At the outset of the war against Hamas, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant exclaimed, “Our enemies are animals!”
I thought to myself, ‘Is this the right metaphor for what Israel’s defense minister purposed to say?” Why insult the animal kingdom? Surely, the members of Hamas are far worse than animals who, even when they attack, are doing so from instinct. They have no other choice. In terms of behavior, they are one-dimensional. Our enemies are far worse. They are human beings! Even though they may be saturated with drugs, they still have a choice.
Indeed, according to some reports there were Hamas terrorists who did not loot, rape, or kill the families that stood before them. The sense of what Gallant said was that he reacted spontaneously, from the kishkas [guts] It was an emotional response, not the response of a seasoned general with political expertise.
It seemed to reflect a primitive mentality which in a tight corner forgets the basis of his training and lets him express his gut feelings instead of his learned behavior. One that instinctively would find favor in the eyes of his supporters. A populist response in a moment of crisis.
Friendly fire
I heard about our soldiers being killed by “friendly fire” before it hit the media. I heard it from a young soldier who is stationed in Gaza and told his father, who is a good friend of mine. He described what he saw. The reservists who turned up for battle had forgotten how to fight. Many of them found it difficult to put on their old army uniforms. In the passage between their younger selves and their present obligations, they had gained weight but lost their martial training. They did not heed their commanders’ commands and consequently were shot by their comrades in arms. The newspapers reported the incidents at 20 percent. That’s a lot of fighting power down the drain.
The ultimate tragedy was when three of the hostages escaped their captors and were shot by our own men. Who were they who shot them? I failed to find any names, but I would not be surprised if they were youngsters caught up in the moment and forgot their basic training. Even when you shoot the supposed enemy, you are required to shoot first at the legs and then in the air. Such a precaution could have saved the lives of these brave young men who had somehow managed to slip out of captivity and should have been rejoicing with their loved ones instead of being buried by them.
The big lie
Another friend of mine, a professor of Jungian psychoanalysis, tells me that his colleagues are engaged in a debate as to whether or not our beloved prime minister is consciously lying or has forgotten the distinction between truth and lies. My friend feels the latter is more likely. But worse still, Benjamin Netanyahu’s blatant lies have spread throughout his supporters. It is reminiscent of the first biblical king, Nimrod, and his gang, who told their supporters that they should build a tower in Babel “in order to make a name for ourselves” (Genesis,11:4), using the royal “we” to disguise their intention of securing their own names for the history books. So, too, here in their daily (it’s difficult to call it a newspaper) Israel Hayom, as well as their blatantly pro-government TV Channel 14 (ditto as regards television stations) who pour their daily invective onto their craven populist groupies without regard to its resemblance to truth or reality. To be fair, Israel Hayom does occasionally call for Netanyahu’s resignation when the war ends, being unaware perhaps that his intention is for the war not to end until he is exonerated.
Now, I have been around long enough to realize that politicians lie; it’s part of their DNA. I can even point to texts in our holy tradition that justify lying – for the sake of peace. But there is a difference between that and what Bibi has done carelessly and with no thought of the consequences of his public pronouncements. A desperate, would-be dictator caught with his self-image lying shattered all around or perhaps buried underground, like a Hamas tunnel.
One consequence of this culture of lying is that we can no longer trust the army’s continuous reports of successes in the field, when it is plain to see that the reality is far less rosy than they try to paint it.
The First Amendment
The row in the United States over Ivy League colleges’ inability to come out and condemn antisemitism because it would be a restriction of free speech would be pathetic if it were not so dangerous. At least the presidents of UPenn and Harvard did the decent thing and resigned after their offensive congressional testimony. Unfortunately, MIT President Sally Kornbluth not only refused to leave but received unwavering support from her colleagues.
What is at stake here that has caused the bells to toll all over the US and elsewhere? Is it because they have forgotten that freedom of speech has to be balanced against something we call lashon hara, literally bad-mouthing. Now there is in the US Constitution mention of a ban against discriminatory language, or language that would cause offense because of its defamatory nature. But one wonders if this has been internalized in the way it was in Judaism, where lashon hara is considered not much less than murder. The Hafetz Haim wrote a whole book on the topic, to such an extent that saying anything becomes a problem! We don’t need to go that far (I once designed a paper with everything the Hafetz Haim allowed to be printed – it was a blank sheet!). But such an approach would undercut the travesty of these universities’ apparently liberal stand. Not for nothing have our sages averred that “Life and death is in the power of the tongue.”
Palestinian power
There are a lot of people going around saying that the Palestinian issue is really a sneaky attempt to take over the world. The Palestinians, they say, have conned the world into believing that Jews/Israelis are the cause of all the world’s troubles and if we could only get rid of them, all would be well. These savants posit a world overrun by hordes of these latter-day barbarians champing at the gates of civilization.
To put it mildly, these claims seem a tad exaggerated. The daily pictures coming out of Gaza should be sufficient to disabuse ourselves of such overheated arguments. Pictures of dying babies, women and men, hospitals reduced to dust, or doctors desperately trying to save the lives of their seriously wounded patients should caution us before such claims. By blowing up such an exaggerated picture of our enemy, we fall into the trap that the present government fell into in the wake of the horrors of October 7. That was an unparalleled failure of our much-vaunted intelligence service, which only became worse by our overreaction to the situation from day one. The Palestinians we see on our screens hardly look the type to take over their own miserable lives, let alone the world at large. Exaggeration on this scale is also a lie, to ourselves and to the outside world. The symmetry between our enemies’ overblown view of Jews (ruling the world) and our own approach to the Palestinians prevents us from seeing the situation as it is. ■
The writer is a veteran contributor to The Jerusalem Report.