Marking on Sunday six months since the Oct. 7 massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his weekly Cabinet meeting by listing what he called the "considerable achievements" of the war in Gaza.

"We have eliminated 19 of Hamas's 24 battalions, including senior commanders," he said. "We have killed, wounded, or captured a large number of Hamas terrorists. We have cleared out Shifa [Hospital in Gaza City] and other terrorist command centers."

He went on, "We have destroyed rocket factories, command centers, and weapons caches. And we are continuing to systematically destroy underground installations."

Netanyahu punctuated the impressive inventory by stating, "We are a step away from victory."

Encouraging words, to be sure. Yet, to everyone's surprise, they were followed by a withdrawal of most of the Israel Defense Forces ground troops from southern Gaza, after four months of fighting in Khan Yunis.

As soon as the IDF announced the pullback, I began receiving frantic calls from abroad and WhatsApp messages at home requesting my take on the move.

"Does it mean that the war is over?" some asked. "Has Israel capitulated to pressure from the White House for a ceasefire with nothing in return?"

Others wanted to know whether Netanyahu and his War Cabinet – despite their repeated assertions – had decided against entering Rafah, where four of the six remaining Hamas battalions are located, along with many of the 133 hostages.

The following evening, Netanyahu addressed that very question. The Rafah operation, he assured the public via video, "will happen; there is a date."

Rather than putting puzzlement to rest, however, his statement served simultaneously to raise and furrow a lot of brows – even more so a few hours later, when Defense Minister Yoav Gallant denied this was the case.

In a phone call with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Gallant reportedly told his counterpart that no time frame had been set for an IDF invasion of Rafah, since plans for the evacuation of the civilian population there were still in the works.

To make matters even more complicated, the Israeli hostage-release negotiating team, led by Mossad chief David Barnea, returned on Monday from Cairo amid "conflicting reports" of progress in the talks.

Translated from Middle Eastern into plain English: No matter how many concessions Israel is willing to make to the Qatari, Egyptian, and American mediators – for the freedom of the men, women, and children being starved, brutalized, and raped in Hamas/ Palestinian Islamic Jihad captivity – the terrorists are continuing to call the shots.

This brings us back to the confusion surrounding the partial curbing of combat, which has had one amusing effect on Netanyahu's detractors. Those who've been accusing him of prolonging the war in order to "hold on to his seat" are now attacking him for prematurely exiting the battlefield.

The trouble is that his supporters are also anxious about the direction he's taking, particularly with Washington's hostility growing more blatant with each passing hour. So much so, in fact, that the atrocities of Oct. 7 are barely mentioned anymore.

In their place are admonitions about Israel's duty to prioritize the needs of Gazans over those of the hostages. Yet, hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks are transferred to the Strip every day.

In addition, US officials told CNN on Tuesday that President Joe Biden pooh-poohed Netanyahu's claim about a "date" for the Rafah operation, calling it "bluster" and "bravado." On the same day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the opportunity of the end of Ramadan to compare the "plight of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank" to "civilians in Syria, women suffering under the Taliban in Afghanistan, Uyghurs in the People's Republic of China [and] Rohingya in Burma and Bangladesh."

No wonder certain Israelis believe – or at least fear – that Netanyahu was bullied by the Biden administration into halting the war. Some of us still have faith that it's far from over.

My own uncharacteristic optimism comes from an analysis by war correspondent and Israel Prize laureate Ron Ben-Yishai. In an article in Ynet, Ben-Yishai (who, it should be noted, is no friend of Netanyahu) spelled out the strategy behind the troop withdrawal.

The "98th Division's exit from Khan Yunis is designed, in part, to open up opportunities for unexpected, intelligence-guided strikes that will catch Hamas terrorists off guard," he wrote. "This tactic was recently successful at a Gaza City hospital, capturing terrorists who believed IDF activities there had ceased."

Ben-Yishai stressed that this ploy "puts [the troops] less than an hour from any target location, including Rafah," adding that "all intelligence, air and ground fire resources currently active in Khan Yunis will remain in place, allowing uninterrupted intelligence and operational activities."

He went on to note that this shift to a new strategy also reduces the soldiers' vulnerability to terrorist attacks by avoiding static positions; paves the way for the next phase of combat; and generates incentives for Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar to negotiate a hostage deal.

"Understanding that the IDF can swiftly penetrate any location," he explained, "Hamas is constrained in its movements and in reestablishing its military and civil authority in the region without assuming risks."

Finally, Ben-Yishai emphasized, the troop exit was planned weeks ago, without any connection to the US-Israel relationship crisis.

You don't need to be a military expert to see that this makes total sense.

It's also safe to assume at this juncture that Netanyahu would not be reiterating, ad nauseam, the imperative of tackling Rafah if he were on the verge of back-tracking. Even his detractors should realize that doing so would guarantee, not postpone, his downfall.

So, everybody needs to calm down and remember that the war "ain't over 'til it's over."

 Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Israeli Minister-without-Portfolio Benny Gantz delivered a speech on Tuesday that sheds light on his alleged exclusion from the decision-making process surrounding the current negotiations in Qatar for the release of the 134 remaining hostages in Hamas captivity.

