A sobered nation returns to (a likely long) war—with the outcome still far from certain
And for the first time since the war began, more and more newspaper articles and columns are beginning to argue that the war is not going nearly as well as the army would have us believe.
As of this writing, on Sunday December 3, Israel is back at war. At this very moment, Israeli planes are bombing Khan Yunis in Gaza (a city known to be much more extreme and violent than Gaza City, which Israel (perhaps?) neutralized in the previous round), Israeli F-15 are in the skies over Beirut, an attack of some sort was carried out in Yemen and Israel is regularly bombing Syria. In Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), the heat is also turned up, and Israel is preemptively arresting Hamas members, including Muslim clerics, and preparing to destroy their homes.
Netanyahu, Gallant, Gantz and the IDF apparently understand that the clock is ticking and that we’d better get done what we want to do before we can’t. Israel, it seems, wants to do a lot. And that list doesn’t even include Iran—which is responsible for all of this.
Behind the scenes of this military activity, though, the mood has shifted, as seen clearly in this weekend’s press. We’ll first take a look at the front page of Makor Rishon from this past Friday, below, and then share portions of a telling column by Ari Shavit.
First…
In mid-December, I’ll be in New York for two events in conjunction with The Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership of Yeshiva University.
The first event requires registration (via the red button below); the second event is open to the public with no need for pre-registration.
On Sunday, December 17, at 8:00 in Cedarhurst:
On Tuesday, December 19, at Weissberg Commons, Yeshiva University campus, Washington Heights:
Now, back to that front page of Makor Rishon from Friday. Here’s what’s worth noting:
Maya Shem, the woman facing the camera, at the moment she was reunited with her mother and brother after being released from Hamas captivity. Take a look at her eyes. Nothing more needs to be said.
In the ORANGE outline to the right: Gideon Sa’ar, a member of the cabinet, in a column predicting (correctly, obviously) that the fighting would resume, and warning that there is no way that Gaza can be left in the hands of the Palestinian Authority. Among almost all Israelis, the suggestion that the PA assume responsibility for Gaza is a complete non-starter. Given Kamala Harris’ comments to the contrary from Dubai, are the US and Israel in store for a head-on collision?
In the PURPLE outline, center top: Hagai Segal writes that a “all of them for all of them” would be a national disaster. One hears rumors that Hamas is going to propose that they release all the hostages they currently have in exchange for all of the security prisoners Israel now has (presumably with a commitment from Israel that the war then ends). But Israelis are keenly aware of the price we’re now paying for the Shalit deal. Yahya Sinwar, who heads Hamas, spent 20 years in Israeli prison, speaks Hebrew fluently, was operated on by Israelis doctors for a brain tumor and saved, and was freed as part of the Shalit deal — and now represents an existential threat to Israel. Israelis are unlikely to repeat that “mistake.” Which means that if Hamas offers a deal that would return all the hostages, Israel may well reject it. What that will do to internal politics is hard to know—but it will be heartbreaking.
In the GREEN outline: Ran Baratz, once very close to Netanyahu but now a harsh critic (though Baratz himself remains very much on the right), writes that in the form of the IDF spokesman and others, the IDF has a publicity machine working overtime, covering up grievous IDF mistakes and failures, exaggerating accomplishments and misleading the Israeli public. It’s an astonishing accusation in the middle of war, and Baratz acknowledges that he wrote the column with many misgivings. We’ll return to his assertions down the road.
In the BLUE outline, top left: Yehudah Yifrach writes that “the son of all of us,” the phrase that was used prior to the Shalit deal to express the notion that all of Israel is responsible for all Israelis, is “good for Hamas.” It’s got to be mind over heart, argues Yifrach—we cannot let our emotional attachment to the hostages or to our desire to get them back lead us to repeat strategic mistakes. To say that that is a contentious position in Israel today would be to put matters mildly—but he is hardly the only one saying “we got back who we could get back, and now we just wage and win the war.” Though not everyone here is even convinced that we can win the war. That, too, is for down the road.
In the YELLOW outline, bottom left: Amir Rapoport writes that “the front in the north [Lebanon/Hezbollah] poses an enormous challenge, and there are no evident solutions.” That is clearly true. And today, as we noted above, Israeli F-15’s are flying not over Hezbollah territory in Lebanon’s south, but over Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. The message is clear. Will it work? And if it doesn’t?
In addition to these issues, one issue that figured centrally in all the papers that I saw this weekend was the growing evidence that an officer named “Vav” (her first initial, apparently) wrote up an assessment of what Hamas was planning—including penetrating the border with thousands of fighters, taking over army bases and kibbutzim and more—and got it right almost to the T. But she was told to drop her “fantasy” prognostications. How far up the food chain did her warnings go? People at the top are running for cover and issuing denials, of course, but two things are clear: (1) her warnings got pretty darn far up before being trashed, and (2) she ended one of her memos saying “fifty years ago, we ignored evidence because of a ‘conception’—and paid a horrific price. We ought not do the same thing again.”
This week, we’ll look at a few columns that reflect the mood in Israel. Today, we’ll begin with one by Ari Shavit, the well-known author and journalist, whose book My Promised Land became an international sensation.
