- What happened on October 7 was a punch to the teeth of the Zionist view that a national home will prevent antisemitism, and that old-style pogroms cannot happen with a Jewish defense force around. The same is true of the saying “Never Again” in response to the events of the Holocaust.
- The difference is that here, there were also those who fought like lions and the State of Israel recovered, called up the reserves, and went to war. But the blow is still powerful and painful. An enormous loss for a sovereign state. Citizens who committed no sin – women, men, children, elderly, and the disabled were murdered, slaughtered, and kidnapped in unimaginable numbers. Home has become unsafe. Fear and threat now pervade the whole country.
- The war has become one of no choice. The very life of the Hebrew nation and the Jewish People was put to the test. The enlistment of the nation and of the people withing it was and remains amazing. This nation has found its strength. The deep identity which binds us all burst forth and we will yet see the consequences in the future.
- Those who thought this or that passport will save them from their fate as Jews discovered that without realizing the dream in the Land of Israel, no Jew – anywhere – is safe. As assimilationist Jews discovered in Nazi Germany.
The Blow That Gaza Must Suffer Must Also Echo Throughout the Middle East
- The leadership failed. The last government was the edge of a titanic struggle which cracked us from the inside and the partisan rot and effort to defeat the other camp at any cost signalled opportunity to the enemy. The government which emerges after the war is one which will succeed in using the enormous force bursting forth for prosperity and momentum.
6. I identify among parts of the camp criticizing Netanyahu and his government both correct criticism which I have connected to for a few years, and also irrelevant arguments continuing the caprice of Oslo. It does not understand the Israeli settlement, spreading lies about battalions being tied down to Judea and Samaria at the expense of the south and fantasizing about leaving it. No, this is not the lesson, my friends. The naked truth about our enemies once again burst forth in full force. We cannot sweep that aside with all sorts of economic statements and internal Palestinian interests.
7. The blow Gaza needs to suffer and the enormous price exacted for their murderous and contemptible act needs to be one that echoes throughout the Middle East. “For the fear of the Jews fell upon them,” as it says in the Book of Esther. Everyone needs to know that Israel going rampant. Therefore, lines of refugees, destruction and taking of territory and resettling Jews there is the direction.
We Cannot Ignore the United States, But We Must Stand On What is Sacred To Us
8. We cannot ignore the world, and we need allies who share values with us (and interests…). The axis of the western world is what we belong to, especially the United States. However, we mustn’t become an American doormat. We need to insist on what we consider sacred and important, clarify that this is a war for our very existence and that we cannot allow pure evil to exist alongside us. We need to navigate this tangle of interests and ensure broad room for maneuver, and this will not happen without repeating the existential threat we face and which we will not allow to return.
9. Even the moderate Sunni axis, an axis we owe Netanyahu for helping to build, will not hold up without Israel demonstrating its strength, big time. The US is also being tested in the region; people are watching to see how strong an ally it really is, and how deeply committed it is to its allies. This, following the errors of the Obama administration who threw Egyptian and other allies under the bus during the Arab Spring, when his naivete led to the emergence of democracies which empowered the Muslim Brothers and ISIS, creating rivers of blood.
10. Apropos nuclear weapons. Thinking about a field I don’t have enough information on: the fear of bombing the centrifuges in Iran is always that their proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and their buddies in Syria will drill Israel with holes. But if that’s already the situation and they’re firing at us from all directions, anyway (even the Houthis…), and the army is deployed along all the borders, why not take advantage of the hour? We already learned that those who promise to kill you, declare it, train for it, and build up capabilities – ultimately follow through. Should we not ride that wave and prevent a future headache?