One Year After

Morality Teeters on the Edge

A year has gone by and Israel has recovered its self confidence but the future is still cloudy.  The entire West has turned against Israel while its Arab partners understand full well why Israel is doing what it is doing and how it is doing it (that is not to say they support it publicly).  There is no expectation in the Arab world of a cease fire after people invade your town, rape your wives and mothers, kill your children and take whoever is left alive to be hostages and slaves: Only the total destruction and death of the perpetrators.  On October 7 the US State Department was most concerned about a potential humanitarian crisis in Gaza and possible war crimes that Israel would theoretically perpetrate on the criminals living in Gaza.  The Secretary of State messaged to the world that a cease fire needed to be declared. Morality was turned on its head.

We are not allowed to speak in these terms as we are from the “civilized West” but what Israel needed to do most of all was to get revenge on Hamas and on Gaza.   The goal was never to make sure that “October 7 never happened again” as many in and out of Israel like to claim.   If that was the goal then Israel could have just had a permanent presence of 20 or 30 thousand troops with 1,000 tanks and 250 artillery pieces all between the Gazans and the Israelis living on the border. 

If the goal of the  United States after 9/11 was to prevent a further 9/11 all they had to do was to beef up airport security, as they did anyway.  But that was not the goal of the United States just as the goal in 1941 was not the prevention of the next Pearl Harbor.  The goal on both occasions was the destruction of the will and the military capabilities of the enemies – no matter the cost to the enemy.   Berlin had to be bombed. Dresden had to be firebombed.   Hiroshima and Nagaski has to be vaporized – all to break the will of the enemy – and not just their soldiers. And the will and morale of the West needed to be preserved. We can talk all we want about preventing attacks and de-escalating but what the US needed after 9/11 was revenge on the perpetrators and those that housed them.   What Israel needed after October 7 was to take revenge on Hamas and on Gaza. 

Yes, I already see people cringing at this word and wondering how we can speak like this out loud.  But let me ask you – if you are an Israeli, a Jew, any person who understands common decency and morality  - what would your reaction be if Sinwar, his brother and his ‘comrades in arms’ were to come out of their tunnels holding up their “V” for victory and celebrating in the streets of even a near destroyed Gaza?   They  tried to sell us over the years that we had to be better and smarter than our enemies and if they are celebrating and handing out cakes and candies when we know that we have hurt them we can laugh it off.  That was the response of a sophisticated and cowardly crew who think morality is passe. After October 7 that bill of goods can’t be sold to decent people anymore.  My good friend and father of a kidnapped solider (back in 2014!) Simcha Goldin has been speaking for ten years about the fake morality of helping your enemy while you leave civilians and soldiers in their hands and how that loss of values, that ridiculing of  common humanitarian morality can only lead to the nihilism we saw on October 7.

How will you feel after that celebration?  I will tell you how you will – you will feel disgust, filth and humiliation.   You will feel that you have been embarrassed and shamed.  You will feel dirty. You will realize that everything you have believed about good and evil has been turned on its head.   If you don’t believe in good and evil if you are too sophisticated to see that there is no nuance in October 7 – you have already stopped reading this.

At 6:30 we were in bed, hoping to sleep “late” – until maybe 7 or 7:30  - as this was a holiday in which singing and dancing and joy replaced the somber prayers of the High Holidays that ended a week before.  As a Jew  of good Lithuanian stock, I don’t go for joy and dancing in synagogue and was going to pray at home and go to synagogue late so as to say the Yizkor service for my parents.  My wife felt the same way (but for different reasons). But the sirens went off and we were awakened.    Although we live in a part of the country where the sirens are rare, we experienced them dozens of times over the years and did what we always did.   We went to the stairwell, which is in the middle of the building with no windows, and met our neighbors there.      

The first thought that went through my mind was “I don’t remember them saying that Hamas is extra angry now”.   Most of us were smiling in the stairwell, annoyed at being out of our beds but we understood that this happens and unlike the south we didn’t have to worry about day long sirens.  We were spoiled.  We assumed it would be more of the same. My wife and I went without our phones as we don’t use them on the Shabbat and holidays but our neighbors checked theirs and said there were sirens in most of the country.  Ten minutes later we went back to our apartments, had coffee and read the paper.  By 9 we decided to go to synagogue. 

Once there, the rumors started.  Terrorists have entered a kibbutz.  Terrorists might even have gotten to Sderot.  We were concerned but nothing prepared us for what was going on less than an hour’s drive from us.  We have a very small synagogue and on holidays people visit relatives and it is even smaller.  After prayers we had a very small “kiddush” with some bourbon, cookies and pickled herring.  We discussed what we knew – which was very little.

Outside there were people in the civil guards who were going to the synagogues and telling everyone to finish up and go home and stay off the streets.  But they didn’t seem to know anything either and couldn’t really tell us why.   There was no real sense of urgency in their words.

Then the daughter of one of the congregants came running in, out of breath, looking for her father, who had already left.  “We are at war” she said.  “Bibi went on the radio and announced that we were at war”.   We still couldn’t imagine what was happening.  War in Gaza?  What could have happened differently than what happened over the last 15 years?  Could they have invaded from Lebanon?  Syria?  Did Iran attack us?

We rushed home, quite concerned. We met someone on the way whose brother is the Deputy Mayor of our city, Kfar Saba.  We knew he would know something.  He said he heard that 120 people had been killed.  Horrible. 

We got home and, in spite of the fact that we don’t use phones or turn on the TV on the Shabbat and holidays – we did just that.  We turned on the news.  The faces of the broadcasters told a more horrible story than their words.   They knew more than they were allowed to tell.  They don’t announce the number of deaths until families are notified.  Absurd in this situation, but we all feel for the families, and no one wants to find out from the TV. 

