Wednesday, 23 Tishrei 5786 – Isru Chag Shemini Atzeret
What is the Basis for the State of Israel’s Failure?
It is difficult, extremely difficult, to decide from which angle to approach the disgraceful agreement that everyone is celebrating. It could fill dozens of articles, and yet few would grasp the depth of the fracture. Benjamin Netanyahu, master of rhetoric and oratory, wizard of international relations and champion of mass media, knows his flock well. Only he, with his sleight of hand, could turn a shameful failure into an “absolute victory,” a humiliating surrender into a “monumental achievement,” and a national disgrace into “diplomatic strength.”
One could write about the inconceivable ease with which nearly two thousand terrorists were released, including murderers (that is, those who succeeded in murdering; the rest only tried and failed), after Netanyahu himself was once a leading opponent of deals to free murderers. In a world ruled by logic, there would be grounds for outrage, especially given that the horrific massacre two years ago was a direct result of the Shalit deal. One might have expected at least that Netanyahu would learn the bitter lesson from that bitter experience. But apparently, common sense is a rare commodity today; many prefer superficiality over it, and they refuse to let the facts and the stark, murderous reality staring them in the face dim the wishes of their hearts. The holy words of the Gemara echo through the generations (Yoma 86b): “Rav Huna said: Once a person commits a transgression and repeats it, it becomes permitted to him. Permitted to him? One might think so? Rather, say: It becomes as if permitted to him.”
One could write about the unbearable capitulation to a handful of anarchists who hold Netanyahu by the throat, and his refusal to make the courageous decision to break free from their grip. If the hypothesis is correct—that the reckless protests against the elected government were the trigger that enabled Hamas to carry out the horrific massacre—then it can equally be stated that in the night of Galant’s dismissal, when Netanyahu surrendered to that deranged and reckless handful (by rescinding his decision), the foundations were laid for the current capitulation, which would not have come to pass without the funded and publicized “hostage campaign.”
One could write about the treachery, defeatism, auto-antisemitism, self-destructive impulse, and other maladies of the Left, and the media that gave a platform to the campaign that knowingly sabotaged the war—cynically plucking at emotional strings, employing false and abusive motifs from our sources such as “redeeming captives,” and consciously collaborating with the worst of Israel’s enemies—yes, even with the Gazan murderers.
One could write about so many failures: the senior military command that threw sand in the gears of the war; the IDF Code of Ethics, whose adherents are directly responsible for the murder of countless Jewish soldiers and civilians due to their mercy toward the cruel enemy; the blind Bibi-ism that blinds the faithful public, which should have cried out bitterly against the deal and prevented it by any means; the naivety, intellectual negligence, and lack of initiative of the Haredi politicians, who thought that supporting a reckless deal would somehow help them with the draft law; the no less profound naivety of large segments of Religious Zionism, who collaborated with the Kaplan Street protest activists against Torah scholars instead of understanding that the knife the Left stabs into the backs of the fighters gets further sharpened when it succeeds in stabbing into the crowd of believers.
As stated, it is extremely difficult to decide which aspect to write about. I will admit without shame: my holiday joy was mingled with great sorrow over the state of the nation—two years in which there was hope for revival, for shaking off the dust, for returning to the source, to the identity, to the Jewish root; for returning to the vision of conquering the Land, settling it, and dwelling in it. And now, with our own hands, we are squandering it all and sacrificing our future on the altar of the “hostage religion” and American dictates.
And now Shemini Atzeret has arrived—the day when the Jewish people unite with their God after the days of Sukkot; the day we complete the Torah reading and celebrate its conclusion; and the day when, two years ago, the order of the world collapsed, forcing even the willfully blind to open their eyes and see the enemy as he is (until they decided to close them again by force). And when we reached the Torah reading, I understood that it all begins here, with “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), in the first Rashi that we all know but don’t always internalize: our exclusive right to the Land granted by the Creator of the world. Only by recognizing this can we truly sit here securely and repel the claims of “you are thieves.”
At the sycophantic celebration held in the Knesset in honor of Donald Trump, who forced this disgraceful agreement on Israel due to his economic interests in Qatar and Saudi Arabia (and the Israeli government, of course, would not refuse a “friendly” president, whose friendship matters more to the government than the friendship of the Beloved from the Song of Songs), Opposition Leader Yair Lapid delivered a speech and received applause even from government members. These were his words:
“From here, I say to everyone who protested against Israel in the last two years, in London and Rome, in Paris and at Columbia University: I do not represent the government; I am the head of the opposition, and yet I say to you: You were fooled. The truth is there was no genocide. There was no intent to starve…”
When historians in hundreds of years investigate the annals of Israeli flaccidity in the struggle for the Land, these words will stand out as one of the most blatant documents of the phenomenon. Our modern-day Nazis carried out a horrific massacre against us, with an undisguised intent to destroy us. For two years, they held our hostages in inhuman conditions under the protection of the supporting civilian population (try imagining the most “extremist” Jews in Yitzhar holding an Arab hostage, and think how many minutes it would take for him to be released—then perhaps you’ll understand that to hold a hostage, you need civilian backing; that’s what they call “non-involved”…). And after all this, what matters to us is to tell the world that we didn’t commit genocide. This is how one behaves who does not believe in his right to exist on this Land. This is how one behaves who did not study Chumash with Rashi, who did not study Chumash at all. This is how one behaves who does not believe in his right to win the war. It’s not just Lapid; this is the full right-wing government, addicted to that same conception, and the Kaplan Street protest activists knew full well how to identify its Achilles’ heel and stab their dagger into it.
The disgraceful surrender agreement—its birth was in the cabinet decision at the start of the war, which defined the war’s goals as releasing the hostages and toppling Hamas. Had they studied Chumash with Rashi, the goals would have been defined as conquering Gaza, destroying the enemy, expelling the Arab enemy from it, and establishing Jewish settlement within it. With all the good intentions, without Torah study for its own sake, you get nowhere. Let us pray to the Creator of the world to have mercy on us, to grant us another chance to return to Him, to sprinkle pure water upon us and pour out upon us a spirit from on high, that we may merit to save ourselves from ourselves, and that the fallen shall not have died in vain…
The author of this article is Rabbi Yehuda Epstein – Chairman of Agudat Kedushat Zion.
The translation into English is by Vilnagaon.org