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Gantz, the National Unity Party leader who joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government for the duration of Israel's war against Hamas, is a voting member of the "triumvirate" War Cabinet. Alongside Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, he has played a central role in determining the direction of the existential battle against the terrorist organization that perpetrated the Oct. 7 massacre.

According to Israel Hayom defense analyst Yoav Limor, however, Gantz was suddenly sidelined on Sunday. Limor claimed that Netanyahu decided at the last minute that only he and Gallant would be giving directives to the Israeli delegation leaving for Doha the following day.

Though Limor's report was based on anonymous sources, and therefore might well be inaccurate, it is nevertheless plausible. Gantz has demonstrated that he can't be trusted as a team player, particularly not while preoccupied with his campaign to replace Netanyahu at the helm.

His unapproved excursion to the United States and Britain earlier this month – in the guise of a state visit – was a glaring example of his political priorities. It was a wink to the powers-that-be in Washington and London that he will be a better ally than Netanyahu – someone to form a less right-wing government more open to peace-processing with the Palestinians.

That the trip backfired, with Gantz receiving a dressing-down rather than a propping-up, wasn't merely ironic. It illustrated his cluelessness about international attitudes towards Israel that have nothing to do with Netanyahu.

Which brings us to the remarks he made at the Makor Rishon newspaper's conference on security and society in Sderot. Addressing the issue of the hostages, Gantz called securing their release a "moral obligation" and "strategic necessity," both integral to winning the war.

"All of us, everyone who held leadership positions before Oct. 7, bears responsibility for the disaster," he said. "The government that I joined in light of the state of emergency has a broad, binding, and tremendous responsibility for the past, but also for the present and the future…Israel has a responsibility to its citizens. This covenant must not be broken, even at painful costs," he said.

He went on: "As in the case of the last time we negotiated [a hostage release], if there is a real opportunity [today] to bring them back, we will take it…There will be a price to pay for this and it will hurt. This is the price of the covenant between the state and its citizens; violating it will exact a heavy historical price on Israeli society."

No Israeli disputes the failures of the military and political echelons that enabled Hamas barbarians to commit the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust. Nor does any citizen doubt that ransoming the hostages will put the rest of the populace at risk.

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According to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday, Yahya Sinwar sent a message to his concerned counterparts hiding out in Qatar that they need not worry about Hamas losses in the war.

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On the contrary, the Gaza Hamas chief who masterminded the Oct. 7 massacre assured, "We have the Israelis right where we want them."

This statement, like the rest of Sinwar's memo, reportedly delivered via courier during a meeting last month of Hamas honchos in Doha, was a paraphrased summary conveyed by anonymous sources supposedly informed of the event.

If the WSJ's sources are to be trusted, Sinwar indicated that he and his goons were looking forward to a ground invasion by the IDF in Rafah – you know, the operation necessary for destroying Hamas's last six battalions and finding the 134 remaining hostages.

The mere prospect of the move is causing global apoplexy, due to the estimated 1.2 million people residing in Rafah who would be at great risk if not relocated. But, as the WSJ's sources imparted, incurring mass casualties is precisely what Sinwar wants, since he knows that the higher the death toll in Gaza, the greater the pressure will be on Israel to stop the war.

No sane observer of Hamas could possibly be surprised by this revelation, regardless of the reliability of the report. Sinwar is evil, but he's far from stupid. Not only does he speak fluent Hebrew, thanks to his cushy conditions during the 22 years he spent in an Israeli prison, where, in 2008, Israeli surgeons removed a tumor on his brain.

Since his release in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit deal, he has followed Israeli politics and behavior, familiarizing himself with the Achilles heels of the Jewish state, in particular, and of the West, in general. This has made him well-versed in asymmetric warfare against an enemy with values that are anathema to his core. These include holding human beings in esteem and being disturbed by their suffering.

Indeed, as he recounted to interrogators after his arrest in 1989 for killing multiple Palestinians suspected of "collaborating" with Israel, his preferred methods of murder were strangulation and suffocation.

Ironically, then, while the international community bemoans the plight of the people of Gaza, Sinwar revels in it. Just as he must have been condescendingly amused when Israelis saved his life – rather than snuffing it out, as he would have done in their position – he is now pleased by the mounting Palestinian body count.

That the number of non-combatant casualties is among the lowest in military history, even by UN standards, is irrelevant to the sadist who perpetrated the most heinous atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust. He is aware that all it has taken to erase the footage of Hamas terrorists gleefully raping, burning, mutilating and desecrating the corpses of hundreds of innocent Israelis are graphic images of wounded children and dead babies among the rubble in Khan Younis.

Such photos-gone-viral have even been sufficient to make the "Ceasefire Now" chorus drown out the cries of the families of the starved and sexually abused hostages. In the best case, Israel's detractors say that neither Hamas' genocidal deeds on Oct. 7 nor the ongoing captivity of men, women and children justifies IDF actions in Gaza.

Worse charges are that what befell Israel five months ago was the result of the "occupation." Never mind that the Israeli government forcibly withdrew all Jews from the Strip in 2005 and removed IDF presence there.

The basest allegations are those lodged by the hateful crowds chanting, "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Must Be Free."

