The Year that Changed Israel

by Yehuda Vald, Director-General of the Religious Zionism party.

We had an amazing insight while in the midst of anti-Hizbullah combat just a few days ago. We were waiting for the Oketz elite K-9 unit (which uses dogs specially trained to sniff out weapons, ammunition, or volatile chemical vapors from explosives and booby traps, and then sit in place to alert the fighters without detonating the explosives) to scan a house for explosive devices before our entry. I stood there, in the courtyard of a house in the heart of Lebanon, enwrapped in dust and sweat, on a mission to destroy terror infrastructures deep within the territory. I caught the eye of the fighter standing next to me and asked him: "Can you believe what's happening with us right now?"

He just looked at me, and I continued: "If I had told you three years ago that we would be 13 kilometers deep inside Lebanon, marching wherever we feel like, moving between houses and fields almost without fear, opening an operational position in a destroyed village – one of many dozens all along the border - and that on the route back, we would see Israeli flags waving along the roadsides with the city of Tyre in the background, what would you have said?"

It took him a few long seconds to change his perspective. I could see the magnitude of the historic event gradually come through to him – and then we received the order to move into the house and prepare it for destruction.

In the middle of battle in Lebanon, looking around at the big picture as the year of 5786 was drawing to a close, it must be said wholeheartedly: Israel's security situation has never been better. The reality created on the ground over the past year is nothing less than a strategic revolution.

Let's start here in the north: IDF forces have complete control deep inside Lebanon and are able to act freely all along the long border. Hizbullah, the terrorist organization that sat on our fences for decades, looming threateningly and murderously over our northern towns, has been systematically decimated. Thousands of its terrorist operatives have been killed, and the rest have been distanced tens of kilometers towards the north.

On our northeastern sector, Israeli outposts are stationed deep within Syrian territory, and the critically strategic Mt. Hermon Crown has become a strong built-up Israel outpost, fortified and protected.

In the south, Israel holds 60% of the Gaza Strip, from which so many murderous attacks emanated over the decades, and of course especially in 2023. Our brave and courageous soldiers man the Yellow Line (the north-south line that divides Gaza into IDF territory and that which is still controlled by Hamas), systematically gunning down anyone who nears the border, or who took part in the Simchat Torah massacre three years ago.

And of course, we cannot forget the head of the terror octopus seeking to attack Israel from every angle: Iran. Israeli forces carried out unbelievable missions precisely in the heart of Tehran; dozens of leading Iranian officials and military figures have been liquidated, including the leader himself, Ali Khameini. Working in tight cooperation with the United States, our forces destroyed infrastructures and headquarters, killed many terrorists, and landed a very heavy blow against Iran's nuclear installations.

Israel's recent strategic revolution is not confined merely to the security realm. In the realms of construction and the settlement enterprise as well, there has never been a Jewish presence as broad, deep, and significant in Judea and Samaria as there is today. Dozens of new communities, and over 100 farms, have been established throughout the territory, and we have even returned to the northern Shomron communities from which our fellow citizens were expelled during the days of the Disengagement 21 years ago.

In the north, often very close to the Lebanese border, new homes are being built and dozens of young families are joining these veteran pioneering communities. Kindergartens in Metula and Zar'it are once again teeming with life and children playing. To the south, in the Gaza envelope and the Tekuma region, hundreds of new couples and families are settling down, construction is in full swing, and the waiting lists only continue to grow longer.

The Israeli economy has revealed strength that surprised all the analysts. Despite nearly three years of difficult and complex war, unemployment is at a historic low, the stock exchange is climbing, hi-tech stocks are taking off, foreign investments flow in at a record-breaking pace, and the shekel is strong against the dollar and other foreign currency. As predicted in the Talmud, at the time of the Ingathering of the Exiles, the Land of Israel is giving forth its fruits ever so generously.

But of all the miracles, the biggest one is taking place in our life spirit. Despite the futile attempts, morning and evening, to convince us how terribly divided we are, the truth on the ground is diametrically the opposite: Israeli society is experiencing one of its greatest moments of unity in its history.

Hundreds of thousands of reservists and their families eagerly put their entire daily routines on hold and enlist to protect the homeland. Thousands of volunteers embrace our many bereaved families, medical teams act with endless sensitivity and compassion to rehabilitate the wounded, tens of thousands of youths volunteer in their communities, and businesses donate equipment and food on an unprecedented scale. All of this is happening across the political spectrum: right and left, religious, secular, and haredi. This is the unconditional love (Ahavat Chinam) of and within the Nation of Israel.

I'm not coming to whitewash the terrible prices that we have paid since Oct. 7, 2023. My eyes are not closed to the hardships, the pain, and the heavy crises we have undergone since then. We have paid in our must expensive currency: the lives of our best sons and daughters. The tears of the mothers, widows and children continue to sear our hearts. Not for naught do we pray on Rosh HaShanah, "May this year and its curses come to an end."

