September 2008. It was not long after I returned to Israel from Mauretania after four years as the Israeli ambassador in that unique Muslim country. I hadn't just returned to Israel, but also to my original profession, journalism. After many long years at Ma'ariv and Yedioth Ahronoth, with a break for diplomatic service, I joined a young newspaper that was barely a year old called Israel Hayom.

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I thought it was another stage in my career. I never imagined I was about to begin the most important chapter of my professional life – 14 years of writing and editing a right-wing newspaper distributed nationwide, a newspaper like ones I had prayed for when I was young. Like the ones many like me in the national camp had hoped to see in Israel. A newspaper that wouldn't be afraid to use the term "our forces" when talking about IDF troops. A newspaper that wouldn't be afraid to hope for sovereignty to be applied to Judea and Samaria in the heart of our country. A newspaper that wouldn't make the mistake of dreaming about dividing the country, and a newspaper that wouldn't be afraid to criticize, when necessary, powerful institutions that many people were accustomed to seeing as sacrosanct and untouchable.

After years as a foreign affairs reporter and editor at Israel Hayom, in April 2017 I had the privilege of being appointed editor-in-chief of Israel's right-wing newspaper. And not only a right-wing newspaper – the most-read newspaper in the country. For almost five years, I had the honor of serving a legacy, being part of what was to come, serving the profession of journalism in which I had grown up and which I still see as a holy mission, serving the newspaper's team – my fellow writers, editors, the impressive content managers with whom I was privileged to work – serving the Adelson family, who promoted the vision of this beloved newspaper, but above all, serving you, the readers.

There are editors who wait until the paper goes to print to take a breath and enjoy the fruit of their labor. Every week, I would wait for Friday morning, when – even now – I would visit Israel Hayom stands in my neighborhood in north Tel Aviv. Yes, even there people stand in line to pick up the paper you're reading now. That sign, of loyal readers, old and new, gave me the strength and the inspiration to continue the work that goes on day after day, with a release only on Yom Kippur.

On Monday, the latest TGI survey came out and showed that Israel Hayom was far ahead of its competitors in readership, both for the weekday and weekend editions. The readers love the paper, and that's the biggest thanks I could ask for. Not everyone gets this kind of reward for their work. I did. The five years I was in charge of Israel Hayom were busy and important ones. What didn't happen? A military operations and a spate of riots, a global pandemic, political and legal storms, four elections, contentious changes of government in Israel and the US, the events at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where as editor-in-chief I was present, dramatic peace accords, and exclusive interviews with former US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. I even covered the coronation of Japan's new emperor. There were plenty of exciting moments, too many to count, like the exclusive interview with my friend Jonathan Pollard, whose beloved wife, Esther, passed away on Monday. I stood alongside him as she was laid to rest.

If it's hard, that means it's possible, Jabotinsky said in a different context. It's hard to leave a profession we love so much – but it's possible. But I have news for you – maybe even a headline: print journalism isn't dead. The opposite – it continues to serve the readers, savvy consumers of current events and content, who are curious and critical. It continues to promote an agenda, and still serves as a platform for the exchange of ideas and opinions. In our changing world, like that of Stefan Zweig, the general direction is toward the digital, but it will get there as part of the newspaper and the profession of journalism, not instead of them. I started this wonderful journey 14 years ago, and it has led me to new worlds and thrilling places – both around the planet and in terms of content, thought, and creation. After five years as editor-in-chief, I'm not ashamed to say that sometimes you need to bring in new blood.

I am leaving with an enormous sense of satisfaction and endless appreciation for everyone who worked alongside me over the years. When I look at the countless messages of praise and thanks I've gotten in the past 24 hours from colleagues in the world of journalism and media, including competitors, I also know how valuable an asset Israel Hayom is. It has presence, it makes a statement, and has its own distinct identity. And yes, I know that many who are supposed to be fellow members of the "press gang" never gave us credit and attacked us because of their different worldview and because we succeeded.

I heard those voices, too. But anyone who knows me knows that I've never hidden my views, and that I expressed them fully in the pages of this paper, along with a wide variety of other, sometimes opposing, opinions from both the Right and the Left. Even when we didn't agree, we tried to do so pleasantly. Perhaps the fans and critics of the paper would agree on one thing – no one is indifferent to Israel Hayom. Dear readers, I want to thank you for your trust, your loyalty, your responses, for the advice and the friendship. I hope we'll meet again in the future.

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Yoram Taharlev's bench was the nicest place to sit in Tel Aviv, especially on Shabbat. Religious and secular, traditional and Haredim, anyone who passed by Yoram's bench at Kikar Hamedina plaza would always receive a warm, polite smile from this wonderful man. That same pleasant gaze was afforded to everyone. Incidentally, even the cigar in his mouth was as modest as him.

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We knew each other, Yoram and I. We collaborated on a special weekend supplement, enchanting and witty, as only Yoram could offer the readers. But we were also neighbors – a gigantic privilege for a newspaper editor, but also a gigantic privilege for a resident of Tel Aviv.

Saturday was the first Shabbat my children didn't meet with the man on the bench with the white beard and jeans t-shirt, who would discuss the weekly Torah portion with them in his typically intelligent, poetic manner. My children hear the Torah interpretations at synagogue, and Yoram, from his bench, would make sure to add his own magical connection between Judaism and Zionism, which we must never forget.

