The Calamity and Clarity of Absolute Failure

By Ehud Neor

“Abba, Ima, can we come out now?”

What with the world-wide spectacle of an antisemitic circus—excuse me—an anti-Zionist circus soaring to new heights with every tweet and post, a Jew living in Israel can be forgiven for being confused. Our friends are not being very friendly, and our enemies have adopted a ferocity and cruelty not seen in almost a hundred years. For some months prior to the attack a well-organized series of demonstrations shook the Israeli social fabric, with the demonstrators showing a spittle-spewing intensity that was so theatrical that it was hard to take seriously. Their fury was not believable, but the theatre proved sustainable with the help of an enlisted media, and the public had to endure costume processions of characters from a Margaret Atwood novel that I would bet none of the marchers had read. The most powerful women east of Greece and west of India were playing the role of birthing slaves. It was all a spectacle too pitiful to ridicule and too sad to evoke laughter. However, the unintended self-ridicule forced the organizers to up their game and they managed to convince some active air force pilots that Israeli democracy was in danger of being overthrown. How supposedly intelligent pilots allowed themselves to be manipulated by slick and shallow brainwashing will be an interesting subject of the upcoming inquiries. The theatrics ceased to be laughable if they ever were when the air force pilots began to threaten to not show up for work. Though there had been some conscientious objectors over the years, this felt different.

The Calamity

And it was different, for no matter if the walkout threat was real or not, there was no denying the thing most real about Oct. 7, and that was that the dauntless Israeli Air Force was nowhere to be found. Billions of dollars invested in equipment and training, with only the best of the best becoming pilots, but when it counted, absolute failure. Teen-age girls were having their pelvises torn apart in front of their parents before being murdered, and the Air Force was, well, they must have been somewhere, just not anywhere where they could fulfill their only purpose which was to protect Israeli civilians. The air force was joined in this deep sleep by the military intelligence, whose head was vacationing in Eilat, and who had recently said that the main threat to Israel is global warming. Some intrepid investigators looked for a common denominator to this sleepiness in the headquarters of the IDF and intelligence services. Fingers were pointed accusingly at the Wexner Foundation, where many had spent time on the Harvard campus learning to be the future leaders of Israel, and a quick look at the web page listing their aims is enough to understand how a highly trained and experienced combat officer can become a soft sort of thing that needs to roll over for another hour of sleep. Rest assured that the fighter planes and attack helicopters were ready for action because they are maintained by a simpler type of Israeli, the type that is not invited to mind-bending retreats such as found in Wexner-land.

The military is already investigating itself—and that is an insult to the dead and to the survivors. As is the fact that the main enablers of this tragedy are leading the charge against Hamas. They have proved beyond a doubt that they are the worst commanders in Israel’s history, yet they believe that they are currently irreplaceable. Though some have accepted responsibility, what does that even mean if they insist on keeping their posts? It means that they have no shame, and that they don’t really believe that they are responsible. They may have a desire to correct some of the damage that they have caused. They do not have that right. They do not have the right to succeed in battle as they do not have the right to fail again in battle. They do not have the right to be involved at all. The fact that they are still in the picture is a major cause of confusion among Israelis.

They all must go, and the sooner the better. From the top all the way down two or three levels in all directions. Clean out the barn. Their betters are far below them, as befits a retched regime that knows only to perpetuate itself. Yes, it means that the prime minister must go. Though he cannot be blamed for taking the advice of his heads of intelligence and military that Hamas was “intimidated,” and so not a present danger, still, these heads served at his pleasure, and his acceptance of their service implies an acceptance of their evaluation of enemies, which was as wrong as it was possible to be. So, the prime minister must go, as do all the military and intelligence leaders and no less important, all the appointees of said leaders. There must be deep cuts to stop the infection. Though it may take three or four election cycles to get this done, it will get done.