Their aspiration is for the eradication of the democratic State of Israel, not the bloodthirsty Iranian proxy reigning over a populace whom it has taught to glorify the slaughter of Jews. Is it any wonder, then, that Hamas apologists in New York and London tear down and trample on posters of the hostages?

Is it the least bit mystifying that no Gazans have tried to help the hostages by revealing their whereabouts? The answer is no.

As of now, nobody in the Strip is likely to gain future recognition as a member of the "Righteous Among the Nations." Fear of torture by Sinwar is one explanation. Support for his brutality is another.

Examples of the latter were on full display during the Oct. 7 massacre. They were prominent, as well, when Red Cross mini-vans transported tranches of released hostages in the following weeks.

Thus far, Israel has shown incredible fortitude in the face of Sinwar's manipulation of fellow travelers abroad. Jerusalem has even managed to withstand tongue-wagging about the "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza.

One way it has attempted to stave off the false accusations of genocide is to enable the delivery of food and medicine to the Strip. This, however, hasn't halted the admonitions from friends – or threats from foes – about the consequences of continued IDF activity.

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Right on Sinwar's cue, Israel is blamed for Hamas' theft of the aid meant for civilians. It is currently being condemned by the United Nations for the death-by-stampede of Gazans descending violently on the trucks delivering the goods.

Glaringly absent from the din is a reference to the malnourished, injured hostages subsisting on half a pita per day. Under these circumstances, Sinwar might well be imagining that his gambit to end the war and stay in power has paid off. If so, he's existing in a pre-Oct. 7 universe.

Israelis never needed a piece in The Wall Street Journal to shine light on Sinwar's mindset. Today, they are battling to deal it – and him – a fatal blow.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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As the leaders of Israel's protest movement have acknowledged, judicial-reform legislation is only part of the impetus for the demonstrations. This is why the pause in the process to enable negotiations didn't cause them to put the Saturday-night rallies and intermittent "days of disruption" on hold.

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Indeed, safeguarding "d-e-m-o-c-r-a-c-y" from the authoritarians bent on desecrating the sanctity of the hallowed Supreme Court is merely a catchall slogan for the real aim of the rallies: to topple the government. Hence the alternating headlines for the regular events. The title of Thursday's happening, for instance, was "Day of Equality." This one focused on exemptions from military service for Torah-studying haredim.

The long standing bone of contention has once again come to the fore, due to its having been a Coalition condition of the haredi parties. But it was just an excuse to reinvigorate the waning enthusiasm of those who've grown a bit weary of waving flags at intersections, particularly in increasingly hot weather.

Though the idea was clever – since targeting "black hats" is a favored pastime of the Israeli Left – it didn't pan out as hoped. Nevertheless, it stirred up a separate controversy that's causing apoplexy among the chattering classes.

The brouhaha began when former Public Security Minister Omer Barlev, a key honcho of the protest movement, participated in a "Brothers in Arms" demonstration in Bnei Brak, outside the home of Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, a highly venerated figure in the haredi community. Along with a selfie on social media, he added the text: "Beyond and in addition to the importance of military service for everyone, the law of 'no equality in the burden' that the Coalition intends to enact is the bribe being paid to the haredi parties by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and [Justice Minister Yariv] Levin so that they'll vote in favor of the coup d'état."

Never mind that the words "bribe" and "coup" constitute a total misrepresentation of the democratically elected parties that make up the government. Barlev is a member of Labor, whose poor showing at the ballot box on Nov. 1 left him out of a job – in the Knesset, that is.

Today, he earns a living as the chairman of the board of Angel Bakeries, which controls a third of the country's bread market. Haredim, who have big families and therefore are large consumers of Angel products, decided to counter Barlev's purposely offensive act by a boycott of the company's goods.

This elicited a vile response from Yoel Spiegel, grandson of the founder of Angel and nephew of its CEO. In a Facebook post on Friday that he has since deleted, Spiegel wrote: "There is no limit to the chutzpah of part of the ultra-Orthodox public in Israel. They eat for free … evade army service, have dark opinions and, above all, are hypocrites! Omer Barlev is the chairman of the board of the Angel bakery (the same bakery that my grandfather and his brother founded more than a century ago and of which my uncle has been the CEO for many years). But above his position as chairman of the board, he is a citizen of the State of Israel (a citizen with many rights, in light of his past). As such, he has the right to protest wherever and whenever he chooses, as long as he does so within the framework of the law."

Nobody, including the haredi community, disputes Barlev's freedom to demonstrate. So Spiegel's was simply the kind of bashing that is rightly categorized as antisemitic when voiced by non-Jews beyond Israel's borders.

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Ditto for the maneuver pulled by an affluent left-wing activist, who purchased the entire stock of Angel challah from a store in Bnei Brak and invited passers-by to help themselves to the loaves at no cost. The ploy to expose them as "moochers" failed, however, because the crates were left untouched by neighborhood residents.

All that the above accomplished, thus, was to strengthen the resolve of haredim and others incensed by the baseless hatred for a whole sector of society to exert pressure on Angel to penalize its chairman. The fact that Spiegel swiftly removed his tirade seems to suggest that he was reprimanded by the bosses at Angel.

It's a business, after all, which needs to retain its customers. Why, then, didn't it bother to release a statement clarifying its position on Barlev's behavior?