And in general, how many families in Israel, religious families, have walked and journeyed the country thanks to Yoram. "Kum VeHit'halech Ba'Aretz" (Get up and walk the country), Yoram wrote, and they surely did so because of his songs, without desecrating Shabbat. This is his greatest contribution to Shabbat, the country, and the nation. In days such as these, in which we sadly enjoy disagreeing about our identity, I already miss this cherished poet, my neighbor, who was a secular man but breathed Judaism, similar to many of our founding fathers.

"Ein Kvar Derech Hazara" (No Way Back), Yoram wrote. But from my perspective, from the perspective of my children, and from the perspective of the people you so dearly loved and so dearly loved you back – you never left, you will never leave. I passed by your bench on Shabbat, and I ingrained it in my heart. In the evening, I remembered the photograph and saw you still sitting there, because how would we say – there's no way back because we won't let you go.

Thank you, Yoram.

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The secular new year at our door brings old challenges, but also new hopes. For the world's populations, the end of December is an optimistic time of holidays, vacations, good wishes, and presents. The problem is that after Dec. 31 comes Jan. 1 – and then, usually, come the surprises.

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Who remembers, for example, that in December 2019 various systems (outside China) tried to predict the future without a single word about "coronavirus," which stormed onto the scene at the start of 2020 and turned all of us into mask-wearing citizens with the status of vaccinated, recovered, or – heaven forbid – a vaccine refuser.

So first of all, we'll wish us all good health and a long life, and exactly the opposite for COVID itself. Optimism is allowed, even if we are currently living in days of quarantine and mass spread. "The worse things are, the better they will be," according to a quote attributed to Vladimir Lenin. Why not this time, as well?

By the way, the virus itself only strengthened trends that existed in the world: China was the source of the evil, America was irresponsible, Russia wanted to remain relevant and is one of the only countries that produced a vaccine, and Europe is less and less relevant because of the clumsiness of the European Union when it came to the vaccination campaign. Africa, always colorful and beloved, is left behind, and nationalism has once again become a legitimate term – certainly not a bad word – because of COVID.

The upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing, scheduled for February, are supposed to distract us from COVID somewhat (China taketh away, and China giveth), just like Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, which is happily returning.

Even the very untraditional World Cup, slated to take place in the Qatar desert in November-December, might make a contribution to the post-pandemic world. We said "might," because no one really knows.

Waiting for the baton to be passed

We are living in strange times. What used to be is not necessarily what will be, because the past is gone. Stefan Zweig and his book The World of Yesterday are more relevant than ever. Superpowers are in decline, and new powers are rising to take their place. Some European universities have even stopped teaching the ancient languages of Greece and Rome, and the level of interest today's young people have in the past means they don't know their Mamluks from their Milky Ways. It's the zeitgeist. There has never been such easy access to information, and we've never seen such a lack of interest in looking at things in depth. For millions of young people, even a 30-second video is becoming too long and tiring.

So where is our world headed, and us with it? The trends of this past year will only grow stronger, and the main arenas of the future will be Ukraine, China and Iran. That can only be bad.

Let's start with Ukraine – things are on fire there. Vladimir Putin, a man of the previous century who if it weren't for the laws of nature would be with us for a century more, wants to restore his country's days of glory. Putin sees Russia as the greatest country in the world, and not only in terms of territory. But there is no doubt that the Russian economy is faltering, which is making it difficult for him to go back to being the Soviet Union.

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But Ukraine is a battlefield on which Putin can prove to the world – he's here, he's alive and kicking, and invading. The predictable lack of an American response – and also a European one, and a response from the West in general – will send strong signals to the Chinese to get ready for the baton to be handed over in a ceremony that gets closer every year. The question many in the West are starting to ask is not "if," but when it will happen.

And China? It continues to grow stronger economically (see where it is compared to Russia) on the back of the US and at its expense. By the way, this might be one of the reasons why the Chinese aren't really in a rush. They haven't finished getting rich. But on Judgment Day, we'll wake up to see Chinese ships on the coast of Taiwan. The day that happens – it's all over. It's unlikely to happen in 2022, but this year will only bolster the developments. US President Joe Biden and former US President Donald Trump didn't agree about anything, except the Chinese threat.

This coming fall, China's Communist Party can be expected to hand Chinese leader Xi Jinping the reins for the third time (the first time this has happened since the death of Mao Zedong), so he can continue to entrench his country's status. Did you miss the cold war between the USSR and the US? Wait for the Chinese version.

A riddle with no solution

And of course, Iran. Washington is focused on the Chinese threat, and therefore withdrew from Afghanistan this year. It could also forgo the Ukrainian front, as well as the Iranian one. America is retreating willingly, and Iran, with its rich history, is waiting for the day it finally becomes a nuclear power. The nuclear deal everyone is talking about has almost become a goal, not just a tool. Remember, the goal is neither a bad deal nor military nuclear capabilities.

Biden's Washington, like Obama's, puts more faith in words than in actions when it comes to Iran. 2022 was a test year. The US mid-term elections in November should lead to a reversal in Congress, which might cause changes on certain points, but not a change of direction. American society is replete and tired, and more interested in gender definition than in punishing tyrants.

And where is Israel, as our world changes? There is no doubt that Europe, with its feelings of guilt, has contributed a lot, even if there were times when the Palestinians were exploited to prove that Jews aren't any better. America, of course, gave us all the help at a time when our shared values were a kind of supreme value.

But today, a new superpower has erupted into our lives, one that believes in total collectivism, in a world in which technology has never been so advanced. All this makes our future a riddle.

Just like with COVID – this time, the answers lie with China.