The Clarity

The sound and the fury of the battles in Gaza and Lebanon suppresses for now the innocent question of innocent children, not those questions of the children of the Passover Seder, rather those of the children who are the progeny of the people of the Seder. This child—hiding in the field next to his childhood home and hearing the screams of his siblings and parents as they were tortured for hours until finally being allowed to die, then burnt to ashes—this child is the one doing the asking. The child is not asking “What is different this time?” because he knows, as all Jewish children know, that “in every generation there are those who rise up to exterminate us.” The child is asking “Can it happen again? Can I quit hiding?”

The answer of course is yes, it can happen again and will happen again unless there is a sea-change in the way Israel deals with threats, and in the way Israel sees itself and comports itself in the World, and no, you cannot quit hiding. You can bullshit a small child, but a child who already has a head on its shoulders is going to look at you like an idiot if you tell him “Everything is going to be OK.” That is what it has come to. Ehud Barak, the Kaplan Street demonstrations, “never Bibi,” none of that matters beyond a possible election in the near term if it works out that way. The real and lasting changes are happening at the other end of the age spectrum. A parent who loves his child will always choose a truthful connection with that child over right-speak in service of a political position. Clarity is coming from below.

And from without. It is now clear that Israel’s enemies expected an immediate and massive response to the attack of October seventh from the IDF, and had planned for it, with well-organized demonstrations taking place across the board. There was an awkward moment for the demonstrators screaming in the streets when it dawned upon them that there was no IDF activity. With a pause that may have lasted all of many minutes, waiting to see if they would be held accountable for their overreaction, they soon realized what they knew all along, that it is always open season on the Jewish Zionists. What transpired over the next few weeks before the IDF attacked Gaza were the most outrageous and immoral instances of double-speak in modern history. The unexpected military silence on the Israeli side created a conundrum. The only media available to construct a narrative was that provided freely and widely by the perpetrators themselves, a literal avalanche of Allahu Ackbars and wasted Jewish bodies young and old. The media companies, suddenly puritanical, swept their servers clean as fast as possible of this self-damning evidence of a brutality against Jews not seen since the holocaust, but not before Israel managed to download copies. For once, the Jews thought, they had a case to present to the world that could not be denied or “spun.” Though Israel could not save the victims portrayed in these film clips, the agony of the victims could be displayed for all the world to see. To this day, nothing has been more pitiable than seeing the only sovereign Jewish State act like a deranged Sally Field narrating a snuff film, proclaiming near and far: “Look what they have done to us. Love us! Really, love us!”

Alas, Hamas, the latest in a long line of bloodthirsty Jew haters, had the measure of the Jews, and the measure of the Jews’ true standing in the world. They know their enemy, and in the spirit of Eichmann surprising his Jewish interrogators by his unsolicited recitation of the “Shema,” they acted upon a simple truism of history: most non-Jews are indifferent when presented with the sight of a bloodied Jew. Many more than dreamed of in the worst nightmares of the Jews take a certain pleasure in seeing such a sight. That being the case, why not put on a show and shoot at the Jew’s feet and watch him dance. By golly, those Jews can dance! The world, including Israel’s supposed allies, has taken pleasure over the last twenty years or so in watching the Jewish people dance, scurrying to find shelter under rocks, or hastily assembled “shelters.” Hiding.

Though now fighting back under restraints dictated by their allies, the Jews still are running and hiding. That is the moment of clarity to be had when looking at the slaughter of October 7. Jews are not safe in the country that they built to be a refuge. Even if the Israeli army totally wipes out Hamas, the pattern has been established and verified. First, discover an imaginative method for slaughtering Jews, then deny what you have done. You will be innocent until proven innocent by a jury of your antisemitic peers.

Such a harsh reality for the confused Zionist Jew! Standing at the street corner of history, hoping against hope that things cannot get worse, but they do get worse sooner than that hope can take shape, and there he is, peeping around the corner of a building.

“Psst. Hey Jew. I’ve got just what you need.

In spite of himself, the Jew asks, “What?”

“Two states man. Fresh and rejuvenated, brand new. Here, take a free snort.”

Battered, confused, the Jew cannot believe what he is hearing.