Wars are Won Not Only by Shooting

by Prof. Elisha Hass, member of Professors for a Strong Israel, translated by Hillel Fendel.

President Trump announced last week that he is prepared to accept “only unconditional surrender.” This is because he wants a traditional, decisive victory. Most wars, in fact, end when one side reaches the conclusion that he has lost and that there is no point in continuing, and surrenders unconditionally.

To achieve this, both sides, and especially the winning one, work to strike the enemy’s symbols of rule and national sites with cultural and other importance. The goal is to bring the enemy to a psychological state that will lead to his surrender.

Let us consider the intense, though not particularly well-known, war that is taking place in Judea and Samaria. Many IDF fighter battalions have been dispatched to these areas. The question is: Do these battalions understand their mission? Is it clear to the IDF who exactly the enemy is? Do the IDF leaders understand the importance of hitting symbolic and nationally important targets in a military campaign? Are the battalions being sent to the front striving for victory – or for stalemate?

We know very well that the IDF is not the only army in the field. A well-trained and suitably-equipped Palestinian army shares the space with us, having received its war training in the framework of the Oslo Accords from the U.S. Army's General Dayton. This is an army with improved abilities that is located, as the saying goes, "just five minutes away from Kfar Saba." It takes encouragement and motivation from the Oct. 7^th massacre, and is an army with clear awareness of its goal to destroy the State of Israel. The motivational weapons it uses include symbols such as monuments of its leaders, such as the PA father of Oslo - none other than arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, may his name be blotted out.

The Disappointing News from Shomron

And yet, just this week we have learned that an IDF reserves soldier from the Menashe Brigade (responsible for the northern Shomron, including PA cities such as Tulkarem and Jenin) has been suspended, after it was learned that he defaced a monument in honor of Arafat in the village of Zababida. The IDF quickly decided to remove him from active service, announcing that smashing Arafat's likeness with a hammer was "against the regulations."

We are, of course, at war. The government, with public support, calls upon its loyal citizens to leave their homes and families and report for duty for unknown durations. The army's values are, clearly and primarily, to strive to engage with the enemy and aspire to victory. In light of what we have said regarding the value of destroying his national symbols, this decision by the army raises some strong question marks:

Non-Comprehension?

Does the IDF understand its objective and how to achieve it? Does it not understand that while the enemy strives to wear us down with terrorism, our goal must be clear victory? Does the IDF not realize that young terrorist gangs are our enemy?

The IDF appears to be still living under the misconception of the Oslo generation that brought upon us the tragic disgrace of 10/7. Instead of sending the reservists to totally destroy the military threat to central Israel, it continues to nurture the enemy and its symbols. Instead of wiping it out, it continues to preserve the capabilities of the threat to the heart of our country, under the illusion that this enemy can be turned into a friend. This was a reckless illusion from the day Oslo began, and especially after the morning of Simchat Torah 5784.

Hegseth Got it Right

It is worth studying the clear and straight-on speech of U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth last week. He announced that the United States is fighting without the principles of political correctness and progressivism: an enemy is an enemy. We, too, must apply these rules of combat not only to Iran, but also to the West Bank. Any enemy focused on the destruction of the Zionist enterprise, whether openly or under camouflage, must know that it faces the singular fate of destruction. It’s either us – or them. 

It’s high time to erase the infamous “Spirit of the IDF” document that emasculates our army and endangers all of us. We must cultivate the combat mindset of the soldier and encourage him to take combat actions even vis-à-vis the enemy’s motivation. We the citizens must demand that the military command provide soldiers with the full tools of combat and make it clear, once and for all, who the enemy is.

And of course, the smart soldier from the Menashe Brigade, who knows how to defeat the enemy by striking directly at what makes him tick, must be immediately returned to service and given words of encouragement so that all his comrades - and commanders - understand. Enemy symbols are targets for attack no less, and even more, than physical positions or other ground targets chosen “according to regulations.”

Translator's Note: Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir criticized the censure of the soldier, but even he could have done so more strongly: "Arafat's hands were filled with the blood of very many Jews… The reservist [in question] is in the midst of a war, which began with the slaughter of his brothers and sisters; fighting for Am Yisrael, he expressed his pain, fury, and sense of justice. The army's decision [to dismiss him] went a step too far, and should be reconsidered."

Waking Up from a Scary 30-Year-Old Dream

by Boaz Lieberman, Strategic Crisis Management Advisor, translated by Hillel Fendel.