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"If Iran gives an order to launch missiles [into Israel] from Lebanon, we must attack Tehran," former Jerusalem mayor and current Likud MK Nir Barkat told Israel Hayom's Editor-in-Chief Boaz Bismuth, at the Israeli-American Council conference in Florida on Saturday. 

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Barkat, who is currently in the United States on a public diplomacy tour, stressed that "when we talk about the Iranian threat, we are all one people – the opposition and the coalition in Israel as well as the US. Iran is governed by a radical Islamic regime that wants to obtain nuclear weapons in order to use them, that is their goal. There's no point in talking to people who want to push you into the sea."

Barkat added, "We also need to be aware of the existing threat. There are about 250,000 missiles around our borders. We need to tell the Iranian regime that for every missile fired at Israel from one of its proxies, our target will be Tehran. We need to be prepared for the first war with Iran, and the only way to prevent a war is to prepare for it seriously. The Iranians need to understand that we will attack forcefully. I want them to be afraid before they press the button to attack Israel."

In the last few months, Barkat led the efforts to prevent the reopening of the United States' Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem. He garnered the support of 200 members of Congress who sent a letter to President Joe Biden opposing the move. In addition, 36 senators submitted a bill to block the reopening.

"Opening the consulate would divide Jerusalem, and that is why we will never let that happen," Barkat said.

With regard to internal Israeli politics, the lawmaker said, "When we [Likud] return to power, we will promote Israel much faster, because the [current] government has no vision. There are elements from the Left, the Right, Arabs, they have completely different angles. We need a government with a clear vision to promote the Golan, the Negev, the Galilee and Judea and Samaria."

When asked about the polls that predict his victory in the Likud leadership race after Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Barkat said, "I am part of the Likud, and we are a democratic party in a democratic state. For me, the day Netanyahu decides to leave, primaries will open and I will run and win."

Barkat was also asked whether Netanyahu constitutes an asset or a burden for the Likud now, to which he replied, "I said before that we are a democratic party and we are a democratic state, so the people who need to determine assets or burdens are the Likudniks and the people of Israel – they will decide. They are the ones who decide at every election, as they did last time, and whatever they decide, we will accept."

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On Oct. 21, the Turkish paper Sabah reported that an extensive operation by Turkish security forces had resulted in the arrest of 15 Mossad agents. The surprising report didn't upset us especially, since it was clear that it wasn't the most reliable article of the year. But the report should have been a warning light. Israel didn't respond, rightfully, but Turkey should have been expected to. Ankara couldn't ignore a story like that, especially one that ran in a newspaper identified with the regime.

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Nine days ago, Israeli tourists Mordy and Natalie Oknin, were on vacation in Istanbul, visiting the Çamlıca Tower on the Asian side of the magical city, and taking pictures of the views. Since the Turkish report about the supposed arrests of Mossad agents hadn't resulted in a travel warning, they were convinced (justifiably) that there was no risk in taking a picture of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's private residence, which is documented on social media.

Who would have believed that the innocent picture would send them to prison and create a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, which were nevertheless able to handle it efficiently and with perfect coordination between various systems. On Thursday, an entire country was able to breathe easy (may social media forgive me, but in the case of the couple's arrest, users acted as if they were exempt from the laws of the state).

President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and Mossad Director David Barnea successfully navigated their first crisis. Not everything is about position – there is also a need to calm things down. The government can be praised when it succeeds. The country belongs to all of us. Everyone wondered what Erdogan got. Some say the Turkish president wants someone to listen to him and received a phone call with President Herzog. In a difficult time for Erdogan's Turkey, which went too far in adopting political Islam, a happy ending like this one gives it credit in the international community.

Turkey, which is engulfed in a major economic crisis and dealing with a difficult PR problem, is looking to improve its public relations. It doesn't cost us much, and for Turkey, it's worth its weight in gold. It's too bad that the Oknins didn't know that their all-inclusive trip would include spending eight days behind bars. Thank God, they made it home.

The banality of the relations

This week, I returned to the United Arab Emirates after I hadn't been there for a long time. The last time I was there was in January 2010. Since then, plenty of water has flown under the bridge, even if, apparently, not enough. This time, I entered the country on an Israeli passport for the first time. What a difference. No longer on a French passport that allowed me into Iraq during the Gulf War via Qatar, Kuwait, and most enjoyably, the Emirates. The Abraham Accords have made the Israeli passport not only relevant in the Gulf, but into a friendly and even sought-after one.

I visited Abu Dhabi and from there left for a visit to United Arab Emirates University in the desert capital Al Ain. And Dubai, of course. How could a visit miss that amazing city, which never stops developing? I spoke Hebrew, I heard Hebrew, and of course at the expo in Dubai I saw an endless stream of locals and tourists visiting our booth and taking pictures with our flag in the background. They call this peace between the peoples. Not peace between leaders. Not peace in the dark. Not relations with a concubine. That's over.

And that's the amazing thing about the Abraham Accords. People have tried to play down their importance. Do you remember? They tried to say it was just a banal agreement. That it was a deal intended to secure F-35s. Very quickly, we saw that was nonsense. This peace is in the interest of the Emirates, who very bravely gambled on ties with us. For their people, for us, and for the region. Yes, at the expo the Palestinian booth was set up next to the Emiratis', because when you're a country like the UAE you need to balance things all the time. But as our diplomatic correspondent Ariel Kahana reported, an Emirati source said, "We talk to everyone." And that is why they are great.