True, Barlev is a private citizen with the rights that entails. Still, he's also the chairman of a commercial enterprise who ought to take his position into account while engaged in very nasty political battles. Unless and until he suffers consequences for the latter, Angel will have to bear the brunt of the ramifications, and deservedly so.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Those of us who were among the hundreds of thousands of participants in the right-wing rally in Jerusalem on Thursday evening weren't surprised when the "resistance" bloc pulled a two-fer: downplaying the significance of and attendance at the event, on the one hand; and treating the happening as evidence that Israeli democracy is in danger of annihilation at the hands of fanatics, on the other.

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Nor did we imagine that coverage from most media outlets would be accurate, let alone fair, since they've been acting all along like a branch of the protest movement. Instead, we drew encouragement from the throngs of fellow members of the national camp who turned up to bolster the government and urge it not to be bullied into backtracking on its mandate.

Both were necessary under the circumstances, with the Orwellian doublespeak of the Opposition having become so blatant that it's putting regular propaganda to shame. Indeed, the projection on the part of the protest instigators isn't merely jaw-dropping (calling the government, rather than those trying to topple it, a "coup," for instance); it's actually been successful at sowing self-doubt in Coalition circles.

Ahead of the opening of the Knesset's summer session on Sunday, then, it was particularly crucial for lawmakers to be reminded of the populace that isn't drinking the Kool-Aid – those still expecting and demanding judicial reform, with or without a broad consensus. It was also important to highlight that compromise on this or any other issue isn't on the agenda of the forces spearheading the weekly demonstrations.

The points were made amid much good cheer and lots of applause for the speakers. Justice Minister Yariv Levin was given an especially warm welcome, in addition to cautionary chants of "Don't be afraid!"

The message was that he shouldn't cave on the judicial-reform process that the government had put on hold. This was done to allow for negotiations to bring about an agreement and prevent civil war.

Levin's speech was aimed at reassuring his base that he hadn't abandoned the mission, and assuaging the fears of opponents.

"We are told that the reform is intended to take over the Supreme Court, but the truth is the opposite," he said. "We want a court for everyone: liberals, conservatives, Right and eft. Everyone."

He went on: "They say that the reform is intended to impose the lifestyle of one public on another. The truth, of course, is the opposite. There is nothing in the reform that involves coercion or an infringement on the individual rights that are important to all of us. We are told that if the reform passes, there will be a dictatorship. There is no bigger lie than that."

He also addressed Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli and the many feminists who've been wearing costumes from the Netflix series, "The Handmaid's Tale," based on the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood.

"Join us so that we have a court that punishes rapists and doesn't seek ways to make it easier for them; a court that cares for an elderly woman in south Tel Aviv and not for infiltrators who harm her; a court that protects the lives of IDF soldiers not terrorists."

All well and good. But his words were far less noteworthy than the reaction they elicited from protest leader Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon. The former defense minister, who used to be politically and ideologically aligned with Levin, is now a key promoter of the above-mentioned slurs.

"The fact that he who bears the title of 'justice minister' has not yet been fired and arrested, after the mendacious incitement speech that spilled the blood of Israeli judges, is a normalization of the insanity," Ya'alon tweeted on Friday. "The fact that at the head of the Israeli government, which is trying to carry out a coup d'état, is under indictment for serious crimes and prohibited from dealing with the judiciary due to a clear conflict of interest, is a normalization of the insanity; the fact that the heads of the Opposition are conducting negotiations under the auspices of the president of the country on the coup d'état proposal (the Levin-[Simcha] Rothman legislation) is a normalization of the insanity squared."

So, in Ya'alon's view, Levin deserves to be sacked and hauled off to jail. Talk about lunacy.

As if any of these statements weren't sufficient to warrant a psychological examination for their author, he proceeded to command of the representatives engaged in talks at the President's Residence that they "get out of there and let the criminal government, which has caused and is causing unprecedented damage to the country and its citizens, deal with [its own mess] so that its days will be numbered."

His next cynical feat was to invoke and appropriate Ze'ev Jabotinsky – the father of Revisionist Zionism, precursor of the Likud Party heading the current government – by using the title of the latter's famous 1923 essay.

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"Join the 'Iron Wall' of the mighty protest, which will not allow a dictatorship! Democracy will win," he wrote, before going on in his lengthy thread to describe the scenes from Thursday's "extremist messianic incitement demonstration" as "shocking," and accusing Levin of inciting "blood-curdling libels against Israeli judges, as if they support rapists and terrorists!"

Never mind that Ya'alon is fully cognizant of the specific cases in question, each of which actually did favor the perpetrators. On a roll, he told his "friends in the Opposition" that they are the "messengers of the vast majority that supports democracy and independent judges. … The inciters won't get their way. Israel will not become a messianic dictatorship with an inciting regime. The huge democratic majority – the democratic 'iron wall' – will defeat this craziness! Democracy will win."

What he and his ilk have been trying to obfuscate, however, is that democracy never lost; the Left did, at the ballot box in November. The 600,000 Israelis who arrived in the capital on Thursday from around the country were simply reasserting this reality. Let the government not forget it.

 Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Yom Hazikaron, Israel's Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, begins on Monday evening. When it ends on Tuesday night, cheer will replace mourning as the nation embarks on a 24-hour celebration of Yom Ha'atzmaut, Independence Day.

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The pairing of the two dates was purposeful. The idea behind the juxtaposition of grief and gratitude in such proximity was that Israelis owe the birth and continued existence of the Jewish state to the men and women killed while living in and defending it. Though this week marks the country's diamond anniversary – at the young but ripening age of 75 – internecine political battles are threatening to take center stage at the somber ceremonies and at the happy ones to follow. Thankfully, there are many Israelis who intend to treat Yom Hazikaron with the respect it deserves and then go on to enjoy Yom Ha'atzmaut festivities.

These citizens understand that Memorial Day isn't merely for the loved ones of the fallen, who don't need annual reminders of a loss always lingering. It is held, rather, to highlight the collective nature of a sacrifice made by individuals, each a world onto him/herself, with a name, a face and a grieving family left behind. The same applies to Independence Day. Its message to all Israelis is that the wonderment around them is both a personal and a shared accomplishment, regardless of the issues that divide them.

It's a tall order for people about whom it is aptly quipped: "Two Jews, three opinions." But more than a handful manages to set aside the latter when called upon to do so, which helps to explain why Israel repeatedly ranks high on the happiness scale.

One man worthy of note in this context is Baruch Ben-Yigal. The bereaved father in his mid-50s decided through sheer will to pull himself out of the depths of despair over the death of his only son by seeking to sire and raise another child. Staff Sgt. Amit Ben-Yigal was struck down three years ago during an IDF raid to arrest Palestinian terrorists in the village of Ya'bad in Samaria. The 21-year-old member of the Golani Reconnaissance Battalion was murdered on May 12, 2020, a month before completing his compulsory military service.

The incident occurred at 4:30 a.m. When the troops began to exit the village on foot, approximately a dozen residents began pummeling them with bricks and cinder blocks from surrounding rooftops. Nizmi Abu Bakr, 49, targeted Amit, making sure to hit him at an angle from which his protective helmet would be of no use. The terrorist's aim was impeccable.

Though Ben-Yigal was administered first aid on the scene, he was pronounced dead on arrival at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. He was the first IDF soldier to be killed in action in 2020, and was promoted, posthumously, to the rank of sergeant first class. Hundreds attended his funeral, crying as his distraught parents, who had divorced when Amit was a baby, eulogized their son separately. Calling him "mommy's hero," his mother, Nava Revivo, wept bitterly as she bid him farewell.

"My eldest child, beloved child," she wailed. "Your sisters can't comprehend what's happening. We will keep your ember burning, your happiness, your love."

Unlike his ex-wife, Baruch hadn't remarried. But, as he subsequently revealed in a TV interview, he doted on Amit for the next two decades to such an extent that he broke up with a girlfriend who grew irritated with the toddler one day for fiddling noisily with the refrigerator door. At the burial, he bemoaned having consented to let the boy serve in a combat unit – something that the IDF demands from parents of only children and from those who already lost sons or daughters to war or other tragedies.

"You told me, 'Dad, don't deny me this,'" he wailed. "So, I signed [the permission slip] and you celebrated as if you'd just won the lottery. You were supposed to bury me, not the other way around. God in heaven, give me a reason to wake up tomorrow morning."

His prayer was answered last year, when – after countless dates with women who contacted him after seeing him on Channel 12 in 2021 – he met and "clicked" with Daniela Afriat, a 30-year-old divorcée with two little kids. In a follow-up feature on Friday night, the couple spoke of their relationship and the fact that they are expecting a baby.

In the course of the program, during which Daniela was filmed receiving a sonogram, the couple was informed that they'll be having a boy. Baruch promptly took the tidings to the Be'er Yaakov Cemetery. Caressing and planting kisses on his late son's headstone in the pouring rain, he announced, "I have news. You're going to have a brother; can you believe it?"

Tears running down his face, intermingling with the showers from above, he not only assured Amit that the new child would never take his place, he added, astonishingly, that the boy will grow up to serve, like his older brother, in the Golani Brigade.

Baruch Ben-Yigal's story is a perfect metaphor for the indelible link between heartbreak and joy that is Israel's curse and blessing. It is this very paradox that Israelis must take a pause from politics to acknowledge and honor.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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During his Holocaust Remembrance Day speech on Monday night at Yad Vashem,  President Isaac Herzog admonished the public never to invoke the genocide of the Jews in any context other than the Shoah itself. This was a not-so-veiled reference to a practice that's become frighteningly commonplace in the politically polarized country.

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"The Nazi abomination is an unprecedented evil, unique by any measure," he said. "We must remember, repeat and emphasize again and again: These, and only these, are Nazis. This, and only this, is the Holocaust. Even when we are in the midst of fierce disagreements on our destiny, calling, faith and values, we must be careful about and guard against making any comparison, any analogy, to the Holocaust and the Nazis."

He went on to remind the citizens of Israel that the "Nazi monster" didn't distinguish between one member of the tribe or another, regardless of their "views, beliefs or lifestyles." Indeed, he stressed, such "nuances" were utterly meaningless to those who set out to annihilate every last Jew. "For them," he pointed out, "we were one people, scattered and separated among all the nations, with one sentence: death. And our victory over them, as well, which takes place every day, is a victory of one people."

