1.
Where are the whispers calling on our brave soldiers to stop the fighting before the war's objectives have been achieved, coming from? "We lost," the whisperers declare to the world, as our soldiers dismantle the enemy's bases and capabilities. "Living with defeat," was the title of an opinion piece by a senior commentator who has seen a thing or two in his life and is now struggling to sow cowardice among us. A few days after the ground incursion began, he wrote that "unfortunately, there is no victory on the horizon." After the hostage deal, he added: "The war will come to a halt, the reservists won't return to fight after that."
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The soldiers back home for some R&R look at us in wonder; there is an enormous gap between the fighting spirit they and the general public have and that of the journalists who almost from the start of the war have been telling us that this is the last week of fighting. And as the war continues, they change their predictions, again and again.
There is a connection that is difficult to accept between those who shout out "we lost" and the enemies they single out (except Hamas): some explicitly point a finger at "Religious Zionism," while others, who are aware of how shameful this is, use the euphemism, "the messianic nationalist ultra-Orthodox wing," but they mean the same pioneering group whose boys are now fighting and many of whom were killed or wounded.
2.
Once again, the usual former MKs, generals, and others sign a demand to stop the fighting and hold elections, and their call resonates in TV studios and the press and pleases the daughters of the Philistines in Gaza and our enemies from the north and the east. The spectacle of Jews holding elections in the middle of a war will inspire courage and fortitude among the dastardly terrorists hiding in the death tunnels of the Gaza Strip and fortified bunkers in Beirut. The Iranian regime has long recognized our tendency to become engaged in heated public debate and operates agents on social networks who create a belligerent atmosphere and sow panic and hatred among us.
No former army officer, no matter how senior, has any advantage over any civilian in assessing whether we need elections instead of continuing the fighting. This is an issue that is not about analyzing the battlefield, but about understanding the spirit of the people versus the spirit of the enemy, about setting a vision for the people and dealing with its historic destiny. The question is whether the current war is a war of existence or just another round of conflict. If this is an existential war, then military experts have no advantage over others. They are experts in questions of "how"; in other words, how to defend the country how to move troops, and so on. They do not have greater expertise on the question of "why", from which the goals of the war are derived; that is, on the question of "what is the purpose of our existence" here in the land for which our forefathers yearned for so many centuries.
3.
The enormous discrepancy between the spirit of the people that gives a tailwind to iאs soldiers and leaders, and that of an important and influential group that generates conflict between us at a time of war and creates the mistaken impression that we have lost, is probably the same as that between those who remain stuck with old perceptions that reigned supreme before the new era that begun after October 7 (those who fell into the "conception"), and those who dared to change their way of thinking and perceptions about the region we live in and the purpose of our existence here.
This week, a veteran military correspondent who covered the Yom Kippur War back in 1973 remarked that if such defeatist voices had been listened to in the War of Independence, the state would not have been established, God forbid. Since the dawn of our existence as a people, we have known this tendency to despair before the work is done, to give up on our goals because of the heavy price to achieve them. When our sages from the era of destruction learned the story of the Exodus from Egypt, they read between the lines the hints about those who despaired and retreated, who refused to be redeemed and set free. They read twice the words, "And the children of Israel went up armed from the land of Egypt": On the one hand, they came out with weapons, ready for battle. On the other hand, the sages read the word "armed" (hamushim, which shares the Hebrew root for the number five) as "one of five," meaning that for every person who chose freedom despite the dangers, four preferred to remain in exile. As far as they were concerned, one had to "learn to live with loss" and know that the very "understanding that there is no victory is also a victory" (as the above-mentioned commentator wrote at the beginning of the ground incursion in Gaza) and other arguments designed to justify their spiritual defeat at a time when their brethren chose to pay a price for their independence.
4.
What else could they say after a generation of marketing "land for peace" and the establishment of a Palestinian state that will look out over us from a height of hundreds of meters – just as the Syrians looked out over our communities in the valley from the cliffs of the Golan Heights – as the only solution to the region's ills? When it was founded, Hamas published a spiritual and political manifesto in which it repeatedly swore that its conflict with Israel was not territorial but religious, that is, an existential conflict, and that there was no room for compromise. But they did not listen. As far as they were concerned, the problem was not the terrorists and murderous gangs imported here from Tunisia to preserve our safety, but the "messianic" "extremist" pioneers sitting on the Samarian Hills – those who, in their opinion, interfered with the establishment of a Hebrew-speaking European state here and wanted old Jerusalem and the Temple Mount as its "Vatican."
Here are a few pearls from the Hamas Charter, the ideological foundation of the October 7 massacre, and the Nazi entity established above and below ground, only hundreds of meters from our communities. "The Islamic Resistance Movement (i.e. Hamas) believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf (endowment) consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up." Another article states, "Nationalism, from the point of view of the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed. Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Muslim land (i.e. the whole Land of Israel). Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Muslim." Another chapter of the charter states: "Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement." In general, the charter states, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad" and, "It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Muslim generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem and should be dealt with on this basis."
Moreover, it states, "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
5.
Everything was written on the wall of our life, but we have not been willing to listen. We listened instead to our heart's desires. We saw what the terrorists did on October 7. Had they been able to, they would have done the same to all of us. Nonetheless, influential elements among us are working to convince us that we have lost. Hamas is collapsing and crushed; what gives it hope is the defeatist talk of the losers, those who reject victory.
In view of this constant defeatist agitation that weakens the justness of our war and dampens the spirit of our soldiers and encourages our enemies who quote its representatives as if they have struck gold, the historical position of our people regarding our right to our land and the right to national self-determination in it – which includes our "messianic" religious position – makes much more sense. By virtue of this ancient truth, we survived in the valley of the shadow of death of nations and we survived wars and destructions, and by virtue of it, we will win the present battle as well. We need patience and faith.
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