A Sobering Perspective

From our contributor who is still serving in the army

We have merited another essay from one of our prolific contributors (see a list of his essays here) who is still serving in the IDF and has a deep knowledge of what is transpiring on the ground. He is here to give his perspective to how this relates to Torah issues and especially how Bnei Torah should view the situation. I warn you beforehand that it that you may find what he has to say disheartening and depressing, and may not necessarily accept it (I am not sure if I do! But what do I know from my distance in Chu”l?) but nevertheless, it is an important message for all of us.

This essay is an honest but depressing discussion of current events here in Israel. Anyone who has lost close relatives during this war, particularly a child, should probably not read this essay. 

When this war broke out, everyone was shocked both because the war was so unexpected, and by the extreme brutality of the Arabs in their opening act. Yet I remember back to the early days when the reserves were called up, and the regular army was told to prepare for a two front war. There was a sense of hopefulness, that like the Yom Kippur war, this had become as a disaster but would eventually turn into a victory. It soon became clear that the army leadership, as well as the political leadership, was not up to the task. From the very beginning their incompetence stood out. While those who have served and been exposed to the terrible leadership that the military has been displaying, now take it for granted that we are poorly lead, one must recognize that this is actually a supernatural phenomena. The leaders of the army, people who almost universally came up through the ranks of elite commando units, were not otherwise known to be either fools or incompetent. The same is true of the political leadership. They may have been of questionable moral probity, but they were not known to be fools who regularly totally misread the situation. 

And yet here we stand 7 months since the Arab attack on Simchat Torah, having been thoroughly defeated by the people of Gaza. It is true that God in his kindness has caused our defeat to not be accompanied by the huge numbers of dead that such a defeat generally entails, but we have gained nothing strategically. Despite hundreds that have sacrificed their lives and thousands more that have been wounded, we are not in a better strategic situation now then we were on October 10th once we managed to seal the border and killer or capture the remaining terrorists that were inside Israel. Confident in the fact that the United States will not allow Israel a victory over them, the political leadership of Gaza sees no reason to negotiate the release of the hostages that they are holding, much less concede anything to Israel politically. Yes they have lost tens of thousands of fighters, as well as several thousand of their non-combatant supporters, but this means nothing to them. They have garnered support from many of the people's and most of the political systems in the world. BDS has gone from a fringe phenomena to being completely mainstream. Even major European powers such as France are now openly and unabashedly engaging in BDS. The United States, once considered Israel's great ally, has not only conspired to deny Israel any type of strategic or political victory, but it is well known that behind the scenes it has been responsible for many dastardly betrayals. These include negotiations with the Iranians to deliver Israeli concessions into their hands, something that was only revealed by the Iranians themselves when their foreign minister was unexpectedly killed in a helicopter crash. Likewise it is impossible for anyone who knows how these things actually work, to believe that the prosecutor of the international criminal court would seek a warrant of arrest for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister if that had not been coordinated in advance with the United States administration. 

In the North, Hezbollah has displaced tens of thousands of Israeli citizens, done untold economic harm, and is now causing massive blazes, with complete impunity. For 7 months the Israeli prime minister and defense minister periodically travel to the north and make blustery statements about what a terrible punishment they will visit upon Hezbollah, while in fact doing nothing effective. Yes, they have managed to kill a few hundred Hezbollah commanders and soldiers, but just like the people of Gaza, the loss of a few hundred soldiers means nothing to Hezbollah. They are obviously not at all deterred. 

What are we meant to learn from this sudden and unexpected change of events? The state of Israel and its military have come to take Divine assistance for granted, to the extent that they simply assume it is part of the natural order. No matter what errors they make, they're always sure that it will work out in the end. While Israel has suffered far greater losses in other wars, it has never in its history suffered a loss of strategic position remotely similar to what has happened now. From time to time I have the opportunity to speak to Zionist intellectuals, older men who are committed to Zionism, who have seen it all, and heard it all, and thought that nothing could ever surprise them. And yet they express wonder at current events, they admit that they have no explanation for what is going on. How an army that was once considered one of the world's foremost innovators, experts at succeeding through thinking out of the box, has suddenly become completely captured by "concepts" and is unable to learn from its mistakes, despite the fact that this war has now involved more continuous fighting than any other war in Israel's history including the war of independence. Many of them are ready to recognize that something besides the natural order of the world is afoot. 

Last night there was a major operation involving over a hundred soldiers from an elite commando unit in Jenin. Despite sustained combat, not a single terrorist was killed or even injured. In a similar operation last week, a mere 8 terrorists were killed, in a huge operation involving hundreds of elite troops from multiple parts of the army. Similar stories have been repeated time after time in all of the major centers of terrorism, Jenin, Tul Karem, Shechem. And yet despite months of continuous failure the army has learned nothing. The terrorists get better and better at what they do, while the army does not progress at all. 

