85 Days to Voting: Avoiding Global Catastrophe  

In this morning’ s New York Times, respected columnist David French authored a piece entitled “The War That Could Swallow the World” which you can see here….

https://tinyurl.com/bdem9hy4

French shares some very significant appraisals of where the world finds itself today, four years into the Russian-Ukraine war, three years into the Israel-Hamas war and five months into the US-Iran war, all three of which were anticipated to have been concluded long ago, if time is measured both by the calendar and the pain caused by some and experienced by others.

He analyses where we stand today as follows: “The initial American strategy (against Iran) failed, the risking (led to) a face-off, there is evidence that both Russia and China are escalating their military commitments, American munitions stocks are dwindling, and Trump is raging.  Not only does Iran continue to strike American bases effectively; it has relentlessly attacked American partners across the region. These attacks are doing immense damage to oil and gas facilities and — combined with Iran’s continued control over the Strait of Hormuz — are placing the world economy at risk.”

Add to this, of course, the entry of the Houthis into the conflict, Ukraine now having struck an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, the supposition that Russia and China may be supplying satellite imagery to Iran raising the efficiency of Iranian missile attacks, along with a Reuters report that China is sending Iran hundreds of surface-to-air missiles as well and the situation can only be descried as “out of control.”

But worst of all, in the face of this worldwide political chaos there does not appear to be a horizon for change that will bring us to the point of what we called normal before all of these conflicts began.

Russia’s Putin seems to have no real desire to end the war because without total victory he cannot justify to the Russians why he started the war to begin with, a war in which over a million Russian have perished.

Trump won’t simply end the war with Iran because, similar to the situation in Russia, Americans will not perceive the wat to have been won if all that emerges from this effort is putting the Strait of Hormuz back to where it was five months ago and with the Iranian regime stronger than ever.

Here in Israel the only substantively positive result of the war with Hamas, to date, has been the release of all of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas which was, at the end of the day, because of the intercession of the American president. Yes, we destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure, a large number of people in Gaza died from our attacks, but Hamas remains operational and in control of what’s left of Gaza, albeit somewhat less powerful, but still functional and, at the moment, still armed.

So, the only real achievement of the Gazan war was the return of the hostages while over 1,150 IDF troops and related security personnel lost their lives. While we do now “control’ 70% of Gaza we continue to attack targets there, people continue to die and, at least to the average Israeli, our Prime Minister does not seem to have any desire to actually end this war.

French goes on to ponder: “I’ve often wondered what it was like to be alive in the summer of 1914, much less in 1938 and 1939. When did people start to realize that the world was on the brink of catastrophe? Speak up too soon or too frequently, and you look ridiculous — like the Chicken Little of world war. Speak up too late, and you live (if you live) with bitter regret.”

We can ask ourselves, what is it like to be alive in the summer of 2026? What will it take to make us realize that we are on the brink of catastrophe? In writing this, am I an alarmist or a realist? Have we learned from history or are we doomed to repeat it? If, indeed, we are on the brink of catastrophe, whose responsibility is it to scream “Gevalt!” (a Yiddish interjection and noun that literally means “violence” or “force”, used to express shock, dismay, or as a desperate cry for help.)

The responsibility to yell Gevalt and do something about it, in democratic societies, rests in the elected leader. Holding him or her to task is the responsibility of the legislature elected to represent the interests of the people and protect those interests. When neither of those entities are willing to put a stop to the insanity, there remains just one alternative, the electorate, which then has the responsibility to exercise its ultimate control and vote for new leadership.

The upcoming elections here and in the US, provide that opportunity for change and hopefully the electorate will respond.

Here in Israel, it is high time that the current leadership which refuses to accept responsibility for any of the security related errors over the past years that have contributed to bringing us to where we are today, be voted out of office. This country should continue to strive to be, as in Lincoln’s words uttered at Gettysburg in 1863, a country of the people, by the people and for the people.

From my perspective the only person who qualifies in all three aspects stated above is Gadi Eisenkot. A man of the people whose family is native to this region; who rose through the ranks of the IDF to become its head; and who, when Prime Minister Netanyahu needed a level headed person with experience to add to his War Cabinet after the October 7^th attack, it was Eisenkot whom he invited to counsel on the existential threats to the country and how best to meet them.

As David French writes at the end of his piece when speaking about how to avoid the catastrophe that confronts us, he says: “But that requires us to do something that democracies have rarely, if ever, done successfully: see the catastrophe coming and act decisively before a terrible war swallows the world.”

Each of us living in a democratic country needs to be able to recognize the challenges that confront us and use the vote to move new leaders into place who can make decisive course corrections and are not constricted by the understandable but dangerous desire not to have to admit failure. Let us hope we are up to the challenge.

Carthago substituenda est!