Translation by Vilnagaon.org 26th of Cheshvan 5786
Many struggle to understand how the United States has turned against us, how the “most pro-Israel administration ever” has flipped on us, how in a short time we have gone from a situation of American support for transferring Gaza’s population to various places around the globe to a reality in which Steve Witkoff, the special American envoy, sits in Israel’s cabinet meetings and scolds ministers as if he were Antony Blinken, the hostile Biden administration’s Secretary of State, and then goes off to hobnob with the Islamo-Nazi tyrant Khalil al-Hayya, the leader of the murderers, holds a cordial chat with him and lays the groundwork for a state for the killers.
But anyone who remembers a little history from just over thirty years ago will understand that we are witnessing a repeating pattern, and as the wisest of men said in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) (1:9–10):
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has been already in the ages before us.”
In those days, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein conquered the oil-rich state of Kuwait and called it “the 19th province of Iraq.” In the White House sat George H. W. Bush – then, as now, a Republican. At the head of the Israeli government stood Yitzhak Shamir – then, as now, from the Likud, heading a full-fledged right-wing government. Then, as now, the American president decided that with all due respect to Israel, he had other interests in the region. He built an international coalition to fight Saddam Hussein, and for that purpose the Saudis gave him complete freedom of action on their soil. Egypt and other Arab states joined, alongside European countries.
Then, as now, Saddam Hussein explicitly threatened to annihilate Israel, boasted of his ability to launch precision missiles, and there was even fear of the use of nuclear, biological, or other unconventional weapons – despite the fact that ten years earlier Israel had bombed the Iraqi reactor.
According to the Israeli ethos forged since the state’s establishment, Jews would no longer go like sheep to the slaughter but would stand and defend themselves. The failure of the Allies – including our American friends – to bomb the railway tracks to Auschwitz seared into the heart of the young State of Israel the lesson that only we will defend ourselves and we will never again rely on the kindness of the nations.
Yet George Bush thought otherwise. He was not prepared to give up the coalition he had assembled with the Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, against their Iraqi brethren. He knew that if Israel fought Iraq, the entire Arab world would have to stand with it, and he certainly could not side with Israel. Therefore he told Shamir: Israel would have to sit quietly, absorb the missiles fired at her, suffer casualties, lose her deterrent power, and hope for an American-Saudi-Egyptian-European victory.
Shamir – once a leader of Lehi – adopted the historic Left’s position that “restraint is strength,” offering convoluted and grave-faced explanations that this was in Israel’s interest, and the right-wing public followed him blindly. For good measure, he brought Rehavam Ze’evi of the Moledet party into the government and cabinet, a move that gave wall-to-wall legitimacy to the policy of restraint and humiliation.
Indeed, Saddam Hussein was defeated in that war, and a triumphant George Bush delivered his victory speech. And what did Israel receive in return for its restraint and for entrusting its security to the American-led international coalition? In that very victory speech, Bush laid the foundation for “solving the Palestinian problem.” A short time later Shamir went to the Madrid Conference to appease Bush, and a year later we got the Oslo Accords – whose bloody consequences we continue to suffer to this very day, culminating, of course, in the horrific massacre two years ago.
Oslo was birthed by Rabin, Peres, Beilin and their circle, but its conception occurred in Shamir’s unfortunate decision to surrender Israel’s independence and the principle that we alone look after our security and never abandon it to foreigners. The American president understood that Israel could be bent to broader U.S. interests in the region, and he saw a need to compensate and reward the Arab world for rallying against the people’s hero, Saddam Hussein. Israel paid the price.
Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun. Benjamin Netanyahu has now handed our security over to the United States. The American headquarters in Kiryat Gat is intended to ensure our defeat in Gaza and to preserve Trump’s interests in the Gulf. Has Netanyahu learned nothing from Shamir’s mistake? He is, after all, the son of a great historian…
The sad answer is that when there is no vision, when no one truly understands why we must fight for the Land of Israel – including Gaza, Lebanon, Bashan, and all the other parts that Hashem has placed in our hands – a vacuum is created in the national consciousness, and into that vacuum the Americans march with their own interests. Had we treated Gaza as our land, that strip – captured in six days back then – would have been recaptured in two days today, and the Hamas-supporting population would have been expelled to the four corners of the earth. But we feared, we hesitated, we wavered and dawdled.
Netanyahu’s devotees blamed the Biden administration, but today it is clear to all that the problem is not the American administration but the Israeli spirit – the spirit of the start-up nation that is unwilling to place a Torah vision against the deluge vision of Al-Aqsa. As the heads of the defense establishment said: it is impossible to defeat Hamas’s vision…
Indeed, one cannot defeat Hamas’s vision with precision weapons and the mindset of a Western country that only wants quiet and a strong economy. But it is absolutely possible to destroy Hamas and the murderous Arab national movement of which Hamas is merely one arm – by means of a deep-rooted Jewish vision drawn from the Jewish sources that the defense establishment, in its ignorance, does not know. Whoever sees global warming as the greatest security challenge facing us truly cannot win. And right-wing governments remain captive to the same radical leftists who head the defense apparatuses.
If we wish to learn the lessons of the past, if we wish to regain our independence and wage our own wars instead of remaining subject to the mercy of the nations, we must undertake a serious house-cleaning and return to Hashem and His Torah – not only as individuals but first and foremost as a nation. This is not a luxury; it is a matter of our physical and spiritual survival!
The author is Rabbi Yehuda Epstein – Chairman of the Kedushat Zion Association