My worst day – apart from a nonchalant phone call from an M.I.T. doctor in 2001 telling me casually I had prostate cancer – was October 7, 1973.
At 2 a.m., a Volkswagen honked its horn outside my home in Ramat Hasharon. I grabbed my duffel bag and headed off to join my army unit. On the way, I saw terrible car crashes as reservists desperately raced to join their units, while some genius decided to turn off all the traffic lights (fearing air attack).
My weapon was an antiquated three-shot Czech Mauser, and my artillery unit featured obsolete towed 120-mm. mortars. We were initially directed to Sinai – another genius forgot that wheels do not travel well through sand. It was the mother of all chaos.
Somehow, Israel reorganized, fought back, and in the Yom Kippur War defeated two huge armies on two fronts. Some 2,700 soldiers paid with their lives.
Israel’s worst day was yesterday, October 7, 2023, exactly 50 years to the day, almost to the hour, the VW honked for me. Worst day? Ask New York Times columnist Tom Friedman – that was his column’s headline.
I call on the great New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra to supply me with relevant epigrams. For those deeply offended by my cavalier treatment of a huge wrenching tragedy, let me explain. To get through the dark days and weeks that lie ahead, we will need cool heads, warm hearts – and a sense of humor.
‘It’s that old déjà vu all over again!’
Prior to October 6, 1973, there were multiple signs that Egypt and Syria were planning a joint surprise attack. According to a classified document released for the first time on Thursday, September 24, 2020, nearly 24 hours before the Egyptian military launched a surprise attack on the Israel Defense Forces into Sinai, the head of Israeli Military Intelligence received a warning that Cairo and Damascus were poised to carry out a surprise attack. Russian nationals in Egypt were leaving the country in a big hurry.
For over 10 hours, that dire warning, which had the potential to change the course of the conflict, was kept from the Israeli government.
Tom Friedman recounts how, again, Israel saw evidence of a burgeoning sneak attack on its border – and ignored it.
“For the past few weeks, as anyone following the news from Israel knows, Hamas was conducting what appeared to be practice maneuvers for just this kind of attack all along the Gaza border — right before the eyes of the Israeli military.
“But it appears that Israeli intelligence interpreted the moves as Hamas just trying to mess with the heads of the Israeli military and make commanders a little nervous, not as a prelude for an attack. Israeli intelligence apparently believed that Hamas desperately needed more financial assistance from Qatar, which has given Hamas over $1 billion in aid since 2012, and work permits for Gazans to work in Israel – and both Israel and Qatar have always required a quiet border in return.
“‘The intelligence interpretation is that they were training for something that they would never dare to do,’ said Nahum Barnea (Yediot Aharonot). ‘It was bad judgment and arrogance.’ Hamas instead launched an incredibly complex and sophisticated invasion from land and sea.”
I recall the post-Six Day War euphoria, leading up to the 1973 debacle, which caught the IDF unprepared.
Today? Former IDF Ombudsman Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brick said in 2018: “The IDF is undergoing a process of deterioration that has reached its peak in recent years.... In the past three years, a lethal encounter between drastic, unregulated and sometimes irresponsible cuts of thousands of career soldiers and... the [simultaneous] shortening of male service has created complete incompatibility and critical gaps.”
Brick met with everyone he could find. Nobody listened. Déjà vu.
‘W’hen you come to a fork in the road, take it.’
My good friend Bilahari Kausikan is a wise, seasoned diplomat, now retired, who served in Singapore’s Foreign Ministry. He is a loyal friend of Israel and visits us often. Here is what he emailed to me:
“Hamas is trying – successfully for now it must be said – to force attention on its relevance as a player at a time when the Palestinian issue is declining in geopolitical significance and to derail Saudi Arabia’s discussions with the US on joining the Abraham Accords. But these geopolitical shifts are the consequence of larger trends that may be delayed but not permanently deflected. In the meantime, Hamas and the people under its control will soon pay a huge price – Israel will retaliate massively: it must!”