This banal agreement has made our ties to a large Arab population into something banal. Therein lies the greatness of the accords – the banality of the relations. Indirectly, it has also contributed to warmer ties with Egypt and Jordan, who understand that they now have competitors, and that peace between peoples is better than peace between leaders. Peace without feelings of inferiority.

Let's get back to Turkey. Do you remember David Ben-Gurion's peripheral alliance, when he realized that there was a need to form regional ties? And that without Arab friends, he reached out to Turkey, Iran, Chad, and Ethiopia. Today, all that has been upended.

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Iran is far from being a friend and is even our biggest enemy. When it comes to Turkey and political Islam (the Muslim Brotherhood), which it is spreading in Libya, Jerusalem, and even throughout Africa, the country under Erdogan isn't exactly a lover of Zion. On the other hand, we have all of a sudden started to collect Arab friends in the Gulf and the Arab world. Ben-Gurion would be turning over in his grave.

But we should remember that Turkey and Iran today are not the Turkey and Iran of the 1950s. The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and the Shiite ayatollahs weren't exactly part of the "peripheral alliance" back then. And our Arab neighbors, at least some of them, have undergone a massive change. People claim that a third state helped resolve the crisis, even if Jerusalem is insisting that even if one had been willing to step up, there was no need.

Either way, this has been an interesting and successful week. Mordy and Natalie Oknin are back home, and a crisis that could have lasted weeks if not months was solved by the effective work of the Bennett-Lapid government. Of course, the fact that they weren't really spies helped. The trip to the Emirates proved what I already knew: that the Abraham Accords were an immense achievement by the Trump administration and the Emirati crown prince, and of course the Israeli government. In particular, the direct flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, just like the outgoing flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi over Saudi Arabia, proved to us that there is indeed a new Middle East and mainly – that normalization is a vital condition for true peace.

We can assume that at this rate, if Elon Musk and Richard Branson will forgive me, we'll get to Saudi Arabia long before we get to the moon. The Abraham Accords created a new climate in the Middle East, one in which even Erdogan realizes that he might have to change the record. Israel did well in helping him out. And I don't know why, but I feel like saying thank you to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed.

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Khreshchatyk Blvd. is the Champs-Elysees of Kiev. If anyone wants to advertise anything, this is the place to erect billboards. If you want to tell a story through signs, this is the natural place to pick.

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On Tuesday morning, a street cleaner, not young, wearing a yellow coverall, stopped sweeping the sidewalks so she could read the new signs that had been put up. Her face showed surprise, interest, horror, curiosity, and possibly all of these, over the terrifying historic event perpetrated a few kilometers from here, northwest of where she and I were standing – a valley of slaughter in which 100,000-150,000 people were murdered, 50,000 of them Jews.

Babi Yar. A place that has become synonymous with Hell for an entire people, where 33,000 Jews were systematically murdered in the space of two days, before the use of gas chambers, which saved bullets. And this didn't happen 1,000 years ago, but started at the end of September 1941, yesterday in terms of the human calendar.

For many long years, there were no bullet shells, no names, no graves, and no monuments to testify. The victims were destroyed a second time. The Nazis slaughtered, the Ukrainians helped them during the war, and the Soviets covered it up. The historical display erected on the boulevard allows passers-by an impression of the historical signs, in which Soviet propaganda is clearly displayed – Jews are shown as Nazis in the context of the "Big Israel" project. Instead of commemoration, this was slander. And not only that.

Three hours after the encounter with the horrific episode of history on the boulevard, I'm in a different place in our history, Jewish history. Isaac "Bougie" Herzog, president of the Jewish state, the son of a former president and the grandson of a great rabbi, is being given a state welcome at the Ukrainian presidential palace. Holocaust and rebirth in a single morning. This is our wonderful story.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday in a joint statement with Herzog that Ukraine was working to pass a law against antisemitism, and Herzog mentioned that Ukraine had boycotted the 20^th anniversary event of the Durban Conference. This is very important, but not enough. Ukraine should not be afraid to confront its past, and with the right education in its schools it can make its antisemitic chapter, which included some national heroes, clear to the young generation. France under Chirac did the same thing after Mitterand refused to, when it recognized the crimes of the Vichy government under the Nazi occupation, and it only added to the country's honor.

On Tuesday, along with Israel Hayom's correspondent in Kiev, Ariel Bulshtein, we sat down with a young local woman, Lana, an event coordinator. She is intelligent and studied humanities at the University of Kiev. She explains that the Cossacks were not antisemitic, and neither was the traitorous dictator Khmelnytsky.

History teaches us about dark periods in the relations between Cossacks and Jews, and Khmelnytsky himself, one of the fathers of Ukrainian nationalism and leader of the Cossak rebellion against the Poles, was responsible for the 1648 rioting against Polish Jewry, which killed thousands of Jews.

Ukraine shouldn't be afraid to confront its dark chapters. Tuesday's visit and the way in which the country is marking the 80^th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre illustrates how far Ukraine has come in the right direction. Whoever said that history is written in the ink of the past was right. In the case of Babi Yar, it's not ink, but blood.

In the meantime, when you hear some of the young people here explaining that what we see as antisemitism is nothing more than love for their country, a kind of nationalism, you realize that we don't really speak the same language as the rest of the world's citizens. And maybe because of that, there are some who claim that antisemitism is just part of generalized racism or another form of xenophobia in an attempt to reach the hearts of the citizens of the world and today's young people, and there are some like me who think that just like the Babi Yar massacre, the unique Jewish experience is of great importance. That's why it's so important to stress – of course there is racism and xenophobia in the world, but there is also a special form of it directed at Jews – which is why it is so important that they have a Jewish home in a Jewish state. And to those who are busy with the work, work and commemoration – we can only congratulate them and tell them what they already know, that their work is eternal and will never end. Societies and nations will seek to cover it up, like the Soviets did, and we will always insist on remembering.