There are singular occasions in history when a particular reality is totally, and abruptly, replaced by another. This is precisely what happened to Israel during the current war with Iran and its underlings such as Hizbullah. Not only has there been a military change, but also a 30-year-old deception has collapsed before our very eyes.

For decades the Israeli public has been inculcated with the fear of regional war. Every time the possibility of war with Iran was even raised, the TV studios were immediately inundated with the same commentators and experts who explained why we simply could not even entertain such a scenario. They warned us that it would bring destruction upon us, including financial collapse and thousands of rockets that would wipe out entire cities. Nothing short of an apocalypse.

This conception of fear became an axiom of our beliefs. The message was drilled in repeatedly for three decades: Israel can fight only limited wars, whereas a full-scale regional war was a red line we could simply not cross, because its price would be, literally, unbearable.

And then reality arrived:

Israel strikes deep inside Iran. Hizbullah joins the campaign. Iran launches missiles. And the Israeli home front, with all the difficulties and tensions, continues to function! The economy does not collapse. Israeli society does not fall apart. The public does not panic – and actually shows strong resilience.

Businesses continue to operate. People go out to work. Children laugh and play in the streets between sirens. And it's not because of apathy. It is rather a deep Israeli trait of standing firm under pressure.

The gap between reality and that which we were so dramatically warned of is tremendous. We were taught that if Israel dared to confront Iran directly, a regional catastrophe would erupt. But the current reality teaches us something quite different. Israel is far from a fragile state. It is a regional power with a strong army and advanced defense systems, as well as a society with exceptional resilience.

Of course, war is always difficult. There are casualties, fear, and disruptions. But that is truly a far cry from the scenes of calamity that were sold to the public for years.

This is precisely where the great lie of the past thirty years is revealed. It is not necessarily a deliberate lie. It could be simply a worldview that hardened and became an accepted truth. An entire system of security, media, and academia began to believe in it itself. And this is how "conception" - or more precisely, "misconception" – is created.

It did not influence only our public opinion. It affected policy as well. It encouraged overcautiousness, putting off conflicts, and unending attempts to "contain" threats instead of definitively neutralizing them.

And another thing that this war has revealed is something no less disconcerting. It revealed the failure of the security-commentating industry in Israel. For years, the same analysts, many of whom are retired generals and the like, have been appearing almost every night on our TV screens. They dissected every movement made by the IDF and our enemies – and it turns out that they are wrong almost every step of the way in their main prognoses.

They warned of hundreds of missiles a day; the reality is much lower. They warned of economic collapse; actually, the economy continues to function. They spoke of panic on the home front; in practice, public resilience is the name of the game.

It's not that we can gloat. Mistakes happen. But when the same mistakes repeat themselves again and again, over the course of many years, we are obliged to ask: Who determines the security discourse in Israel? Is it the army? The Mossad? The Shabak?

Sadly, no. In recent decades, the Israeli media has become an almost exclusive platform for a small group of commentators – and they set the tone. Most of them come from the same social networks and the same worldview. Instead of representing and inviting intellectual diversity, they formed a closed club. Predictably, with everyone thinking the same way, the mistakes that they invariably make in direction and conception find no one left to correct them.

The result, then, is a public that has been fed extreme and chilling forecasts. The "pre-conceptions" had become set too deeply. Only when actual reality happens differently than had been predicted, do we wake up to see that we were wrong all along. Inner Israeli strength is greater than we were told, our military prowess is better than we thought, and even the Iranian threat, as grave as it was, turned out not to be the end of the world.

This also provides an important lesson for the future: Israel cannot afford to continue to wage its security policies based on fear. A country surrounded by enemies cannot base its strategies on reticence to fight when necessary. Our history actually teaches the exact opposite: True deterrence happens not when we try to "contain" the enemy, but when he understands, on his own flesh, that we are not afraid to wage even the largest-scale conflicts.

The current war is far from over, and we can't yet give out grades. But one thing we do know already, and that is that a long-standing myth has been broken. We are no longer afraid of a regional war – not because war is easy, but because both our military and our society are much stronger than we have been told for too many years.

And perhaps the most important lesson is simply an intellectual one: A country must be wary of its own "conceptions." These are liable to take over the public discourse, our national security thinking, and then our actual decisions. Doing so through warped glasses is very dangerous indeed.

Thirty years of media defense commentary have taught the Israeli public to fear a regional war. But we are now learning something completely different. Sometimes the greatest threat is not the enemy before you, but the stories they tell you on television.

