What this war has taught us

After 18 months of a war with every one of our neighbors, one of which continues seemingly unabated, we as a nation should have learned some lessons that can guide us for the future.  After all, some mammals, of which we humans are one species, have brains and can evaluate situations and make corrective course corrections for the future.   That is a fact.

However, there are a lot of other facts that we are faced with today as well.

• Israel was ill equipped to be on a war footing for so long a time. We are a small country with a reserve military not prepared to be professional soldiers for such an externed period of active duty.
• The failure of our security apparatus to alert us about, and protect us from, the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust should have triggered a national commission of inquiry long before now.
• The fact that while some of our military and political leadership who were in place on October 7^th took responsibility for their error and resigned is a good thing, but all too many others remain in place unwilling or unable to recognize their responsibility as well.
• Most polling shows that the vast majority of the Israeli public wants, more than anything else, to bring all of the remaining hostages, both alive and dead, home to their families or for proper Jewish burial.
• Other reliable polls demonstrate as well a general lack of faith in our political leadership with an alarming number of Israelis having already left for greener pastures.
• i24News reported last November that 117,000 Israelis left the country since October 7^th while Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reported that at least 82,700 have left in 2024 alone. This is a troubling trend that does not augur well for the future of the country.

Because we have been blessed with the intellectual capability to reflect on our mistakes and then do a national “reset” to correct those errors, it is incumbent on us to do so.

According to the Israel Strategic Futures Institute (ISFI) co-founded by Prof. Eugene Kandel and Ron Tzur (https://www.israelstrategicfutures.org/en) there are four accelerating threats that are pushing Israel to a breaking point and need to be addressed.  They are:

• Social Collapse given the intense conflict among various internal groups each bent on protecting their values.
• Economic Collapse caused by unsustainable subsidies to rapidly growing specific populations.
• A Structurally Inefficient Government that is not strategic, fails to properly manage risks, and, worst of all, is structurally unfit to address Israel’s current challenges, given that it is still the model that has not been changed since the early days of the commonwealth.
• The Security Crisis that has developed given the above failures that, together, weaken Israel’s ability to defend itself.

While Israel may currently be in its strongest position ever and could be classified a regional hegemon as the New York Times did on April 15^th, there is no long-term security for us here without addressing the challenging issues outlined by ISFI.

In computer circles the term “reset” is used often to clear away the accumulated “rotten data” and establish new reference points and values.   It is term often heard from the mouths of the miluimnikim who came back from Gaza and Lebanon saying that we are not going back to the way things were before October 7^th when the country was roiled by protests and demonstrations, for and against the planned judicial reform.  The question then becomes how to achieve this “reset” and what would it look like?

Ideally Israel needs to create a new governance model to fit not only the realities of the world in 2025 but also to acknowledge that any successful society must be built on a “Parity of Esteem” concept:  an agreement that we all have legitimate rights to our values and the right to live in dignity and safety.  It was that concept that formed the basis of the end to the internecine wars that consumed the Irish for so many years in the last century.  We will need to integrate that concept here as well in order to successfully get past our differences.

Elemental to the new governance model will, of course, be an acknowledgement that the most professionally qualified individuals will be in charge of the ministries which will be complemented by their leadership.   Qualified health professionals, financial experts, tech leaders and the like will need to be put in charge of operating ministries rather than having these be political appointments portioned out in order to build a coalition.

There will, of course, be plenty of people who will read something like this and say it is a dream that cannot be realized.  But saying that is not a reason but an excuse.  What we need now are people who believe things can change for the better so that we will not be yet another Hebrew commonwealth that could not make it past 75 years.

In the last 18 months almost 2,500 people have lost their lives either in the massacre of October 7^th or in defense of our country.  Thousands and thousands of our citizens were made into widows, widowers, orphans, parents in mourning or are other members of families whose seder table this year had one or more empty chairs.  As a result, we as a nation of memories, have nothing less than a sacred obligation to make sure that their sacrifice was not in vain and that the country for which they gave their last full measure of devotion survives and thrives.

Helen Keller encapsulated the need succinctly when she said:  “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”  We have every reason to have hope and be confident.  Let us find  way to future growth and success.