On Tuesday, I was reminded of a French ceremony commemorating Vel d'Hiv, at which former French President Francois Holland recalled that it was French police – not Germans – who persecuted and founded up the Jews of Paris in 1942 and sent them to die in concentration camps.

On Wednesday, we will be taking part in the important ceremony at the valley of death itself. For the sake of the victims, for the sake of their relatives, for the sake of humanity as a whole – Ukraine needs to tell the world its full story. The event in Kiev brought it honor.

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One picture of Joe Biden at Camp David this week, sitting alone in a polo shirt, chin in hand, looking worriedly at a large screen tells the whole story of the 46^th president's failure in his first major mission – withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan.

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Until last week, Biden benefitted by the Afghanistan issue not being a burning one for anyone in the US, and even the hawks in Congress realized that the mission was over and the withdrawal would happen soon. But on the clear, blue-skied day when Kabul fell like a house of cards, Biden managed to put the country back on the agenda and turn it into a litmus test of his crisis management. The grade? Total fiasco. Not because of the decision to pull out, but because of the lack of ability to plan the pullout appropriately and talk honestly about it to the cameras (not to mention, answer questions).

This show of Biden, totally alone, sitting at a big table and talking to his advisors during a crisis while still refusing to cut his vacation at Camp David short, is all we need to know about how Biden – and the rest of the world – has handled Afghanistan in the last seven months. The image made it clear that for Biden, anything unrelated to COVID and the economy will be carried out from afar, with an uninterested look.

This should be of concern to Israel and other US allies, if this is how he'll act when it's time to make a decision about a nuclear deal with Iran, for example. It should also concern anyone who thinks that Biden will be a "human rights" president – all the signs indicate that the Americans will ultimately recognize the Taliban, even if they continue to take away women's rights.

What might be worse, the picture showed the way in which Biden prefers not to make decisions until he is forced to. He thinks that his cabinet is a bunch of bland technocrats, rather than people who have something organic that holds them together. Some will say that former President Trump was also a one-man show, but Trump knew how to give his administration officials access and listen to what they wanted, especially people at the important level, like his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo and the top defense echelon. When they made suggestions, Trump would meet with them in person and listen, and even insist on developing them (such as with the targeted killing of Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Most important – Trump made it clear that he wanted to be presented with plans, and did not wait for them to arrive. With Biden, at least according to reports these past few days, various officials warned repeatedly that the Afghans were not capable of taking the reins, but Biden hoped his cabinet would know what to do without him giving them explicit instructions. Because really, what's so difficult about pulling out of a country, he must have thought to himself.

For Biden, this is a familiar pattern. As described in a weekly column in The Atlantic, as early as 1975 he opposed giving aid to the South Vietnamese government to help it stop the invasion from the north. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991, and in 2007 he refused to help the Bush administration send additional forces to Iraq, a move that in hindsight helped Iraq out of the chaos that reigned at the time, until the Biden-Obama government pulled the forces out and left an opening for the Islamic State to rise to power. In a book that came out a few years ago, Biden is even quoted saying that the US had no obligation to help the Afghans who helped the Americans, and that the Nixon administration had managed to avoid helping the Vietnamese who cooperated with it.

Today, Aug. 20, Biden marks the seven-month anniversary of his swearing-in as president, and it appears that with one failed mission in Afghanistan he has managed to wreck the only brand that helped him be elected: "I'm not Trump."

Biden successfully marketed himself as a man of experience who knew foreign policy in and out and how to negotiate Washington, so he argued that he could be entrusted to manage the US and the world because he already knew the material like the palm of his hand. This advantage, which he used to promote himself, distinguished him from Trump among Independent voters and those who sought stability after the lack of consistency Trump demonstrated during the COVID pandemic. But in one fell swoop, Biden managed to anger the same voters who made the small difference in the November election: the working class who hoped that Biden, like Trump, would be a president who would put America's honor front and center. So they gave him a chance.

'Stamp of approval'  

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's arrival at the White House this coming Thursday will be Biden's first chance to rebuild his brand. The stamp of approval Bennett will provide him by sitting with him in the Oval Office will be the first signal that Biden is trying to look like a president who doesn't abandon his allies, and the administration's first step toward the difficult year the Democratic Party is expected to face – interim elections. Historically, the president's conduct has a direct influence on his party's chances of succeeding in the interim elections, and usually voters head for a change. This time, if Biden doesn't make a miraculous recovery, Afghanistan will be the Republicans' return ticket to both houses of Congress. Not because voters are angry about the withdrawal, but because they are angry that Biden demonstrated America's weakness and caused eyebrows to go up about his ability to lead America, even on domestic issues, for another three years. Voters will want something as a counter-balance, in the form of a Republican majority in both houses of Congress.

Biden can now be expected to face an onslaught of criticism about how the US can no longer be counted on as an ally, and his critics will make sure to mention both Israel and Taiwan repeatedly in the near future as test cases. If Bennett lines up with Biden at this particular time, he will be seen as offering him approval and forgiveness, and will thereby get pulled into the American political storm.