Three Hostages Remain – Let's Not Forget Them

by Shmuel Sackett, co-founder of both the Zo Artzeinu and Manhigut Yehudit political movements, translated by Hillel Fendel.

If you were to ask someone on the street today, "What about the hostages?" – they would look at you as if you had fallen off the moon. "We returned all of them already! Don't you remember that we screamed out Bring Them Home! and they all came back?"

Well, not quite. We thank G-d that all the Simchat Torah/October 7th hostages have returned, dead or alive – but that doesn't mean that there aren't others who were abducted much longer ago and who still have not returned. One of them is known to have been executed – Eli Cohen, some 60 years ago (!) – and two others are unofficially presumed dead, yet we have no concrete information on their fates: Yehuda Katz and Ron Arad. Their families – at least those who are still alive – are still waiting... Do the rest of us remember them?

Eli Cohen was one of the greatest spies in the history of the State of Israel. He moved to Damascus in February 1962 in the guise of a Syrian-Argentinian businessman known as Kamel Amin Thaabet. With his great wisdom and personal charm, he succeeded in forging connections with Syrian politicians, senior officers, and public figures in Damascus. His assimilation was so successful that the Syrians almost appointed him their Deputy Minister of Defense! They placed complete trust in him and shared important military and other secrets with him. Cohen immediately passed the information on to his superiors in the Mossad, and today we know that the intelligence he provided was one of the key factors in Israel's swift victory over Syria in the Six Day War.

In January 1965, Syrian officials, suspecting the presence of a high-level spy, used newly-acquired Soviet tracking equipment to monitor illegal radio transmissions. They quickly detected a suspicious signal, and security forces traced it to Cohen’s apartment, catching him in the act of transmitting to Israel. He was arrested, interrogated, and brutally tortured. Within a short time, he was charged with treason and sentenced to death, and, despite an international campaign calling for clemency, he was publicly hanged in a central square in Damascus.

Where is Eli Cohen today? In truth, his grave belongs on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem with many other Israeli heroes, but unfortunately this is not the case. The Syrians have been holding his body for over 60 years, repeatedly refusing to release it. He is our #1 hostage, but no one cries out "Bring Him Home!" or even wears a yellow pin for him.

Over 20 years later, on Oct. 16, 1986, Israel Air Force pilot Yishai Avraham and navigator Ron Arad were dispatched on a mission to attack PLO targets in southern Lebanon. However, a bomb on their Phantom F-4 exploded pre-maturely beneath them, forcing the two to bail out by parachute. IDF forces quickly located and rescued Avraham under heavy fire, but Arad was caught by local Lebanese. He ultimately ended up in the hands of Hizbullah – and that's the last we know of him. It is assumed that he was transferred to Iran and then back to Hizbullah, in whose hands he likely died from starvation and lack of medical treatment. His wife Tami is still considered an agunah, in that there is no proof that her husband is dead. I still pray for Ron Arad as if he were alive: Ron ben [son of] Batya.

Where is he today? Dead or alive, he is still being held by Hizbullah, instead of at home with his family or buried on Mt. Herzl. He is Israel's Hostage #2: No one demonstrates for him, no one wears a "Free the Hostages!" pin for him, and too many Israelis under age 30 don't even know his name.

Our hostage #3 is Yehuda Katz, who was taken prisoner by Syrian forces during Sultan Yaaqub battle in the 1982 Peace for Galilee War in southern Lebanon. This tragic and difficult battle ended in the deaths of 21 IDF soldiers and the capture of several more. Among them were Zecharia Baumel, whose body was returned only in 2019; Tzvika Feldman, whose body was returned less than a year ago – both of these followed heroic IDF operations; and Yehuda Katz, whose fate is still unknown.

The Syrians had sent some 30,000 troops to Lebanon in order to help the PLO, together with very significant tank and artillery forces. The Sultan Yaaqub battle is considered one of the most difficult and costly battles fought by the IDF. The Syrians, for their part, did not lose their appetite for killing and humiliating Israeli forces even after it was over, and they paraded Baumel, Feldman and Katz through the streets of Damascus in a victory march, in which Syrian citizens felt at liberty to beat and humiliate them.