For years, Israel cultivated Hamas, strategically. In 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Likud party meeting: “Those who oppose a Palestinian state must support transferring money to Hamas. Strengthening the rift between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas helps us prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
“Those who oppose a Palestinian state must support transferring money to Hamas. Strengthening the rift between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas helps us prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
Benjamin Netanyahu
On Shabbat, October 7, we saw the folly of this strategy and were shown where that one billion in Qatari dollars was invested.
Netanyahu is notoriously indecisive. Will he take the fork in the road – the one obvious and required?
‘The future ain’t what it used to be.’
When my wife and I made aliyah in 1967, we felt a wave of boundless optimism and national energy in the wake of the Six Day War.
Today? In 2020, an opinion poll revealed that the majority of Israeli young people and Palestinian young people believed that the bitter Israeli-Palestinian conflict “will never end.”
“Among those between 20 and 35, some 65% of Israelis and 52% of Palestinian respondents said that they expected the rivalry to last throughout years, if not ages, to come.”
A bitter ground war in Gaza lies ahead of us. It may bring revenge, as Netanyahu specifically stated on TV. It may degrade the Hamas infrastructure and rocket factories. But will it bring us closer to a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?
I was a student of Prof. W. Arthur Lewis at Princeton University, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1979. I once pressed him to tell us students, in a few words, what made some nations wealthy and others poor.
“National energy,” he said.
Israel has grown wealthy and prosperous through the immense national energy of its creative young people. The endless Palestinian conflict, culminating in Israel’s “worst day” is dissipating this crucial national resource, national energy, that makes our future seem far less that what we once dreamed.
My wife and I recently hosted a group of people in our sukkah to discuss the fractious divisions among us Israelis. A young woman in the group told us that she felt less Israeli than a citizen of the world, eager to travel, explore and find opportunities abroad.
If all we can offer our young people is continued strife, nationalism, and xenophobia, they will take their energy elsewhere. Our loss.
‘If you can’t even get to first base, then just go home.’
Yogi Berra did not actually say that. I did. It’s my solemn advice to the failed coalition government that has gotten my country into deep hot water.
For 341 days, almost a year, Israel’s far-right fanatic-Orthodox government led by Netanyahu has split the nation and focused on judicial reform, while Israel, a small and embattled country, faced existential threats on its borders and beyond. The widespread protests have split the army, distracted policymakers, badly hurt the economy, sent hi-tech entrepreneurs abroad, slashed foreign investment in Israel by 80%, and drove the dollar value of the shekel to new lows.
But worst of all – the incompetence of the gang of radicals running the Justice and Finance ministries, and many other ministries, has led Israel to disaster.
Is incompetence a crime? In no criminal code can you convict anyone for being incompetent. But in politics? Incompetence in Israel has become an existential threat.
We have a defense cabinet, composed of the prime minister and ministers who make crucial decisions. The head of a far-right religious party sits in this cabinet, while having been rejected for military service for felonies. We have a finance minister guiding the economy who has no competence in organizing a paper bag, let alone an economy.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asks why American voters would think the Republicans can run the world’s largest economy if they cannot even run their own political party.
By the same token, why in the world did Netanyahu assemble a green gaggle of extreme-right politicians and lead anyone to believe they knew how to run Israel and defend it against implacable enemies?
OK, he did it to save his skin while under indictment for corruption. We citizens are paying the price.
Israel has begun burying its dead. And again it goes out to war.
In the court of public opinion, the Netanyahu government is convicted of criminal incompetence. A crime for which there is no forgiveness on Earth or in heaven.
‘It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.’
As I write these words, the complete count of dead and wounded is still not at hand. I know it will be horrendous. Let me, then, end on a happier note.
Never ever count the Jewish people out. We may be down, but not out. Jews are resilient. They bounce back from tragedies that might sink other nations.
Our sages ask why Sukkot is called the Festival of Rejoicing, a term not applied even to Passover or Shavuot. Because on it, we mark surviving 40 years wandering in the desert, with little food or water, and emerging strong and resilient, ready to battle for the Holy Land.
To our friends: It’s not over. To our enemies: There is a reason we Jews have stuck around ever since we received the Torah at Mount Sinai 3,320 years ago.
Yogi Berra spoke the truth. It ain’t over. And he wasn’t even Jewish. ■
The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion. He blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com.