The Secret to our Survival is NOT Jewish Power

Why is it that those who express the most concern about the halakhic directive not to pay too high a price to free captives, lest this encourage the enemy and exact a high cost on the community in the future, tend to endorse freeing hostages by military pressure? After all, in the same breath that the Mishna forbids paying too high a price, it also forbids such operations, out of the concern that remaining captives and future captives will pay a high price for these attempts?

And another, related question: Why is that the political figures who caution us that while a hostage deal may have short-term gains, it carries the possibility of deadly future ramifications, seem to have far less concern about the possible ramifications of other acts, for example, of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visits to the Temple Mount? A calculated, objective risk analysis would certainly yield that the latter has the potential to be far more dangerous than a hostage deal.

These two questions have a single answer, and it’s an answer that contains this government’s most basic and most dangerous mistake, a mistake so deep and so old that Moses tried desperately to warn us of it on the eve of our entry into the land.

The answer, opponents of the deal will say, is that there is a big difference between risks that we create when we exhibit our power, and risks that we create when we limit our power. The risks created by a hostage deal are the result of giving in, of weakness, of restraining power. The risks created by a Temple Mount visit or a daring rescue, on the other hand, reflect our might.

But this means that the question is not really one of risk analysis and evaluation. It’s a much more fundamental question. The most fundamental question. What does our survival in this land depend on? The basic answer of those who oppose a deal and support military pressure is, to borrow the name of a political party, Jewish Power. Which is not to suggest that everyone who thinks this way supports that party. But it is true that members of the Jewish Power party really do faithfully represent the purest, most extreme and uncompromising expression of this basic belief.

What is this belief? It’s a very natural one, the very “state of nature” that Hobbes writes of, the survival of the fittest, the strongest, the most brutal. It is the belief that our survival depends on our power. Any display of weakness endangers us, and the more we display our might, the safer we are. Only when we show our neighbors “who’s boss” can we best ensure our security.

One of the most tempting things about this belief is that it’s extremely hard to disprove. After all, whenever displaying or exerting power doesn’t work, one can always claim that the reason is that we needed more power. This is the way this government tries to justify the strange and inconvenient fact that the attack of October 7^th happened a year into the tenure of a government that had promised to be and should have been the most powerful, and the most intimidating. If only we had exerted even more strength, this never would have happened. And that, the argument continues, is what we must do now, until we reach “total victory”.

The idea that more force is always more effective is one that every child starts to navigate the world with. If I didn’t get it when I cried, I’ll cry louder. If that didn’t work, perhaps I’ll hit, or grab. Some people go through much of life with this attitude- whatever doesn’t work by force, will work by even more force. But most of us realize that this doesn’t always work. Sometimes, when you exert more and more force, something breaks. And sometimes, even if force is effective, it’s not worth the damage it causes along the way- to rules, to trust, to relationships. Most of us learn, somewhere along the way, what this government has consistently refused to admit: that power has its limits.

The fantasy of limitless power is what motivated, and what doomed, the attempt of the government to effect judicial reform. There were changes that could have been pursued without creating a massive protest movement. But, tempted by the seemingly limitless power afforded them by 64 seats in the Knesset, the government went all out, seeking to remove all checks and balances on its power. Seeking everything, they ended up with nothing.

This is an error that has continued to haunt us during the execution of this war. It is precisely the fantasy of “total victory” that is always just a hairsbreadth away if only we exert more and more power that has trapped us in a war with no end in sight. And it is the resistance to accepting the limits of power that has led to irresponsible, genocidal statements, to behavior that violates the rules of war and our moral code, and to opposition to prosecuting the violators, all of which have ultimately weakened Israel’s position.

This, then, is the paradox of power: if you don’t accept its limits, they will force themselves upon you. The only way to maintain your power, is to restrain your power.

Moses knew this paradox well. Perhaps it even cost him entry into the land of Israel, when he failed to restrain himself and struck the rock. And so his final speech to the Jewish people is filled with warnings about it, and practical advice for how to properly manage power, and not to lose it. He knows that this is a problem that becomes most acute in the third generation, “when you bear children and grandchildren”. The generation that was born into a land already settled and developed, who take their power for granted, is the one most likely to mistakenly ascribe their survival to their own power- “my power and my might has created all this wealth”. Forgetting that it is God who is the source of your strength and your prosperity is a sure recipe for destruction, because if it is my strength that I depend on, then I will always need more of it, and will never be willing to set limits to it.

This is precisely what Moses insists on when demanding that a king limit his wealth, his military strength, and his wives.  Perhaps this is the way to understand the deeper meaning of idol worship that Moses constantly warns us about. When I create my god, I also control it, and I set the limits, not God. A false god is one that serves to further my pursuit of power. A true God is one who limits it.

The great irony is that it is the most ostensibly “religious” government in Israel’s history that has forgotten the paradox that should have been for it second nature. People who bind their arms daily in Tefillin, people who constantly practice the restraint of their power in the face of a higher Power in their personal lives, fail to understand that this is an equally critical message on a national level. But there is nothing new about this. The false prophets and corrupt priests of old showed us how scrupulous ritual behaviors can coexist alongside this form of idol worship.

For ten long months, many insisted that the only thing that can free the hostages is military pressure, is our power and our might, is showing our enemy “who’s boss”. This week, the army heroically returned the bodies of six hostages, all of whom were alive when captured and for months afterwards, who were apparently killed by our own military operations. This must be the final nail in the coffin of this belief. Months and months of the most intense military pressure did not return these men to their homes. A hostage deal would have. A hostage deal now can still save the lives of those who remain, but it will take our willingness to restrain our power, to “show weakness”.

It is precisely this “weakness” in the service of higher values, in the service of solidarity, responsibility, the value of human life- that has always been, and continues to be the true strength of our people, and the true secret of our survival.