For a while, a public outcry for their freedom pressured the Israeli government to act. After several years, however, the IDF came to assume that the three were no longer alive. Where is Yehuda Katz today? Is his body being held in some out-of-the way cemetery in Syria, or perhaps it was transferred to Hizbullah? No one knows. But one thing is clear: The Israeli public has all but forgotten him. Like Eli Cohen and Ron Arad, no one hangs pictures of Yehuda Katz along the highways, no one demonstrates on his behalf, and to the best of my knowledge there is no one in the country wearing a yellow ribbon or a pin for Captive #3.

There is no one happier than I am about the return home of the Simchat Torah captives, both those who remained alive and those who died there for the Sanctification of G-d's name. We must thank G-d for this open miracle. At the same time, please do not fool yourselves into thinking that "all" the captives are now home; it's simply not true. Let us continue to pray for the return of Eliyahu HaCohen ben Sofia, Ron ben Batya, and Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman HaCohen ben Sarah, and ask G-d to bring these heroes back to Israel so that they may finally receive the last honors they deserve.

The Miracle of Olmert's Convergence Plan

by Haggai Huberman, Israeli journalist and author (written for the religious zionist periodical - Matzav Haruach), translated by Hillel Fendel.

It has not received much press, but the government made history this month when it made a series of decisions with historic significance for Judea and Samaria. Leading the way was Minister of Finance Betzalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism party), who also serves as Minster in the Ministry of Defense. Israel's mini-security Cabinet voted to fundamentally change how lands in Yesha are bought and administered, greatly fortifying the settlement enterprise.

The new changes include:

·         The removal of confidentiality requirements regarding land registry records in Yesha, thus increasing transparency and facilitating Jewish redemption of land

·         The repeal of the Jordanian law prohibiting the sale of real estate to Jews. [Nearly six decades after liberating Yesha, Israel has still never annexed the area, thus leaving some Jordanian laws in effect by default.] This allows Jews to purchase land in Judea and Samaria just as they do in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

·         An upgrade to the holy Tomb of Rachel site in a Bethlehem enclave, which will now have its own municipal administration, providing basic services.

·         Hebron: Building permits in the Jewish community and the Cave of the Patriarchs are now under the auspices of Israel's Civil Administration, instead of the Arab Hebron Municipality. Full municipal powers have now been granted to the Jewish Hebron Administration, which is now able to address residents' needs without having to depend on not-necessarily cooperative PA mechanisms.

At the same time, Israel has up-shifted gears in its war for the overall preservation of the Land of Israel throughout Judea and Samaria. Supervisory and enforcement activity will be applied in Areas A and B (under full and partial PA control, respectively) regarding pollution, water, and archaeological-sites infractions. 

The reason these decisions are so dramatic is because they erase, once and for all, the "vision" that reigned here precisely 20 years ago, when it appeared that the Jewish presence in Yesha was to be curtailed, condensed, and cut down to unsustainable proportions.  

Gloom in 2006

What happened 20 years ago was that Ehud Olmert was elected Prime Minister, shortly after – and on the coattails of – Ariel Sharon's ill-fated Disengagement plan. Just as Sharon withdrew unilaterally from all of Gaza, ultimately leading to several short wars and the Oct. 7^th massacre, Olmert was ready to do nearly the same in Judea and Samaria.

He called his plan the "Convergence," according to which Israel was to dismantle and withdraw from at least 60 Jewish communities, and retain no more than some 7% of Yesha. Like the Disengagement, this plan was also to be implemented unilaterally if agreement with the PA was not reached.

Following the elections of March 2006, the left-wing camp became (seemingly) firmly ensconced in power. The government was led by Olmert's Kadima party (originally founded by Sharon after the Likud largely withdrew its support for the Disengagement), and included Labor, Shas, and the seven seats - a fluke achievement - of the Pensioners' party Gil. The Gaza border was quiet, and the Disengagement was perceived at the time as a wise and safe move.

On May 4^th of that year, Olmert presented to the Knesset his new government, with guidelines stating clearly that "the area of Israel with new borders to be determined by the government, will require the reduction of Israeli settlement areas in Judea and Samaria." That is, the democratically elected prime minister of Israel promised to destroy dozens of Jewish communities, with or without an Arab partner for the move.

On June 14^th, Olmert – a former and long-time Likudnik – announced in Paris after meeting with President Chirac: "The Convergence plan is inevitable. I am determined to continue my path of separating permanently from the Palestinians, to attain safe borders that will be recognized by the international community."

The atmosphere in Yesha at the time was dismal, and many residents feared the worst. Some even began making secret inquiries and preparations regarding the compensation that they assumed would soon be offered them in exchange for their homes.

