500 Days of war - Thoughts about something that's been lost in Israel

We may be afraid to say it or admit it, but something in our Israeli identity has died—or been killed.

The Israeli leadership refuses to eliminate the enemy. The opposition is willing to forgo it as well. And a new generation is growing up believing it is normal and natural to lose thousands of soldiers, women, the elderly, and children—without achieving victory.

From a historical perspective, everything is still fresh. Israel has yet to recover and collect itself. It remains in a pathetic stage, listening to emotional individuals waging a private war, sealing the damage with a call for mass surrender to Hamas.

This surrender is an act of the fathers which will become a sign for the sons—just as the Yom Kippur War and its lack of military resolution became a defining mark for generations, just as Oslo did.

One could say that 1973 reached its peak in Oslo, on many levels. It was a catharsis, the completion of a process that began in '73, reached euphoric heights in '78, then collapsed in '93—only to await another catharsis.

Likewise, the blatant lies of the leadership, accompanied by disgraceful surrender and refusal to defeat the enemy, may become the new Yom Kippur—a failure that will one day lead to an Oslo even more catastrophic than before. But this time, unlike then, Israel may not be able to recover in the face of a Sunni axis growing in full force.

One of the key differences between '73 and today is that while Nixon supported Israel, he did not grant it complete freedom of action like Trump. Another difference is that if the leaders of that time were in power today, they would have certainly used this freedom for Israel’s benefit—not merely as a tool to maintain their grip on power.

It is true that, unlike then, the public has not immediately grown weary or suffered a drop in morale. This is, indeed, a ripple of hope and a sign of correction. But unlike then, today’s leadership is utterly unworthy—by any measure imaginable.

Back then, there were doubts in the hearts of the younger generation. Today, such doubts are not as visible. However, the cost of failing to achieve victory means the loss of vitality, vigilance, and to a large extent, the loss of a clear direction on matters of life and death at the national, sovereign level—matters crucial to every state wishing to survive.

This is also one of the deepest differences: Israel today no longer holds a memory, a figure, or a tangible presence of strong, brave, and representative national leadership in the true sense of Jewish public service.

Leadership carries deep psychological weight.

Golda Meir passed away a few years after the Yom Kippur War.

The nation mourned her passing—right and left alike.

Today, such a moment could never happen. I'm not even talking about taking responsibility. A leader who does not truly lead the people cannot take responsibility.

It is difficult to grasp the danger of a nation that has suffered a severe defeat, been humiliated in a surrender deal, and no longer knows the taste of victory. This is an educational failure that will not be rectified. The fact that Trump has entered the picture from the outside does not make things easier.

It is reminiscent of Pompey’s arrival in Judea when the Jews were unable to finish the job themselves in the first century BC, we all know how that ended.

At this point, it seems that the hostages are merely an excuse—an excuse for the continued grip on power by a so-called “right-wing” that has never won a war, and by a left-wing feebleness that disgraces its forebears—having forgotten the meaning of victory in the Zionist lexicon, along with many other foundational values.

The right uses these failures to buy time. The left uses them to run away.

There is a limit to how much one can evade, hide, and escape from the necessity of victory. When the war began, many sang, "You will not defeat me.", the famous Yehoram Gaon song. But they forgot to add: "And we will not defeat you."

Is there a fear that victory would bring the Messiah? Or some form of messianism? Because Israel’s victory is not just a material concept?. And yes, the fear of this messianic power contains a certain Jewish pathology. this pathology may be explained by two archetypical figures - the salesmen on the one hand, and the archetypical 'weak jew' of the exile - on the other. One is pressured by the other to make consessions when it comes to his survival, with a false sense of normalcy - when in truth it is just a fear of losing our imagined stability that makes us cave towards that weakness marketed to us as a "Victory". That is how i see the media and government's role in echoing the Hostage Saga. Some of our brothers, employ this marketing talent which leads to submission, this Jewish ability, precisely because they fear their own Judaism. Yes, It is fascinating to see Jewish traits being used to escape from Judaism itself.

And perhaps Judaism is so deep that only something so profound could produce contradictions of this magnitude—giving birth to a reality in which these very traits oppose the thing that created them in the first place, yet still persist in existence. It is quite astonishing.

From such a phenomenological and historical perspective, one might expect more. And yet, this perspective only seeks to survive at this point.

Perhaps, simply being aware of this wonder—is itself significant.

If the war did anything to pause and think - one may say that examining what Israeli politics has produced in recent decades regarding the question of identity was one of them. And it appears that parts of the nation want to forget their Judaism, while others struggle to remember it in an intelligent way. Meanwhile, no one trusts our politicians. We are simply stuck with them and their system, because the security establishment is subordinate to them—not to us.

Perhaps this is what happens when power is stripped from the people and handed over to the Supreme Court. Perhaps this is why Netanyahu himself empowered the court—to weaken the quality of political players in the parliamentary arena, ensuring that when the public finally chooses someone else after “they took everything from him,” they will, in the end, choose him once more.

Following 1973, we asked ourselves about Israeliness, Judaism, identity, Zionism, and everything in between.

Today, we don’t even hear these questions.

And that is not necessarily a good sign.

Perhaps this should start a conversation.