He concluded: "We are currently celebrating 75 years of Israeli independence – 75 years of victory during which the Jewish and democratic State of Israel and its [proud] society are standing up and declaring to the Nazi monster and those who, even in this generation, are following in its path: 'You cannot defeat us, because we are brothers and sisters; yes, siblings who know how to argue and dispute, but never hate one another, are never enemies.' We are one people and we will remain one people, united not only by a painful history, but also by a shared destiny and a hopeful future."

It was an appropriate message with just the right tone. As is the case with all such pleas, however, the people who most needed to hear and heed it either weren't listening or didn't think it applied to them. Indeed, within minutes, Herzog's social-media feed was filled with nasty remarks from both sides of the spectrum.

Supporters of the government accused him of abetting the Opposition to thwart judicial reforms. Members of the protest movement were more vitriolic. "I'm ashamed that you're the president of my country," tweeted one respondent. "You have nothing to say about the pure evil [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] that's trying to destroy the country just to get out of going to jail."

Another, writing "Yair Golan was right," posted an article from 2016 about the then-deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, who took the opportunity of Holocaust Remembrance Day to caution against the country's own "seeds of intolerance, violence, self-destruction and moral deterioration."

Yet another argued, "Make no mistake; the comparison [of the current government] to the rise of the Third Reich is absolutely spot on!"

So much for Herzog's words about Jewish unity, delivered at the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. Simultaneously, at a Tel Aviv synagogue service marking the somber event, MK Boaz Bismuth from Netanyahu's Likud Party was heckled loudly as he attempted to express a similar sentiment about brotherhood.

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Shouting one of the key chants at anti-government rallies ("shame, shame, shame") and ordering him to leave, many congregants wouldn't let him speak. Some attendees yelled at them to stop harassing their guest. Faced with the altercation that was threatening to turn physically violent, Bismuth exited the premises.

"When your daily job is to corrode the remains of Israeli statehood, and then you appear at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony and pretend to represent something, don't be surprised when you're thrown out on your butt," tweeted Raanan Shaked, an editor at the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

This type of hyperbole, along with the very comparisons and analogies that Herzog insisted rightly should be taboo, is not only now the norm; its spewers refuse to refrain from employing it even while the country mourns the six million who didn't live to see the birth of the Jewish state and honors the survivors of the unfathomable atrocity.

It's as inexcusable as any form of Holocaust denial. Shame on any Israeli who engages in it.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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To borrow the favorite epithet of the demonstrators in the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities, "shame" on Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. In an announcement on Saturday night, the Cabinet member charged with the country's most crucial portfolio called on the government to halt its judicial reform legislation and heal the rifts that have gone so far as to reach the military.

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"I hear the voices from the field and I'm worried," he said, while also urging the opposition to stop the protests to give negotiations a chance. Oh, and to "enable the nation to celebrate Passover and Independence Day together, and to mourn together on Memorial Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day."

Prominently on display in this speech – which he had planned to deliver on Thursday evening, but refrained from doing so at the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – were two traits that make him unfit for his job: cowardice and betrayal.

Let's begin with the former. Faced with the phenomenon of mainly Air Force and Cyber Division reservists threatening and refusing to turn up for military exercises, on the grounds that they wouldn't serve in a "dictatorship," Gallant got frightened.

Rather than nipping the subordination in the bud, he met with the men and women in uniform to let them vent their concerns. The cream of the crop of the Israel Defense Forces said that without an end to the "coup d'état" (the protest movement's misnomer for judicial reforms), the powers that be in Jerusalem can forget about confronting Iran. You know, since there won't be any pilots or computer geniuses to carry out the operations.

Instead of demanding that the IDF chief of staff warn them that such blackmail will result in their ouster from the IDF, or at least in a stripping of their ranks, Gallant not only conveyed their complaints to Netanyahu; he began, apparently, to see the merits of their point of view.

In other words, he didn't make it crystal clear that political positions have no place in the army. Nor did he hit home the very points about judicial reform on which he based his campaign in the Likud Party primary – the very ones that earned him a top spot on the Knesset candidates list and subsequently the ministry he coveted.

He was simply too intimidated by the unprecedented situation to know how to handle it. Such gutlessness hardly inspires confidence about his ability to deal with Tehran and its tentacles in Lebanon, Syri, a and the Palestinian Authority.

Now for the latter attribute Gallant exhibited that makes him unsuitable: extreme disloyalty. Indeed, he took the opportunity of Netanyahu's trip to London to undermine the arduous efforts of his party and coalition partners in one fell swoop.

That he pulled the stunt a mere 48 hours after the prime minister's carefully crafted address aimed at calming tensions was particularly egregious. Netanyahu took pains to articulate the purpose of the reforms – to enhance, not harm, Israeli democracy – and assure that all civil and minority rights would be guaranteed in the law.

What the prime minister didn't do was capitulate. When the opposition responded by stepping up its war, Gallant opted for retreat.

His move was not only dismissive of Netanyahu. It dealt a blow to all the soldiers who shun the mere suggestion of laying down their weapons in protest over policy.

