Hat tip: Rafi, Life in Israel
40 years have passed. Most of Israel’s citizens did not personally experience the shock of the fearful siren, wailing up and down, that at 2 PM ripped through the silence of the holiness of Yom Kippur. The nation was wrapped then in its fast, gathered in the synagogues, or in the privacy of their homes. The gates of heaven were not open that day, the prayers were not answered, the war broke out. The fire was on two fronts, the north and the south, by the time the siren sounded, the first soldiers had already fallen. Israel had made a mistake and was surprised, and her children gave their lives with amazing heroism and saved it from the valley of tears. — President Shimon Peres, at memorial ceremony on Har Herzl for the fallen soldiers of the Yom Kippur War
Israelis, like many other people tend to credit themselves and other humans for good things and blame G-d for the bad. I see like in the complete opposite direction. We humans tend to misuse our gift of Free Will and make the wrong decisions. I’m not talking about buying the wrong color dress, a boring book or even a lemon of a car. I’m talking about dangerous things, like the Israeli Government decisions that caused the horrendous death toll in the first days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and almost caused the destruction of the State of Israel.
Immediately after the 1967 Six Days War, the country was filled with signs thanking the IDF for the victory, even though the great victory bore no relation to the battle plans. In simple terms, G-d took over steering the ship. While the Israeli Labor-ked Government had always made it clear that it was perfectly satisfied with the Land under Israeli control since the 1949 ceasefire, G-d decided otherwise. And instead of recognizing that G-d knows more than man, successive Israeli governments for the past forty-six 46 years have been begging the Arabs to take back the Land we won in a fighting for our lives and existence defensive war in exchange for a “peace treaty.”
Shimon Peres personifies that faulty reasoning. For whatever reason, G-d has made him one of the last, if not the very last of that generation that refuses to accept G-d’s will. And Peres, instead of recognizing and admitting his mistakes has continued for almost half a century taking credit for our survival and promoting his faux peace.
I’m not as optimistic as MK Elkin who thinks that Israelis have “sobered up” and recognize the futility of their quest for peace.
I think a serious step would be when we hear Israeli and Jewish leaders thank G-d for stopping the Holocaust and blaming human free will for causing the death of millions. All of this philosophy and history are related. That’s the key. We’re still stuck in the syndrome of the “Sin of the Spies,” when ten out of the twelve tribal leaders feared the challenges of liberating aka conquering the Promised Land, and they sold their faulty opinion to the masses of recently enslaved Jews. It seems we’re still sentenced to wander the desert and await a Joshua to lead us into Jewish Sovereignty in the Holy Land.
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