An unforgiveable humiliation

Many other Americans, like Biden himself, aren't interested in what is happening in Afghanistan, and won't punish the Democrats at the polls in 2022 or in 2024, or so Washington hopes. But history teaches us that international failures have a notably direct effect on how the US president is perceived at home. Even now, Biden is seeing a drop in the polls and is at his lowest approval rating since he became president because of the failure – and the humiliation – in Afghanistan. Americans will forgive many things, but not incompetence.

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For example, despite all Trump's remarks during the campaign and after his, his polling numbers remained relatively stable during his presidency, even after COVID hit, because he managed to bring the economy to new heights and gave people the feeling that America was once again respected in the world. The same voters hoped that Biden would be a Democratic version of Trump – that he would give America the respect it deserved, and also pull it out of the COVID mess. Instead, in his first seven months in office, Biden managed to do what it took former President Jimmy Carter nearly an entire term to accomplish: cause America to lose the remaining shred of credibility it had in the world as a country not to be toyed with.

No one expected him to fight the Afghans' war for them, but everyone expected him to know how to put the Taliban in its place and deter them without complicating a well-ordered withdrawal. Everyone around Biden is fingering Trump as the party to be blamed for the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, because he was the one who reached understandings with the Taliban about an American withdrawal. But they forget to mention that Trump also made it clear that if the Taliban was responsible for anything "bad," while the deal was being implemented, the US would respond harshly and without hesitation. Biden refused to order a massive attack on Taliban forces that would have stopped their march to Kabul, give the Afghan government some breathing space and allow for an orderly withdrawal, even when one district after another was falling to them. He argued that the Taliban would use any such attack as an excuse to attack America, thereby admitting that he refused to deter the Taliban, and hammering the final nail in the coffin of the Afghan government's chances of survival.

Huge damage to the US image

At the last minute, Biden approved the deployment of thousands of soldiers to the region, including the 82^nd Airborne Division, which was the one that launched the invasion of Normandy. Of the 6,000 soldiers sent in, 2,000 were from this division, and the others were from other units of the American forces. In addition, forces from the 10^th Mountain Division are still deployed in Afghanistan and are defending its airport, as well as special forces, apparently. The British have also sent in hundreds of soldiers from their 16^th Airborne Division. But no soldier can fix the damage done to the US image, and a photo op with the Israeli prime minister will be fully exploited by the White House.

This is why Bennett has to postpone his trip. Bennett argues that his government is 10 degrees to the right of his predecessor. If he believes that he represents that approach, he must not stand alongside a person who has caused America to lose so much of its credibility, and effectively handed the Middle East over to Tehran and the Taliban on a silver platter. Where is American planning? Has America gone back to "leading from behind," as Obama did in Libya, which led to the chaos that Libya and the region as a whole are currently suffering from? If Bennett wants to wipe the smile of Tehran and Hamas' faces, he needs to show Biden that he is not willing to participate with this approach. Bennett will be asked during the visit if he trusts Biden, and he will be forced to say that he does. This would put him in line with an administration that even the Democratic hawks in Congress do not believe is capable of rebuilding America's standing.

If Biden is under attack from the Right and the Left, including by CNN and the other media outlets that general sing his praises, it's a sign he's really in trouble. Does Bennett want to be the one to restore his standing, thereby giving him a chance to put the two-state paradigm back on the table? Does Bennett want to be immortalized as the person who caused the Democrats' peace plan to become an option again, sending Israel and the coalition into another political whirlpool?

Maybe Biden will want to show off his "achievement" with the Palestinian issue. Maybe some sort of reduction to settlement construction, a move Bennett is already moving toward unofficially. This isn't the time for Bennett to be seen as caving in to American pressure. Biden needs to handle his problems alone. For Bennett, it would be better to postpone the visit.

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On Tisha B'Av, the Jewish people's time of mourning reaches its peak. This is the most serious fast of the four that mark the destruction of the Temple, and the most important because by today's fast, we mourn many disasters that befell the Jewish people over the course of generations.

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Tragic events led us into exile, where we dreamed of returning to Zion, the ingathering of the exiles, fulfilling Ezekiel's prophecy of the Valley of Dry Bones, without ever forgetting our Jewish purpose. We maintained our longing, our dream, and our vision far from our promised land, scattered across the earth, and all the while managed to preserve the people's continued existence.

We breathed Judaism without sovereignty. That is the wonder of the Jewish people, a unique characteristic that became an asset. A uniqueness that ensures the continuity of future generations. If there is no land in which to gather, there is a synagogue. And if there is no Temple, there is a state. There is no vacuum. We have the privilege of living at our people's highest point, the fulfilment of a dream: the Jewish people living in the Land of Israel, which became the state of Israel. What more could we ask? There's always something. One might say, more sovereignty, someone else – more democracy, a third might want more equality, a fourth more Judaism and a fifth the Temple itself! More is always possible, but we are thankful for what we have.

Seventy-three years ago, the Jewish people founded a sovereign state, and a month ago, a new government. This is a reason to rejoice. Always. Judaism is not afraid of novelty. The strong base and novelty always come from what is good, old, and strong. We also have a new prime minister-designate and foreign minister, Yair Lapid. Lapid means well. But has it gone so far that he is willing to give others what it unique to us? Last week, in the middle of the three-week period between the 17^th of Tammuz and the 9^th of Av, Lapid spoke at the 7^th Global Forum on Antisemitism, explaining that "The antisemites weren't only in the Budapest Ghetto [in the Holocaust]. The antisemites were also slave traders who threw people bound together with chains into the sea. The antisemites were the extremist Hutu in Rwanda who massacred Tutsis. The antisemites are Muslim fanatics who have murdered millions of other Muslims in the past century."