Worse, it sent a disheartening message to the sector of the public that's been under political, cultural,l and social assault for electing and continuing to support the Netanyahu-led government. "Shame" doesn't begin to describe what Gallant should be feeling at the moment.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Anybody who lives in and loves Israel is aware of its miraculously beautiful mosaic of inherent paradoxes. It's Middle Eastern, yet Western; war-torn, yet peace-obsessed; provincial, yet cosmopolitan; frenetic, yet relaxed.

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It's religious, yet secular; conservative, yet woke; judgmental, yet empathic; marriage-oriented, yet a singles' magnet. And it's a bureaucratic hell, while also an entrepreneurship heaven.

Aside from all of the above, the tiny state – still young at its soon-to-be 75th birthday – is a major player on the world stage. This is both good and bad news for the Jews.

On the one hand, it means that we managed to return to our ancient homeland and make the literal and figurative desert bloom. On the other, such a miraculous success story, against all odds and surrounding enemies, comes with a price.

Indeed, as is the case with many blessings, this one often feels like a curse. The weight of responsibility – the burden of serving as a "light unto the nations" – is only part of it.

Perhaps a greater difficulty for a once-scattered nation demonized and slaughtered in the Diaspora is the realization that the "ingathering of exiles" didn't put an end to envy-sparked antisemitism. On the contrary, what the late historian Robert Wistrich called the "longest hatred" was simply transferred to the Jewish nation-state under the cloak of "legitimate criticism."

"Dear God, I know, I know, we are the chosen people, but once in a while, can't you choose someone else?" cries Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof."

It's not for nothing that this tragically funny line resonates with most of the tribe. Memorialized by Israeli actor Chaim Topol, whose stage-and-screen portrayal of Sholom Aleichem's character earned him international accolades, it sums up our collective gripe in a nutshell.

Sadly, Topol died earlier this month at his home in Tel Aviv at the age of 87. Despite the political rift and mass demonstrations going on there and in other Israeli cities, prominent figures across the spectrum paid tribute to the award-winning actor.

The outpouring of appreciation was for more than his illustrious career, however. Through his performances as Tevye, the quintessential "Sabra," who was born in Mandatory Palestine some 12 years before the establishment of the state, represented a merging of Jewish cultures – a thread connecting the tapestry of the "Old Country" to the new.

Today's protesters against the government in Jerusalem are threatening to unravel that thread. Claims by the movement's leaders about rescuing Israeli democracy from imminent demise are false.

The root of their rebellion really lies in an aversion to the right-wing-religious coalition and its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Their placards, slogans, chants, and epithets make this abundantly clear.

Unfortunately, the campaign has had an effect on many well-intentioned members of society whose familiarity with the reforms is as minimal as their concern (or gullibility) is genuine. Nor do these fellow travelers seem to grasp that nothing short of a coup will satisfy the forces trying to bring down Netanyahu and his partners.

This is precisely why the architects of the endeavor are accusing the democratically elected powers-that-be of staging one. It's a neat trick of projection, reminiscent of Soviet-inspired Palestinian propaganda, a key element of which is charging Israel with its own crimes. Oh, and enlisting support from the international community by inverting victim and perpetrator.

Observers at home and abroad of the current crisis fear – or hope – that Israel is headed for a full-fledged civil war. Hearing members of Israel's military and other security forces join the fray by announcing their refusal to fulfill their duties causes them to consider this a real possibility; watching thousands of Israelis march to the beat of former prime ministers and defense officials calling on foreign governments to censure Netanyahu will do that.

What the ill-wishers purposely obfuscate, and the pearl-clutchers don't take into account, is the way in which average citizens are going about their daily lives behind the lens of TV news cameras. This is certainly true of citizens who have little interest in and no clue about how the branches of government operate. But even activists are hard to discern at supermarket check-out lines and bus stops.

On Thursday night, for instance, as the so-called "Day of Resistance" came to a close, every trendy restaurant, bar, and nightclub in the White City was packed to the brim with millennials eating, drinking, and making merry. When I pointed this out to a friend, she quipped: "All that demonstrating must have made them hungry and thirsty."

It's unclear, though, whether this particular crowd – munching happily on shrimp and pork – had taken part in the protests at all. In fact, according to a recent Direct Polls survey, the civil "unrest" is populated mainly by silver-haired boomers. You know, the ones who think they're at Woodstock or something.

In a lopsided debate (what else is new?) with two left-wingers, I cited this example of the "life goes on" resilience that's characteristic of Israelis in the face of adversity. Their response was that the people I was referring to won't be able to be out enjoying themselves, and certainly not in non-kosher establishments if the government clips the wings of the Supreme Court.

Sigh.

"Ok," I said. "So, you and the rest of the protesters can try to change the situation during the next elections." Their humorless answer was hilarious. If the judicial reforms proceed, they argued, elections will be banned.

It was a ludicrous pronouncement that Opposition leader Yair Lapid had made several days earlier. It's baseless hype that he and the pundits parroting him know to be nonsense.

Despite the damage they're doing to Israel's standing and security, the one thing they won't be able to shake is the underlying health of a society that cares deeply about preserving Judaism, Zionism, and – yes – popular culture. Faith in this unique blend, which the overreaching judiciary has been attempting to dilute, is what the majority reasserted at the ballot box on Nov. 1.