But alongside the pain, as the year of 5786 ends, it is incumbent upon us to view our nation and people, and G-d's blessings, in a generous and positive manner. We must and want to say Thank You with all our hearts for all the many miracles and great abundance of good that G-d has showered upon us this past year.

A moment after we completed our mission deep inside Lebanon, while wearing our uniforms filled with dust and sweat, we stood and prayed together: "So many great thanks for all the good and all the kindnesses, o dear Father in heaven."

Yes, we need many more of them, many more salvations and consolations. We pray that the new year be filled with blessing.

The True Danger: Crossing Red Lines

by Yehuda Vald, Director-General of the Religious Zionism Party, translated by Hillel Fendel.

The right-wing never threatened to burn down the country. The left-wing must follow suit.

During the course of the tenure of the Bennett-Lapid government, which was supported by a terrorist supporting Knesset party associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, I was called to serve as a reservist in the IDF. Once in uniform, I found myself among many friends from the nationalist camp, and we discussed our discomfort and difficult feelings given the government under which we had been called to serve.

Many of us were incensed at the ideological about-face that then-Prime Minister Bennett had made, and the way he turned his back on the values he had pledged to represent and thus earned many of our votes. But despite the turmoil we all felt, not one of us considered not showing up for military service.

Way before that, after the Rabin government signed the Oslo Accords, and after Shimon Peres brought Yasser Arafat to our midst and supplied rifles to the Palestinian Authority that led to the murders of many Jews throughout the country, the story was the same. I never heard my father or his friends threaten to organize a taxpayers' rebellion.

Yes, we protested and cried out in the streets. We blocked roads when the government set out to expel nearly 10,000 of us from our homes in Gush Katif. We watched as it destroyed a beautiful expanse of our homeland, despite our warnings that Israel's security would be in mortal danger. Those in power ignored us.

Knowledgeable and grave-looking former security officials said that everything would be OK, and they prevailed over the teary-eyed orange-bracelet wearers [orange was the color of the campaign to stop the Gush Katif destruction]. Yet even then, we did not refuse to serve in the army of our country that had expelled us, and we did not stop saying the Prayer for the Welfare of the Country and Government.

The right-wing camp protested, cried out, demonstrated – but never threatened civil disobedience. We did not call on the populace not to pay taxes, we did not encourage refusal to serve in the IDF, and we certainly did not threaten a civil war. Even when the government itself acted against us, we continued to remain loyal.

But the Left Acts Differently

Two years ago, high-scale social turbulence enveloped the country following the elected government's attempt to institute a reform of the judicial system. The anti-reform protest gained momentum with slogans such as, "This is the End of Democracy," "Israel is Becoming a Dictatorship," and "A Country of Halakhic Law." Various protest initiatives warned that Israel was on its way to becoming an oppressive regime that would discriminate against women, and posters warned that not allowing a court to abolish a Knesset law simply because it considered it "unreasonable" would lead to students being forced to don tefillin in schools…

At the same time, unprecedented anti-IDF intiatives began to take shape. Pilots and reservists announced that they would refuse to serve, youths began publicly burning their draft notices, and former bigwigs, such as Ehud Barak, started calling openly for civil disobedience. It was even discovered not long ago that 120 million shekels were funneled into those massive protests from foreign sources.

Two years later, all the scare-tactics have proven to have been groundless.  There is no religious compulsion, women have not turned into low-level housemaids, and the democracy has not collapsed. But a deeper problem remains: the fact that one side, the left, took steps to "overturn the table" and collapse Israeli society.    

Political disputes are far from new. There was always right and left, and always different approaches as to how to run the country. But it never happened that senior members of one camp called openly for refusal, civil disobedience, and not to pay taxes.

And we're not talking about marginal left-wingers, but rather leaders of the pack: Opposition leader Yair Lapid, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and former Deputy IDF Chief of Staff and current leader of what used to be the Labor Party, Yair Golan. They have actually called for refusal, disobedience, and even the first steps of civil war. This creates a situation in which every political camp may do the same whenever they lose an election. Can any of us imagine the terrifying scenario of hareidim declaring a civil war if they are drafted, or of the religious-Zionists closing down the country if a Hesder yeshiva is closed? Is this the future of Israeli democracy?

The answer is no. Contrary to the panic in the media, most people in our country, on both the right and the left, want to live together, want the country to be Jewish, want to preserve democracy, and refuse to fight and hate. Most people vow that we will never have a civil war. Those who fought – together! – in the alleys of Khan Yunis and the hills of Lebanon, and who spent days preparing for battle or taking part in distributing supplies to the soldiers, and the youths who helped rebuild the Gaza- border areas and the north, and who helped out the reservists' families in Tel Aviv, Gush Etzion, and everywhere else – know that that's where the truth of Israeli society lies, and that our nation is, essentially, one.

If the left is truly committed to democracy, it must also commit to abide by the rules of the game – even when they don't precisely match its agenda. They must not burn down the clubhouse, and not rock the foundations of the existence of our democracy, and not take extreme measure simply because they find themselves in the minority. "Together We Will Win!" is not just a slogan; it is the essence of our existence here as a nation.