Israel's foreign minister might have hoped that that a speech like that would confront antisemitism by obfuscating the tragedy that was unique to the Jewish people. "Antisemitism is racism, antisemitism is radicalism, antisemitism is xenophobia," he added. But we all know that. The problem is that many peoples throughout history have suffered, but the hatred for Jews is a permanent element of the historical repertoires of the movements that persecute: the Crusaders slaughtered Jews they encountered in Jerusalem, the Inquisitors pursued and tortured them, Jewish holy books were burned outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, there were pogroms in Ukraine and Russia. And the Holocaust, in which entire Jewish communities in Europe and the East were murdered. Over 60 million civilians and soldiers lost their lives in World War II, but 6 million were killed merely because they were Jews. So Mr. Foreign Minister, antisemitism is not "hatred of foreigners," as you said at the conference. Antisemitism is hatred of Jews. It is a lethal weapon.

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Foreign Minister Lapid's speech sent me back a number of years of 2004, to Gorée Island in Senegal. From there, slaves were sent to America. I visited the island as Israel's ambassador to Mauritia. The site director hosted me. A picture of the Auschwitz death camp caught my eye. It was hanging on a wall, between pictures of the slaves. "You suffered five years in the war, we suffered 300," he told me. "300 years of slavery." I didn't answer. True, for many Africans the color of their skin is still a social barrier, or worse – could determine their fate. But to say the Jewish people suffered only five years? In the time of Martin Luther King Jr., Black Americans fought racism using terms from our biblical story. The Black Lives Matter movement adopts antisemitic ideas. So is antisemitism any form of xenophobia?

The foreign minister mentioned the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda by the Hutu. I visited Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, where I encountered a trembling silence in the streets. The place was covered with internal contradictions. The museum of the slaughter they created was inspired by commemorations of the Holocaust. They wrote about their very real suffering using our alphabet. Peoples who experienced tragedies learned from us how to write their future using the ink of the past.

Dear government, don't touch my religion, don't touch my heritage, don't touch my history, and don't desecrate the suffering. What is ours, is ours, including the bad things we have experienced, which have been distilled into the great spirit, the spirit of the Jewish people. The Jewish existential war today is not against COVID or Iran, but the battle for our Jewish identity. The Greeks, the Romans, the Inquisitors – they all tried and failed to attack our identity. And now, in the age of globalism, we are exposed to a new danger. The danger of trivialization, the use of "antisemitism" as "just another" form of hatred, another form of "xenophobia" or "intolerance."

This is the biggest challenge for Judaism in the global era: to preserve its uniqueness and emphasize it in the face of fashions and schools of thought that seek to blur identities, muffle national feeling, compel a world of universal values. There are already some who are marking our insistence on preserving what makes us special as an expression of racism or a view of superiority. There are also some who dream of turning the lessons of the Holocaust into a "universal message" and portray the Holocaust as just another genocide. Each of these trends has a direction, in which antisemitism and the Holocaust are just "reminders" of what human evil can wreak. Every evil, every human. The biggest irony of all is that under the auspices of our greatest achievement, the founding of the state, our Jewish identity was knowingly damaged; that in a government whose leader wears a kippa, we might send the world the message that antisemitism is hatred like any other. Because if antisemitism is just another form of hatred, the Jews are just another ethic group that is hated. This is a radical and dangerous message, and even more painful to hear when it comes from the spokesman of the Israeli government leading up to this holy day.

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The horrific reports that flowed in overnight Thursday and Friday morning from Mount Meron sent me back 45 years, to May 1976.

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My good friend and neighbor Aviad Pohoryles (now an Israel Hayom journalist) and his brother Leon, along with my sister and I, had lit the neighborhood bonfire near our home in Holon. My father was surprised us when he reported that there had been an accident, and he – along with my mother – were on their way to the north. The next morning, my father returned home with terrible news. My grandfather Modechai was on a tour bus that had fallen off a cliff at Mount Meron.

A total of 13 righteous men and women were killed in that disaster, on their way to celebrate the Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. My grandmother was badly injured, but lived, but to her last day the scars on her face were a reminder of the awful accident. My grandfather, who was also my mohel and should have been the one to prepare me for my bar mitzvah, became, to my mind, a saint. And my father? For months, he barely spoke. Only in retrospect did I realize that the task that had befallen him of identifying my grandfather between the wrecked bodies, had taken it out of him. Even my tough father remained scarred.

So every year, the celebrations at Meron turn from a Jewish story to a personal, family one. While everyone else links the event to the gomel prayer, with which they mark the end of a plague that killed 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva's students, for us, it is even more closely tied to the Kaddish mourning prayer for my grandfather and the other 12 victims from Ashdod.

This weekend, we were all plunged from the heights of joy into deep grief. Haredi Jews, traditional Jews, secular Jews. There was an uplifting of the spirit at the end of a plague. Like there was back then. People of faith flocked to Mount Meron in thousands of cars and buses. The world was following the event. It was the first open, accessible religious event to be held since the outbreak of the COVID virus in Israel last year. Once again, we were a light unto the nations. Or at least so it seemed. Who would have believed that 45 righteous would not be returning home? Who thought that a father, like my father did 45 years ago, would have to go to the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine to identify bodies – this time, two of his sons. The heart weeps, and not only the heart.