Voters must not be bullied into forgetting it. It's no accident, after all, that Israel just ranked No. 4 in the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network report on world happiness.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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You've heard about the guy who killed his parents and then wailed about being an orphan, right? Well, what's going on in Israel right now is even more astounding, with the anti-government protest movement taking the metaphor to a whole new level.

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Its masterminds – along with gullible, genuinely scared fellow travelers – are not only premeditating the demise of the very institutions they're claiming to cherish. They're staging mass dress rehearsals, replete with costumes from the TV series "The Handmaid's Tale," for an I-told-you-so funeral of their own making.

But don't take my word for it. Radio broadcaster and social activist Aybee Binyamin, a member of opposition leader Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid Party and a founder of the previous hate-fests against Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, proudly articulates the plot.

"The protest is progressing on several axes," he tweeted on March 6. "The central axis is the Saturday-night demonstrations. The sub-axis is the 'days of disruption' and daily demonstrations. The second axis is the crushing of the economy. The third axis is the crushing of the [Israel Defense Forces] reserves. The fourth axis and the one that will deal the knockout blow is international isolation from democratic countries in general and European Union and United States sanctions in particular! Together we will win!"

Under this manifesto is a photo of a giant banner reading: "The government of the destruction of the Third Temple." This is intentional projection – with the cynical abuse by secularists of ancient Jewish history to engage in it – at its finest.

Which brings us to another psychological ploy: the one aimed, as Binyamin put it, at "crushing the economy." It's odd that any Israeli would consider achieving such a goal as constituting a "win."

Nevertheless, he's among many prominent protesters who react almost gleefully with every hint of an imminent drop in Israel's good credit rating. The March 7 Moody's report, for instance, elicited much excitement in "resistance" circles for providing a baseless assessment of the potential long-term consequences of judicial reform on investment in Israeli technology.

Now, as it happens, Binyamin is a member of the Startup Nation's hi-tech sector, a small percentage of whose unicorns have been taking advantage of their nearly godlike status and clout to abet the attempt to cause the country financial ruin. Their method has been to threaten, and in some cases act, to remove their millions and billions from Israel.

Take Eynat Guez, for example. Several weeks ago, the CEO of the payroll platform Papaya Global announced that she'd be doing just that, in response to Netanyahu's "determination to enact reforms that will harm democracy and the economy."

Other than spewing doomsday predictions, she didn't specify how restoring the balance of power between the self-appointed judiciary and elected legislature would have such a disastrous effect. Indeed, her vague explanation was that "in the emerging reform, there is no certainty that we can conduct international economic activity from Israel."

What she and her breast-beating industry compatriots ought to know is that the Supreme Court's outrageous intervention in business contracts has made it more, not less, difficult for investors. They're certainly aware that fear of disaster is a key factor in market downturns.

Realizing that their own hyperbolic warnings were liable to become self-fulfilling prophecies, they figured they'd better protect their own money, while assuming some phony moral high ground. Oh, and while ignoring the damage they'd be doing to hard-working wage earners with no spare shekels whatsoever, let alone oodles in need of safeguarding abroad.

The sick joke turned out to be on Guez and her peers, however, when Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – where many paragons of anti-judicial-reform virtue signaling placed their cash – collapsed on Friday, and Signature Bank followed suit. Interesting that while it was busy sounding alarm bells about Israel, Moody's failed to anticipate this actual catastrophe in America.

As New York University adjunct professor of law Max Raskin, a fellow at the school's Institute for Judicial Administration, pointed out on Monday in a superb piece in The Wall Street Journal: "Moody's has no expertise in complex constitutional questions and it seems to have enough trouble predicting the stability of private institutions. The company gave Silicon Valley Bank an A1 long-term local-currency bank-deposit rating up until the day that it collapsed. Moody's also gave high credit ratings to what turned out to be subprime mortgages in the leadup to the 2008 financial crisis."

In other words, its reliability is dubious, at best. According to Raskin, statements by Moody's – like those emanating of late from Fitch Ratings and S&P about how judicial reforms endanger Israel's relatively high credit rating – "are part of a troubling trend of supposedly neutral experts weighing in on matters they have neither the expertise nor the authority to evaluate."

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But these experts sure do have political positions. And as long as these tilt in the desired direction, Israel's protest movement will continue to hail them as facts – publicly, at least.

In private, perhaps, not so much. People's wealth is at stake, after all.

It's no wonder, then, that Guez changed her tune. "Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim are taking amazing steps in supporting Israeli companies," she tweeted on Saturday. "Immediate loans to companies alongside bridge loans to employees whose wages will be delayed due to the collapse of SVB. This is what real leadership looks like. Thank you for the example and the [initiative]!"

Amusing rhetorical about-faces aside, the Soviet-reminiscent propaganda that Israel is on a path to dictatorship is no laughing matter. And the recruitment of foreign governments in the effort to foment civil war is not simply treasonous; it strengthens the resolve of those external enemies bent on annihilating the Jewish state.

The good news is that Israel, like its economy, is in better shape than its foes at home and abroad would have the world believe. Supporters of the government and the crucial reforms it's implementing will not allow the protesters to "kill" the country and bemoan their "orphanhood."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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