The pathetic war

It’s another one of our inventions – and not the least. We invented the concept of the pathetic war. That means it’s a war we win, or win. And whether we win or win, in the end, we always lose.

Let me explain. 

In each of our wars, we’ve managed to push back enemy armies. Why? For one simple reason—what Golda Meir once called our “secret weapon”: we have nowhere else to go. 

This means we have no choice. When we are attacked, we defend ourselves and drive the enemies out. We’ve always been attacked. And we’ve always defended ourselves. That’s the fundamental nature of our wars. Nothing more, nothing less.

For 77 years, the objective of the enemy armies has been the same. To wipe us out. That’s why they attack. For us, defending ourselves from this destructive plan means staying alive. The day we can no longer defend ourselves, we’re dead. It’s really that simple.

This isn’t a secret. Everything is crystal clear and loudly declared – on both sides. The enemy’s intent is to kill us. Death, death to the IDF, remember? Our intention is to stay alive. Am Israel Hai. That’s the whole story.

And so far, we’ve succeeded. We’re still here. Which means, yes—we’ve won every war. The enemy fails in its mission, and by definition, that’s called a defeat.

But. We are Jews, and we hate war. More than words can express. 

War, by its very nature, annihilates us. So every time we have to fight one, yes, militarily or strategically, we win – we’ve made sure to give ourselves the means to – but from a human point of view, humanly, we lose. Always. From the moment a single human being falls, no matter the side.

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind”, we truly believe that.

Politically, tactically, militarily, we may be victorious, but we don’t feel like victors, and we don’t act like victors. We never dance, we never celebrate, because each war is always for us a terrible ordeal that is forced upon us. 

We come out of each conflict more broken than before. Scarred. Grieving.

Let’s take theis reasoning further.

So we don’t celebrate. But on the other side, our enemies, who failed to achieve their mission, when they see us so desperate and miserable, of course they dance.

By all conventional standards, they have lost. But they attacked us, and we are wounded, grieving, and divided. If their true goal is to make us feel desperate and miserable, they can celebrate. Our tears are their joy. Jackpot.

And then they return home. They have a home. One that continues to grow. They go home and demand compensation from a stunned world, on behalf of “shield populations” they themselves endanger or neglect, but whose suffering destroys us a little more.

We’ve become masters in self-flagellation. Jackpot again.

This gives rise to surreal, paradoxical endings to wars that no one seems willing to examine clearly. Damn it, the pseudo-genocide victim handing out candy while the supposed victor is sobbing their heart out , doesn’t that raise any questions?

And then we hear: What about the Gazans? As if everyone forgot that this war started because they came into our homes. We’ve destroyed part of the massive underground infrastructure they built to destroy us. Rescuing our hostages and destroying the tunnels, that’s what our soldiers are doing. Giving us a few more years of relative calm, if not peace. Every tunnel destroyed means a few more years. We don’t thank our soldiers loudly enough, in my opinion.

We’re so lost, so shaken, that even among us, more and more people seem to forget why we’re fighting. Some are beginning to doubt. But doubt what, exactly?

War is despicable. All wars are. It represents the absolute breakdown of human values. There’s no need to argue about that. But this war, like all others, will end. It will end when the last of our hostages will come back home.

In the meantime, we must remember this: every single day it has lasted, more terror tunnels have been destroyed, more weapons caches dismantled, while continuing behind the scenes to fight for the return of our kidnapped children. These are facts.

And neither the desperate scope of the tunnels, nor the unspeakable cruelty of our enemies, nor the appalling comments of all the world’s snake oil merchants will ever succeed in crushing our hope to bring our hostages home.