu dictatorship while obviously, and vehemently, preferring an actual judicial dictatorship, notwithstanding that the former is subject to elections while the latter is not and wishes simply to perpetuate its power by any means necessary.

After all the promises of “absolute victory,” and after PM Netanyahu demonstrated resilience and resolve such as he had never exhibited before as prime minister, he reverted to form, caved under pressure, and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Certainly, we were – and are – traumatized by the invasion and massacre of October 7, but few lessons have been learned. Pressure from Biden or Trump should be meaningless if they weaken our core values and interests. That is how independent nations act: they define their interests and do everything to achieve them. True resolve causes even the most intense pressure to dissipate. Israel has never learned that lesson, which is why we have suffered consistent diplomatic defeats for more than fifty years, and time and again, we rehabilitate and strengthen our enemies.

We still fall for Hamas’ psychological mind games – dangling hostage videos, murdering some, threatening others – all to achieve their aims, which they do. We know these are their tactics – and yet we still succumb to them. (Hamas demanded the release of more than one thousand of their terrorists? Why aren’t some of them being returned in body bags, like too many of our hostages?) We are easily manipulated, our enemies know it, and so they do it repeatedly. We learned nothing from the disastrous Shalit deal – nothing. That lopsided and immoral exchange not only murdered hundreds of us in the ensuing years but also guaranteed that the enemy would try to seize more hostages again, because, why not? It works. And it will work again in the future because the release of murderers in exchange for innocent civilians incentivizes the enemy to do it again. And again. The prattle about not releasing any of the murderers from the October 7 massacre in this round only guarantees that there will be future hostage-taking to win their freedom. Has anything changed?

It would be more plausible if many of those who disseminate the canard that “pidyon shvuyim,” the ransoming of captives, is the most important mitzvah in the Torah actually understood the concept, and perhaps even observed some of the other mitzvot in the Torah. (What the Sages meant is that “ransoming captives” is the highest form of tzedakah because it encompasses all dimensions of that mitzvah.) And as is well known to those who open a Gemara, we do not ransom hostages “for more than their value, for the betterment of the world” (Gittin 45a) because “overpaying” will ultimately bankrupt the community and encourage more hostage-taking. We do exactly what the Gemara says not to do, and obviously to our detriment.

Releasing bloodthirsty murderers is not just the “difficult price” we must pay, as the senseless and repetitive cliché uttered by numerous commentators and politicians puts it. It is not moral; it is immoral, because it has, does, and will put many others at risk. We do not endanger the entire community to save a small group. It is well meaning but also flat out stupid. And we need not speculate that this release might endanger the rest of us. It will! It always has. Terrorists leave our prisons more hardened and more hateful of Jews than they entered, and even more contemptuous of us because they know our weaknesses and how we cannot overcome them. More of us will be murdered, and still others of us will be taken hostage in the future. The only thing we don’t know are the names of the future victims.

Have we learned anything? Aryeh Deri announced that he would support “any deal.” And what if Hamas demanded that Yeshiva students must serve in the IDF? Would he pay that “difficult price”? Haredim should be embarrassed that they largely shirk army service but what is almost as embarrassing, this refusal has compromised their ability to present a true Torah view on “ransoming captives.” They lack any credibility, as they necessarily must prefer any option that does not involve the military in which they do not serve. That means you, Degel HaTorah, which has been forced to furl that flag and, in the process, muted the voice of Torah.

We are still tormented by a legal and judicial establishment that prioritizes the lives of our enemies over our own and which fetishizes the chimera known as “international law,” all progressive doctrines that favor the evildoers in any conflict and render victory impossible for those foolish enough to be guided by it. We are supposed to be the “light unto the nations.” We are the ones who should be teaching the true ethics of war to the world – not vice versa. We should be proudly and unabashedly disseminating the Torah’s ethic of war and not constraining ourselves by absurd moral notions concocted by human beings that cannot produce a better, more just world. Indeed, since the first Geneva Conventions were adopted in 1864, the world has experienced in the last 160 years unprecedented carnage and brutality. We have learned nothing from the evildoers’ exploitation of “international law,” that has effectively deprived the West of winning any war since World War II.

 We have learned nothing from the Oslo debacle, from the Gaza Expulsion catastrophe, from the half-hearted waging of the Second Lebanon War and the various eruptions in Gaza, from the “hostages for terrorists” exchanges now four decades old, and from our reluctance, even fear, of acknowledging the true character of our enemies and dealing with that reality. When the next attack comes – and it will – and we suffer again, and go to war again, we will be accompanied yet again by the same false promises, the same lofty words, the same “together we will win!” – even as we disdain any plan for real victory.