This was indeed Olmert's plan – but apparently, the Creator of the world had other idea. Just 11 days after his Paris declaration, events took their first sharp turn in a very different direction: Gilad Shalit was abducted from his tank on the Gaza border – and all of a sudden, the Disengagement didn't look like such a bright idea anymore.

Still, Olmert didn't back down, and vowed yet again to continue along his Convergence path. However, just two days later, on July 12, two reserves soldiers – Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev – were kidnapped and ultimately found to have been murdered by Hizbullah terrorists while patrolling Israel's border with Lebanon. At least five other soldiers were killed in that operation. With this, the logic of the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon of six years earlier – the brainchild of then-PM Ehud Barak – was also called into question.

Quite abruptly, Israel now found itself fighting two wars: the Second Lebanon War, and Operation Summer Rains following the kidnapping of Shalit. Withdrawals from Israeli-held territory, especially without an agreement with the enemy, no longer appeared very wise. On September 4, Olmert was forced to concede, telling the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee:

"Convergence No Longer on the Table"

"What I thought a few months ago regarding the Palestinians, is not correct at present. Our order of priorities, including what to do about the Palestinian problem, is different than it was in the past. At this point, the Convergence is not one of our priorities, as it was two months ago."

A year later, Olmert and the PA's Mahmoud Abbas, hosted by then-President George W. Bush, began trying to negotiate some kind of withdrawal from Yesha in Annapolis, Maryland. Olmert actually offered the PA some 94% of Judea and Samaria – but thankfully, Abbas rejected even this, and the conference ended with no agreement. The diplomats and negotiators packed up and went home, the plans for the abandonment of the Jewish homeland became a form of science fiction, and the Jews of Yesha – and many other Israelis whose lives would have been endangered had the PA been handed control – breathed a loud sigh of relief.

Back in Time

I ask the reader to go back in time to the month of Adar 5766/February 2006, when families in Yesha were quietly consulting with lawyers about receiving compensation. Now, imagine that someone told you then that 20 years hence, the government would not only obviate the need for compensation for the demolition of communities and homes, but would also enable the private purchase of land for the purpose of building communities. How would we have regarded such a “prophet”?

Thankfully, in this month of Adar, once again, things have happily turned upside down. Happy Purim!

Is the Gaza War Being Fought Morally?

Question: “They say that more than 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza, and that 90% of the homes have been destroyed. Is that moral? Are all the residents of Gaza Hamas-supporting murderers?

Answer: This isn’t accurate. We can divide the population into four groups..

A. The fighting circle – Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, tens of thousands of people. They absolutely must be eliminated.

B. The assisting circle – people who hide weapons in their homes, provide intelligence, and also those who handed out sweets and celebrated on the day of the massacre. This is a very large part of the population.

C. The captive / silent circle – people who oppose Hamas or simply want to live, but are living under a murderous terrorist regime. If they speak out against Hamas in Gaza, they are sentenced to death. That is why it is hard to hear their voices.

D. The children’s circle – they are mainly subjected to murderous indoctrination, but at this stage it is impossible to decide that a small child deserves death.

In summary, it is impossible to decide that everyone there is a murderer.

Question: “Why didn’t the opposition leave there, like in Germany?”

Answer: In Germany too there were Germans who could not stand the Nazi regime, but they had no power to resist or to leave — and the same is true in Gaza. The exit through Egypt is also closed. In addition, they are poor and cannot afford the high cost of leaving.

Question: “So, did we do something immoral?”

Answer: No. After all, they attacked us. We had no choice. We are defending ourselves. Our army is the Israel Defense Forces.

Question: "Maybe we should have fought more carefully?"

Answer: My answer has three parts:

A. The enemy is extremely cruel and murderous, and if we show restraint toward them, it will open the door for them to commit terrible acts again.

B. It is impossible to risk soldiers’ lives in order not to risk civilians. Of course, we prefer not to endanger civilians, and we truly did everything possible, but if we have to choose between the lives of enemy civilians and the lives of our soldiers, morality favors the lives of the soldiers.

C. They used the civilian population as a shield. They positioned themselves in hospitals,schools, and children’s bedrooms. They are responsible for those who were killed. They are the immoral ones.

Question: "If that’s the case, should we still be happy about those who were killed there?"

Answer: We should be glad about the killers and their helpers, but regarding innocent people and children, we should not be glad. We would prefer that nothing happened to them. We do not go to war out of a desire to kill, but to eradicate evil, and thank God, we are very successful.

Answers by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, published by Machon Meir.