The Blogs: Eyeless in Gaza

The war continues, hostages remain in captivity, and no one seems able to articulate a clear vision to move us forward.

When will we be blessed with the leaders we deserve?

Trump says to move 2,000,000 Gazans to Jordan and Egypt; in the absence of rational alternatives, people pretend to take him seriously. Qatar, which hosts the Hamas leadership and, together with Iran, helped to finance its war, arbitrates the peace process as a putative honest broker; no one bats an eye. Hordes of well-meaning (and some not well-meaning) demonstrators clamor for the immediate return of all hostages, to be followed by . . . what, an endless cycle of future hostages to be captured and returned? Apparently bereft of alternatives, we actually negotiate with the planners and perpetrators of October 7, knowing that they are committed to planning and perpetrating more of the same at the earliest opportunity. Houthis, who have nothing, and therefore, nothing to lose, flaunt their murderous objectives, and the powers of the world are exposed as powerless. Iran, shielded by Russia, China, and the UN, laughs at threats that appear increasingly hollow.

Everyone on the home front points fingers and assigns blame.

When will destiny provide us with leaders with the wisdom and courage to offer lasting solutions and not platitudes? Action and not excuses?

Yeats, a century ago, appears to have anticipated the Israeli daily newspapers: “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”

At home, the intensely passionate politicians shrilly embarrass themselves. Olmert, Barak, Yaalon–people who one would think would be ashamed to show their faces in public, still offer opinions on governance, as if they have anything of substance to say, as if anyone were still listening. Our alternatives to the status quo–Lapid, Ben-Gvir, Liberman, Golan, Deri–are these really the leaders we deserve? And if so, does any one of them have some clear vision that we can adopt, and support, and repose our faith in for the future? Or is it all just hurling invective at the opposition? Is that what passes for political leadership these days? Accusations of bribery and bad faith? Being someone other than Bibi is not a sufficient qualification.

Shades of Kissinger. We have no foreign policy; we have only domestic politics.

Imagine. What if we were to give each political constituency that seeks to lead us what it says it wants–we fire the incendiary AG; we relieve the head of the Shin Bet of the duties he appears not to have been doing anyway; we get someone new, who perhaps takes seriously the threat posed by our enemies, to run the IDF; we remove, convict, banish, and, for good measure, tar and feather the Prime Minister; we reform the judiciary; we draft the charedim; we empty the prisons of convicted terrorists; we withdraw from Gaza; we either (i) claim sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, and resettle Gush Katif, or (ii) enable a Palestinian State on the West Bank and Gaza–then what? Expand the settlements. Disband the settlements. Sovereignty. Retreat.

Then what?

Is there anyone on our side with the effrontery to claim they have put forth a realistic solution that would bring a sustainable peace to the Jewish State in the near term? How about the medium term? The long term? Has anyone advanced a plan that has a scintilla of a chance to bring us more than a temporary respite from this hell?

To be fair, the situation is not all negative. At the same time that the war exposed some of our most profound frailties and failures, it also revealed some of our proudest qualities. Threatened, we coalesced. Beaten, we rallied. Attacked, we responded. No external force or action drove us to despair. On the contrary, common enemies forced us to unify. Leaderless, we achieved much through courage, dedication, and sacrifice. The performance of our fighting forces in battle is nothing short of miraculous.

There is great beauty and great strength in this land and people.

But we deserve–and require–more. To sustain our strength and unity, we need reasonable, enlightened, flexible, moderate leadership. It is that deficiency that threatens despair. We need a vision for the future articulated and implemented. We need people who can speak to more than one narrow constituency. The dialectic of hatred that reflects our political leaders is not adequate to our needs. We deserve better.

There are so many beautiful things in this country, so much to make us proud. My granddaughter’s class–50 6-year old girls–received their first siddurim at a ceremony at the kotel. They danced with Israeli flags, they sang the prayer for Tzahal, they prayed together, to the charm and delight of assembled parents, grandparents, pilgrims, bystanders, strangers, and Japanese tourists. On Purim, countless Israelis participated in chessed projects for the less fortunate. There is still an overwhelming sense of unity and purpose. In the face of implacable enmity and hatred, we stand together, knowing that our cause is just, that if we just find leaders who want to lead us rather than score points against and defeat one another, our destiny on this land is capable of fulfillment. Those little girls deserve a better future.

Say what you will about our enemies; at least they have immutable, fixed goals. The Arabs are not bedeviled by our conflicting and clouded judgment. Their aspirations are clear and clearly stated: A Palestinian State from the river to the sea, free of and from Jews. And they will never stop in the pursuit of those aspirations unless we are able, together, to advance a competing vision of greater clarity, greater cohesion, greater strength.

It’s not that hard. The following are both achievable and necessary:

First–win the war. We need a military strategy to defeat our enemies so that they no longer represent a credible threat.

Next–win the peace. We need a system that allows us to be a Jewish state without being a theocracy that oppresses non-believers. We need a way to deal with our Arab citizens and neighbors, educationally and socially, that provides them dignity and economic stability, while removing any residual hope that they will replace us in our homeland. We need a Saudi-Israeli-American alliance that can usher in generations of peace and prosperity. We need to respect the Charedi way of life without allowing them to exploit the system, requiring and incentivizing them to bear a fair share of the social burden. We need to have a democracy that reflects majority rule, while preserving basic human rights and not permitting a tyranny either of the majority or of an unfettered judiciary.

These goals are not beyond our reach. Rational, decent, well-meaning, tolerant, enlightened people, working together in good faith under leaders committed to public welfare rather than personal gain and power, could achieve those goals by working together instead of at cross purposes.

We just need to stop competing with one another, stop trying to prevail over our political adversaries, stop screaming and start listening. We need to clear a place in the rubble where we can build an enduring society.

The alternative is too terrible to contemplate.