We are victims of a terrible failure of vision, and of leadership, in the government and the opposition, in the upper echelons of the military and legal establishments. This deal is a classic example of “stage one thinking,” a visceral reaction that does not consider “stage two,” the real-world consequences of that emotional decision. Watch the glee on the faces of our enemies – and the agony on ours – and determine who thinks they won, and who thinks they lost.

It is especially galling that we take pride in our humiliation. Our enemies have not been deterred. They have been emboldened, inspired, and heartened by our surrender. They do not care about life – even their own. They care about murdering Jews and destroying the State of Israel, and we – wittingly or unwittingly – are abetting them.

Sadly, nothing has really changed. As a nation, we have been repeatedly let down by our leaders. The only redeeming value of the current government is that any potential replacement would be far worse. That is our fate – and a good reason we pray daily for judges and counsellors as of old, those who can hasten the coming of Moshiach and the kingdom of G-d on earth. May Moshiach come soon and may Hashem in His mercy spare us the harshest consequences of our folly.

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We the People

Posted on January 8, 2025 | 1 comment

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Israelis do not usually agree on much but there is consensus on two related issues. Most Israelis feel there is a need for a commission of inquiry to investigate the catastrophic Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath, and most Israelis feel that such a commission of inquiry will not be objective, impartial, or fair. Hence the stalemate – and both points have substantial merit.

Obviously, the systemic breakdowns that allowed the invasion, massacre, torture, and hostage-taking to occur – an epic failure – need to be scrutinized if only to preclude a future recurrence. Yet, there is no foreseeable circumstance in which an objective tribunal can be formed because there is no element of military, political, and judicial apparatus that is untainted, and no establishment organ that has clean hands in this disaster. Any investigation will necessarily seek to deflect blame from the sponsors of the investigation, point fingers at the “other,” and exploit the conclusions for crass electoral purposes. The blameworthy are being asked to investigate themselves, a pattern familiar to Israel and occurring now in the purported investigation by the military prosecutor’s office of the military prosecutor’s office and its alleged fabrication of evidence in the Sde Teiman fiasco.

Who is guiltless in the wake of the Hamas massacre? Certainly not the military leadership who failed to anticipate the invasion or respond to the initial encroachments effectively. Israel’s vaunted intelligence – whose craftiness and ingenuity have been astonishing in the last year – failed miserably in the weeks before October 7. Repeated reports by the reconnaissance scouts of unusual Hamas activity as late as the morning of October 7 were studiously ignored. Vital intelligence was not passed up the chain of command, and definitely not to the political decision-makers, another recurring phenomenon in Israel. The military’s embrace of a small, smart army relying on technology was an abject failure. The few generals and commanders who vocally objected to the complacency and indifference were edged aside, reassigned, or dismissed. Groupthink prevailed and the echo chamber was deafening. Accountability will not be readily forthcoming, a disservice to our dedicated soldiers whose bravery and professionalism will inspire generations to come.

Led by the military’s analysts, the political class assumed that Hamas was deterred and would not dare to attack. The politicians, including the Prime Minister (but notably excluding some of the leading Religious Zionist leaders), were guilty of abetting Hamas, allowing unrestricted funding, building, plotting, and finally execution of Hamas’ nefarious plans. The politicians failed in one of the most basic calculations in military strategy – fighting a definite war today with X casualties versus fighting a potential war in the near future with 5X casualties. The “quiet for quiet” gambit was an abysmal failure. They all guessed wrong and for more than a decade, letting Hamas fester and its capabilities metastasize, with devastating consequences to life, health, families, and not least to the Israeli psyche.

Few objected to the Hamas buildup, with prominent exceptions, among others, Betzalel Smotrich and Michael ben Ari, with the latter even being banned from political life. Almost every political party left, right, and center, has a role in this debacle, including the Haredi parties whose repudiation of military service for their constituents leaves them without a coherent or credible voice on security-related matters. Of course, Binyamin Netanyahu shares this guilt as well – but so does almost every other conceivable candidate for prime minister for the next decade. The conceptziya devoured an entire generation of Israeli generals and politicians, even as they try to avoid the day of reckoning.