"He who is prudent will keep silence in such a time," Amos 5:13 says, rightfully. And if that isn't enough, we have the example of Aaron, who discovered that his two oldest sons had died, as told in Leviticus. What did Aaron do? He "kept silent." Then too, the great joy turned into deep grief. The inauguration of the holy site turned into a burial of two sons.

We are holding a national day of mourning, but the darkness will stay with us for many days to come. We are still burying our dead and identifying the last of the victims. The blood boils and we weep with the families. We will mourn – and then we will thoroughly investigate who is at fault. Why the government doesn't have more authority over religious events, why there is not complete sovereignty over Jewish and Muslim holy sites. We owe it to the victims, to the families, and to ourselves. We also owe it to the enormous audience that will continue to visit Mount Meron in the years to come.

It was moving to see the solidarity among the citizens of Israel. Tel Aviv residents stood hours in line to donate blood, residents of Arab villages lined the roads leading to and from Meron and set up rest and refreshment stations. In the year of COVID and elections we were told that we were a fractured, irreparably torn society. But that's not the case: Secular, religious, and Haredi Jews, as well as non-Jews, are all responsible for one another and demonstrated exemplary unity and mutual help. The exceptions to that are the exceptions.

We must not blame the victims, and we must not rush to draw conclusions. But if only the tears of 2021, like our tears in 1976, will be the last tears of grief from Meron. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, possibly one of the most national rabbis in our tradition, once whispered to me when I was a child mourning my grandfather, that he preferred the gomel prayer over the Kaddish.

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Has "ideology" become such a bad word in our politics? It's true, politics is all about compromises, needs, and negotiating. Politics is a field in which you swallow toads if you need to, in which agendas can be flexible, in which you sometimes need to set a goal and pay a price – in principle, ideology, and sometimes even socially – to achieve it.

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And this is precisely the issue: you do it to achieve your goals, not someone else's. And "you" and "someone else" don't refer to personal, careerist goals, however important they might be. It's a mistake to dismiss them. Ambition and competition are an important part of the political game. But they are only a tool, not the target. We have one contract with our leaders: that they use the tools they have to implement the plans that were why we voted for them. We will understand if sometimes it's done imperfectly, and we'll accept that sometimes promises are broken, or that reality overcomes our plans. But there is a path, there is a general decision on a direction.

And these days, those targets are clear: taking a strong stance against the Iranian threat; defending Israel's interests and freedom of action under any American administration or the European Union; protecting Israel's new alliances on the moderate axis of the Arab world; insisting on the core values of Zionism and patriotism; continued economic development; strengthening pluralism in academia, culture, and the media; and of course – a clear statement on Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley: that after we pulled the doctrine of withdrawal off the table, we now move on to talking about a declaration of sovereignty.

That is the direction the Right is headed, and in which it has made unquestionable progress in the past decade, mainly when we consider the starting point a little over 10 years ago, when the world was pushing for another pullback, warning us about a diplomatic tsunami after our disengagement was met by rocket fire and the Goldstone Report. We aren't there anymore, and there's one clear reason for that – the Israeli governments since then have been led by a solid right-wing leadership. Yes, it included representatives of the Left, and yes, it sometimes was forced into unity when there was no other choice. And yes, it sometimes had to fold here and there, or even upset its right-wing base. But these have been right-wing governments, dominated by the Right, that were formed to move ahead in the direction that the Right wanted to go. All the partners recognized that when it came to the deepest existential questions, to principles, the ideological direction was clear.

And astonishingly, just as we reach an absolute majority of right-wing seats in the Knesset, we are about to lose our orientation. From a majority that was pushing for change, we are now prepared to consider a U-turn when it comes to ideas, or at least a sharp turn to the Left. The Left not only identifies the internal collapse of the Right, it also admits freely that this is the moment it has been waiting for. One after the other, representatives of the Left – sometimes a sitting MK, sometimes a former one, sometimes a newspaper publishers – and admit that any upcoming partnerships will be a "one night stand," that they'll get rid of "him" and then see. To put it simply: their only hope of steering the Israeli ship away from the route the national camp has navigated for it is to have more than one captain take the wheel for a bit.

It doesn't matter how many pretty words you couch it in – unity, healing, change – the excitement on the Left can't be disguised, and we can't deny what this means: the Right can no longer dictate the direction of the journey, certainly not like it once could. Even if the prime minister will be from the Right, it won't be the same. It's not only who kills the king that matters, but who crowns the new king, and what he receives in exchange, and where the king intends to go with it. We don't have the privilege of deluding ourselves: the Left didn't fight to bring down one right-wing prime minister just to replace him with another prime minister from the Right.

Bad blood, problems, boycotts, promises, everyone has plenty of these. If we want to avoid another election or exit the political impasse, it's inevitable that some promises will have to be broken. There is no way to avoid sitting in a government with people we once denied. We can't stay pure. Commitments will be violated, but the question is which ones, and in exchange for what?

So because of this impossible tangle of boycotts and promises, in the most complicated place in all the chaos – it is possible to gather around the only thing on which we cannot allow ourselves to blink: our ideology. If they already need to go back on their commitments or check their egos or hold their noses – at least let them do it to promote the ideology of the Right, the national camp, as fully as possible, as deeply as possible, in the most enabling way possible. In the end, it will all fall apart. The dust will settle,  and in a month or two years from now no one will remember who gave in, who folded, who blinked, and who defected. They will remember one thing: who put ideology before everything else, and who allowed the ship of Israel to veer off its ideological course. In the situation we're in, this is the only test we cannot fail. This is the only ideological commitment they must not break.

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