Fools, Children, and Prophecy in Our Generation

 The Talmud (Bava Batra 12B) says that only fools and children possess prophecy. In our generation, however, perhaps we should add another category: the religious Zionist.

For decades, religious Zionists have been branded in Israeli society as warmongers, zealots, or dreamers detached from reality.

Yet it was they who foresaw the dangers that Oslo and subsequent “peace processes” would unleash. They warned that the first Intifada’s rocks and Molotov cocktails would one day become suicide bombings and shootings. They predicted that our personal security would be eroded and that peace would drift even further from reach.

Instead of Israelis enjoying hummus in Ramallah, as the dreamers promised, we found ourselves unable to drive safely on our own roads. The disengagement from Gaza was supposed to make us safer; instead, it created a terror enclave bristling with rockets, tunnels, and Iranian-trained militias. Most Israelis believed that removing settlers would calm the region. In reality, the IDF’s presence protecting small Jewish communities acted as a security buffer. Once removed, Hamas smuggled in weapons, built a war machine, and prepared the horrors of October 7th—exactly as religious Zionists had warned.

At the time, smug liberals laughed at these warnings. No one is laughing now.

If you want to know what may happen next in this war, perhaps it is worth seeking out someone with a large knitted kippah on his head. Their voices are not popular—just as Jeremiah’s voice was not popular when he prophesied destruction before the Temple fell. Then, as now, the people preferred to hear the well-meaning false prophets with their soothing optimism. And then, as now, that optimism has carried us into disaster.