The mainstream media are also culpable, for unquestioningly parroting the establishment views, and especially for their relentless and obsessive hatred of PM Netanyahu as the gravest threat to the Israeli polity. As it turned out, they were wrong: the gravest threat to the Israeli polity was located in Gaza, and Lebanon, and Syria, and Iran, and in the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. The media also misconstrued the temporary calm in Gaza as something permanent and irrevocable and favored short-term solutions to Israel’s military challenges so as to better focus on their most important agenda item: getting rid of Netanyahu.

The legal and judicial establishment – particularly those nominally charged with appointing a commission of inquiry – is also guilty. They are guilty of micromanaging the IDF’s response to everything, guilty of favoring the lives of terrorists and enemy civilians over the well-being of our own soldiers, guilty of tying the army’s hands, and guilty of persecuting the Prime Minister over legal and literal nonsense. The Attorney General has assumed dictatorial powers, with the entire land of Israel her fiefdom. The military advocates allowed the enemy to approach the Gaza border unmolested, continue to hamstring the soldiers and are also anti-Netanyahu activists. Is there any chance their culpability will be exposed? Not as long as the judges play a role – or actually participate – in any investigation. And the Kaplan protesters redefined democracy – now construed as “rule by the self-appointed elites” – and desperately, illegally, and occasionally violently protect the hegemony of the legal and judicial establishment in defiance of all democratic norms.

At the risk of offending readers, another component of society is also responsible for this calamity – we the people. We the people who prefer an illusory calm to dealing with real threats, we the people who seek quick fixes (and encourage the politicians to do the same, even as their popularity continues to be foolishly measured in weekly polls), we the people who supported the Oslo cataclysm and the Gaza expulsion, we the people who would rather be soothed by the elegant words of false prophets of “peace now” than confront the harsh reality of the neighborhood in which we live, we the people who might again be seduced by lullabies sung to us by whoever succeeds Mahmoud Abbas, we the people whose rabid support for political parties and personalities rather than ideas and policies mimics the fervor of football fans and their favorite teams.

Who can judge, when everyone is guilty, including the judges?

Perhaps, then, we should learn a lesson from Yosef. Ramban, the venerated biblical commentator, assumed that Yaakov never found out what happened to Yosef (Commentary to Breisheet 45:27). How is that even possible – wasn’t he curious, didn’t he ask, wasn’t he told?

It seems that Yosef sent Yaakov a clue at their very first interaction: “And [Yaakov} saw the wagons that Yosef sent” (ibid), on which Rashi comments, utilizing the play on words of agalot (wagons) and eglot (heifers), “Yosef informed Yaakov of the religious subject he had been studying with his father at the time when he left him, to wit, the section of the axed heifer.”

The symbolism is dramatic. As the Torah relates (Devarim 21:1-9), a heifer has its neck broken as part of the rite accompanying the expiation of an unsolved murder – a crime for which there was only a victim but no accused, no evidence, and no witnesses. In that scenario, it is the society that assumes the guilt, not any individual or faction. This was a subtle message to Yaakov not to investigate what happened to Yosef. In essence, Yosef told Yaakov we are all guilty – you for favoring me, me for disrespecting my brothers, they for selling me. The fewer details you know, the better, because our society could not survive a fair and complete investigation. No one will walk away unscathed. The same is true today. Even if three unbiased people could be found in the entire country, the elitists will never allow an investigation whose conclusions are not preordained.

To be sure, there must be an investigation at a certain point of the October 7 devastation, if only to draw operational conclusions of what went wrong, why, and how the flawed process can be rectified. Future military and intelligence leaders must ensure that their ranks are filled with a diversity of views, especially views that challenge conventional wisdom. And there needs to be reflection on the goals we seek to achieve as a society, given our enemies across the region and our profound yearning for peace – so profound that it has often engendered the pursuit of fantasies and illusions and a headlong rush from reality. Those goals should feature the creation of a more Jewish state, a nation proud of our uniqueness and our identity, something that ironically the war has catapulted to center stage.

There will come a time when the assumption of personal and collective responsibility will be in order, without such being bogged down in politics. That time is not now. The rival committees now investigating will do little other than stoke the flames of discord by pointing the finger of guilt at their respective political adversaries. There will be an unseemly search for convenient scapegoats and a mad scramble to avoid personal responsibility. For now, it suffices to say, as Yosef implied, we are one nation, we all have much to regret, we all have much we did wrong, we all have much to be proud of – and we all have a grand and majestic destiny to which we look forward.

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