All of this is terribly depressing, and that feeling is shared widely throughout the ranks of the army that are actually engaged in the fighting. It has been a unique Divine kindness, that despite the armies utter failure on three different fronts, and the political leadership failure vis-à-vis international relations, the death toll among the Jews has been far lower than would be expected. Of course every death is the loss of an entire world, a terrible tragedy, and extremely painful. Yet we cannot fail to recognize how God has simultaneously denied us military or political success, while at the same time not inflicting upon us the type of widespread death and economic collapse, that such failures bring in their wake in all other parts of the world. 

In last week's Seddra, Hashem reveals to us the solution to this debacle. Certainly we are meant to learn many things, and perhaps if we do learn the things that we are meant to, and improve ourselves as we are meant to, this may open up before us great opportunities. But at the very least we need to pay attention to a basic fact of life that Hashem revealed regarding economic and military success for the Jewish people. אם בחוקותיי תלכו -שתהיו עמלים בתורה. Then supernatural economic and military success is a assured to us. Since it's inception the state of Israel has lived on credit. It did not endorse the ideal of אם בחוקותי תלכו, and yet it was granted unanticipated success. Apparently that credit has run out, and now we are being held to the Torah's standard. As I pointed out above this is being shown to us in a very kind and gentle manner. We are suffering strategic and economic disasters, and yet we are not nearly paying the full price for those disasters. It behooves us not to be fools and fail to learn our lesson when God is still protecting us from the full force of the disasters that we have brought upon ourselves. Who knows when we will have used up whatever credit is remaining, and we'll begin to have to pay the real price. 

This is an especially sensitive subject for those of us who have paid some of this price already, and those of us who see our lives and the lives of our children hanging in front of us by a mear thread on a daily basis. While I usually serve in a unit that has a high proportion of dati leumi soldiers, I am now serving with a commando unit that is overwhelmingly secular. I have had the opportunity to discuss these issues with my secular compatriots, and to my surprise many of them are very open to the fact that current events clearly reflect the results of spiritual failures. Which brings me to something that has been in the news lately. Political activists that are more concerned with seeking out some political advantage then they are with the good of the nation, have recently been demanding that the עמלים בתורה, who are our only true hope for getting out of our current situation, should be dragged out of the beit medrash and recruited into the same army that is so dramatically failing to use its current resources effectively. As though somehow the failures of leadership, and military and strategic thinking, that have plagued us for the last 7 months, will be magically cured if only we had more soldiers. The same political activists, if they came to power would not attempt to implement what they are so strenuously arguing for. Partially because they simply don't have the power to do so, and partially because the army is determined not to accept large numbers of charedi bnei torah. Nonetheless they see it as giving them some sort of political advantage right now, and therefore cynically demand that it take place immediately. 

One cannot expect secular supreme Court justices, petitioners, or even the secular man on the street, to realize the extent to which they are undermining their own security and futures with this foolishness. Lacking any meaningful education in Judaism, and immersed in a worldview that knows nothing but physical cause and effect, they are overwhelmed and confused by what is currently going on. They do not know how to explain to themselves the current failures of the Zionist dream. So they look for scapegoats, if only we had a different prime minister, if only we had more soldiers, if only we were more culturally assimilated with the non-Jews of the world, then our lot would be so much better. Yet current events demonstrate how mistaken these notions are, and not a few of the more humble, wise, and open-minded among them are actually beginning to rethink their approach. But of course there are still plenty that lack the humility, the wisdom, and the open-mindedness to be able to honestly assess current events. 

There is however another group who are making similar demands, not merely out of hubris and ignorance, but also out of disdain. There are those who are so determined to harm the Torah world, that they will completely ignore their own self-interest, in order to demand that we reduce the number of עמלים בתורה, despite the price we will pay for that in continuing military failure and loss of precious lives. I do not know what can be said to such people, because hatred closes the mind, and there is probably very little in the way of reason or experience that will open their minds. Still, there are likely to be those on the periphery of that world, people who find their ideology attractive, but are not so committed to it that they can't entertain other views. It is for those people that I am writing this essay. On a regular basis I risk my life, and my son does likewise, to protect the Jewish people. We do so because we honestly believe that there is something special about the Jewish people, that they are God's people and the agents of the revelation of God's will in the world. We are not patriots in the sense that a Ukrainian or a Russian would be a patriot, we do not value our nation above all others out of a blind sense of tribalism. We do this because the Jewish people are God's own treasure, and they are worth sacrificing to protect. But if we don't have the עמלים בתורה, who already a far too small proportion of the Jewish people overall, then we are in danger of losing the very thing that makes our sacrifice worthwhile. 

Incidentally, I'm not alone in this feeling. In a recent discussion, a ר"מ in a Hesder yeshiva expressed similar sentiments. He said if we don't give our students an attachment to learning, and a feeling that learning supersedes all else including the army, then what are we fighting for? 

There was of course much more that needs to be said on this topic regarding תפילה , נושא בעול עם חבירו, and many other subjects. But these are my thoughts on this particular aspect of our current challenges.

May we be worthy to be עמלים בתורה out of pure intentions, and for those of us who have chosen to take upon ourselves the economic or military burden of supporting the עמלים בתורה, may God grant us success and bring about the revelation of his name through us.