Just as the healthy majority of the Jews in Israel understand that reform is needed in Israel’s leftist-controlled judicial system, the current failure of the IDF to protect the country against the murderous Hamas invasion should wake us up to the vital need to reform our leftist-controlled military.
Along with a terrible feeling of mourning and defeat, everyone in the country is wondering how enemy forces could have infiltrated southern Israel completely undetected, allowing them to carry out their murderous rampage with almost no resistance from one of the most powerful armies in the world.
After all, security cameras are situated all along the Gazan border.
Dozens of Tzahal personnel sit watching the security screens around the clock.
Satellites in space record the smallest of enemy movements.
An intricate system of surveillance and intelligence gathering exists within Gaza itself.
How did military intelligence fail to detect the massive planning that preceded the large-scale attack and how did it allow convoys of killers to travel along Israel’s roads as if invisible to all systems of alert?
How did Hamas tractors go through the security fence without the air force targetting them?
These questions will only be answered after the war. However, a general explanation can be attributed to the paralyzing leftist, pacifist, concession-oriented ideology of Israel’s military establishment. This must be changed immediately. When the Israel Defense Forces don’t provide even a minimum of defense for hundreds of thousands of Israel’s Jews then the entire system demands reform.
This military impotence dates back to the “havlaga” policy of the Jewish Agency led by Ben Gurion and his followers almost 2 decades before the establishment of the State. Ever since then, except for occasional instances of heroic pre-strikes against enemies, leftist ideology has dominated the upper echelons of the Haganah and Tzahal.
By and large, outstanding commanders with rightest views were not allowed to advance up the ladder of military leadership. Even when a “hawk” like Raphael Eitan (Raful) was Israel’s Chief of Staff, Israel’s political leadership did not grant him the backing to eliminate Arafat and the PLO during the first War in Lebanon. Conceding to American pressure, Prime Minister Menachem Begin allowed Arafat and his band of henchmen to escape Beirut untouched by the surrounding military forces of Israel.
Then the Nobel Prize winners of the Left, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres awarded Gaza to Arafat and supplied him with guns, creating a terrorist haven. In his effort to win the approval of the Left, Ariel Sharon demolished Gush Katif, allowing the Arab terrorists to advance in their openly-stated goal of destroying Israel.
Unfortunately, the mainstream political “Right” in Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud is not so far removed from the pacifist policy of concessions fostered by the Left. In addition, whenever a Likud government did attempt to adopt a more aggressive stance against terror, the Israel Supreme Court sabotaged the initiative.
In contrast, the Torah has a clear and straight-forward approach to fighting the enemies of Israel. All enemies who refuse to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel and who rise up against Israel, refusing to make peace, are to be destroyed without extraneous and paralyzing considerations like the harming of innocent civilians.
According to our holy Torah the task of the armies of Israel is not only to defend the country in times of war, but to root out the forces of evil in the world and to sanctify the honor of Hashem because, as our Sages teach, the honor of Hashem and Israel are one.
May the words of the shepherd boy David come to pass in the coming days with the utter destruction of Hamas so that “all the earth may know that there is a G-d in Israel.”