His weekly column for Makor Rishon on Friday was entitled:
1948 2.0—It’s time to rebuild the iron wall
On the seventh of October 2023, two dramatic events occurred simultaneously: Israeli deterrence collapsed and the Israeli social contract was tattered.
First, the pogrom in the Western Negev gave our enemies an achievement unlike any they had in the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Within a few hours, they destroyed the Israeli defense line, captured several IDF bases, took over civilian settlements and did as they pleased to an entire country. In doing so, they fulfilled a hundred-year-old dream: to break the Iron Wall. To breach the walls of the Zionist citadel and massacre its inhabitants. To make the Israelis feel like crusaders. Indeed: the precedent that Hamas created on the Accursed Sabbath is a terrible precedent. Even two months after its occurrence, the disaster of the temporary Arab occupation of part of the Land of Israel continues to cast a heavy shadow on the national security of the Jewish state.
Second, the pogrom in the Western Negev meant that Israeli citizens were abandoned. Thousands of Jews experienced a trauma the likes of which had not been seen since the beginning of Zionism. For long hours, they locked themselves in the shelters like Anne Frank, terrorists roaming around them, breaking into their homes and seeking to slaughter them. And for all that time, the State of Israel was nowhere to be seen. The Israel Defense Forces did not protect them. There was no security, no independence, and no sovereignty. … In the most basic sense, the contract between the state and its citizens was violated. Decades from now, the temporary disintegration of the state on that Accursed Sabbath will cast a heavy shadow on the Jewish soul, the Zionist identity and the Israeli state.
So the war with Hamas is a two-dimensional war: on the one hand, its supreme goal is to renew overwhelming Israeli deterrence, to re-erect the Iron Wall. We must defeat our enemies completely in order to erase from their minds the temptation created by the bereavement, failure and weakness of October 7th. We must build the walls of the citadel, strengthen it itself and ensure the lives and safety of all its inhabitants. On the other hand, the supreme goal of the war is to establish and renew the Israeli social contract. To establish a state whose mission is not only to protect its citizens but to be worthy of them. To restore sovereignty, independence, security - and trust. And to ensure: never again.
That is the reason why the terrible bargain of hostages-for-truce was justified. After the State of Israel earned the trust of the residents of the Western Negev, it had to do everything to regain that trust. It had no moral authority to say “no” to the return of the children and their mothers. Israel had a human obligation to rescue boys, girls and grandmothers from hell. It had a national mandate to renew the contract between Israel and the Israelis. We had to do what we did and pay the price we paid to start healing a deep inner wound.
But between the deal itself and the events that arose around it in the last week there was a great distance. Day after day and night after night, Israel surrendered to the sadistic emotional manipulations of the mass murderer Yahya Sinwar. A country dedicated to winning-at-all-costs became a country of emotion-before-everything. Instead of carrying out the essential transaction with businesslike silence and modesty, we turned it into a shocking televised event utterly inappropriate for wartime. In doing so, we committed an irresponsible act that will greatly increase the price of the deal for the release of the soldiers and may even endanger it. In doing so, we damaged our regional image as a wounded lion determined to hunt and kill those who dared to attack him. Without intending to, we took Hamas out of the beaten leper's corner and gave it a certain type of legitimacy and a certain type of image of victory.
So now we must reject not only the memory of what happened at the beginning of October, but also the achievements that Hamas gained at the end of November. We must go back and remember the supreme goal of the war: the renewal of overwhelming Israeli deterrence. This will be impossible to achieve without defeating Hamas in Gaza, keeping Hezbollah away from the northern border and deterring Iran. And this will be impossible to achieve without a very long and very difficult struggle, of which the current campaign is only the first campaign. What we are facing is long years of second War of Independence, 1948 version 2.0. And what we must do is adapt both the state, the army and the Israeli spirit so it can coexist with a brutal, long-term and arduous existential battle.
And coming up …. The Israeli press is actively watching the explosion of anti-Semitism throughout the world.
The headline below is a quote of a conversation with the Deputy Mayor of Paris. “Do you think that there is a future for Jews in France?” she was asked.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said.
In days to come, we’ll be covering the impact of global anti-Semitism on Israel’s sense of purpose.
If you’re just joining us, Israel from the Inside typically posts a written column on Mondays and a podcast on Wednesdays. That is obviously irrelevant for the time being.
We’ve delayed all the podcasts that were ready to go, because the people whose stories they tell deserve to tell them when we all have the bandwidth to hear. Hopefully, that will return some day.
In the interim, we’ll post as possible. Here in Israel, there are non-stop funerals to go to, shiva homes to visit, grandchildren to help care for while sons and daughters are in the army, so we’ll see.
Schedules are the least of our worries.
Impossible Takes Longer is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and at other booksellers.
Our Threads feed is danielgordis. We’ll start to use it more shortly.
Oy.
Maya Shem's haunted expression has stayed with me, as I hope that she wasn't raped or molested during her captivity and that she might eventually regain some hope for the future, now that she is safe with her family. Of course I wish the same for the many others.
As to what faces Israel now; a dilemma the likes of which few of our spineless politicians-currently displaying their well heeled double standards in Dubai-will ever have to face.
I wouldn't trust our new Foreign Sec.-'Call me Dave' Cameron -nor many of the other poseurs gathered in Dubai to maintain unstinting support for Israel's struggle.
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