I checked my phone and texted my sons to see what was happening.  I called my oldest son and he was already called up to the north.  He is a doctor and was told to go to his base immediately.  His wife was in her ninth month, but he went.  My second son called me before I had a chance to call him.   He is a reservist in a special forces unit that deals with anti-terror warfare and was called up to serve in his unit.  There were rumors of infiltration everywhere and he went to his base outside of Jerusalem.  His wife is a midwife and needed to go to her shift at 2:30pm and he asked if she could drop the kids by us.      I spoke to my third son who was on his way to his base in the south and would join his unit at the Kissufim crossing, near Gaza where fighting was going on.

They were talking of 30, 40 , 50 deaths.  They made sure to tell us that this number is not close to the reality.  They reached 100, 150 and I turned to my wife and said, I bet it will reach 500.  I don’t even remember what I saw that day and what I saw in the days after.   There was a music festival somewhere and the kibbutzim were overrun.  Military bases were overrun.  They reached Ofakim – a town that is a 30 minute drive from Gaza.   How?  None of it made sense.

I have to apologize now to the young woman who are the ones who man the screens and are to warn of possible attacks – the “tazpitaniyot” in Hebrew.  I said – where they hell were they?  It did not occur to me that their warnings would be ignored.   If I ever had to ask forgiveness of someone or a group of people before Yom Kippur – it is of those brave young soldiers, women all, who warned their superiors and stayed at their posts and were killed and kidnapped and who knows what else?.   I hope they can forgive me for doubting them.

Our daughter in law brought her three children and they wondered why the television was on.    We didn’t leave the house.  The kids ate lots of candy.  I can’t keep straight what we knew and when.   We knew it was horrible, that the kibbutzim were devastated and the sorrow on the faces of the broadcasters told the story – as we just said.  But there was not just sorrow.    There were mea culpas galore about how they all believed that Hamas was deterred and were interested in building up Gaza and in ruling it like a real government. 

There was also anger.  Mostly at the army.  Dani Kushamro, a veteran journalist could not contain his anger.  He was not in the studio but setup a table with equipment outside, in the south somewhere.  He knew then at least part of the failure of the army.  He knew that the air force was not there, that there was no artillery in the Gaza division, that the Gaza division was not operating as a cohesive unit.  He knew that the General Staff and the Chief of Staff poo-pooed all the warnings.  He couldn’t tell us due to military censorship but the army’s failure was clear in the tone of his voice.

We heard from our sons later that day.   My youngest, an infantry officer was at his unit and we spoke to him late at night.  He drove that the highway of death, route 232 and couldn’t describe what he saw.  Our oldest was in the north, getting equipment ready for the Hezbollah ground attack that miraculously did not happen.  Our middle child was busy in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) working to prevent attacks similar to what happened in the south. He went from village to village, chasing down real and imagined infiltrators.    All three fought continuously through the end of the year and into the new one.  And since.  Later that night we spoke to our daughter, who, with her husband are on a two year stint teaching at a Jewish day school in Westchester Country, NY.    Our son in law was called in to the army and returned.

Late night sirens and we carried the children into the stairwell.  Ten minutes and back.

The fear of October 7 has turned into sadness, frustration and anger.  Each time I see that those responsible  - for the big picture and most importantly for the utter failure of October 6 and 7 – I wonder how they live with themselves.  I wonder how they have the chutzpa to continue “leading” a people they have failed utterly and who are so much better than they are.   I wonder how they ever thought they could lead a people they obviously hold in contempt – just as they held in contempt those brave women soldiers who warned and warned.

I do feel a little embarrassed sharing my experiences on October 7 since it pales compared to what so many have experienced then and after.   But I am not embarrassed at my desire for my country to exact revenge on Hamas, on Hezbollah and on Iran.  I am not embarrassed to say that we need to exact revenge on the Nuchba terrorists we captured until our hostages are freed.  The destruction of the luxurious Shiite neighborhood of Dahiya in Beirut is the price for being Hezbollah.  The destruction of the terror filled mosques, schools and UNWRA centers in Gaza and the killing of Hamas terrorists and those who loved them is the price for the murder, rape and kidnapping of my countrymen.  The power of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran needs to be destroyed to avenge the deaths of so many.    

People like to repeat the cliché that Hamas is an idea so you can’t destroy it.  True enough.  We didn’t destroy the Nazi idea but neither did we stop at the Rhine.  We didn’t allow Nazi power to continue even if it could have saved the lives of allied soldiers and even if September 1, 1939 couldn’t happen again.  We didn’t allow the Japanese government to stay in power even though we destroyed their Navy and Pearl Harbor could never happen again.

Never again is not enough.  The hostages need to be freed, by more death and destruction to our enemies, if necessary.  Our borders, citizens and their property need to be protected even if it means we need to conquer territory and ruthlessly make sure our enemies don’t return.   

I am not calling for wanton death and destruction and I am not calling for the death of innocents.  I am not calling for revenge for the sake of revenge. I am calling for a moral clarity in differentiating between the good and evil.  October 7 was that rare moment of moral clarity and that moral clarity demands that the perpetrators and their supporters be punished.  That is what I call revenge. A negotiated settlement is the destruction of that moral clarity and a return to pagan morals that the post-modern West loves to much – a morality that abhors fake, unnatural “injustice” more than it loves life.  It is a morality that worships the irrational while it laughs at the traditional.  A morality that hates order and loves nihilism.  It is a morality that is immoral by any standard guided by reason or revelation.

The tired cliches of Biden-Harris-Blinken and the sad self-righteousness of Macron and Starmer  -two irrelevances - need to resolutely negated and banished from the West.

Once again, it is Israel that needs to teach the world what morality is.