the strategy must change

Israel's security cabinet unanimously approved expanding military operations in Gaza. According to an Israeli source, PM Netanyahu said that Israel's plan included "the occupation of territory and a sustained Israeli presence in Gaza," and relocating Gaza's population to the south of the enclave. Far-right minister Smotrich said the cabinet decided that Israel will not retreat from territories it occupies in Gaza, "not even in exchange for hostages." The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that the plan proves that the Netanyahu government decided to "give up on the hostages." The government decided not to establish a state commission of inquiry into October 7. (Haaretz) 

 

"There is a painful truth at the heart of this war: Israel's military campaign, while degrading Hamas' military capabilities, is also devastating the lives of ordinary Palestinians. If there is to be any hope of ending this war without planting the seeds of the next generation's extremists, the strategy must change" – Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Peter Lerner

Zionism and the Shema

Zionism is heresy. G-d sent us to our room for misbehavior and we returned to the dining room without permission. Zionism is a violation of the Shema, which we say four times a day, every day, and at the end of Neilah on Yom Kippur. If you sin on the land you will be expelled. It's in clear language. You can't return while still sinning, and who were bigger sinners than the people who set up the state? They were atheists. And the country's leaders are still anti-religious. 

So-called Religious Zionists have all their little mind manipulations to justify themselves. Gradual redemption. A wink from up above. The oaths against taking the land by force (which they did) are Aggadata, as if that makes them non-binding.

Regardless of the oaths, Zionism violates the Shema. 

And what is the result, a million Jews left the Torah when they came to Israel. Millions of others build their identities around being secular Israelis. 25,000 killed via war and terrorism. 20,000 permanently disabled soldiers from the assault on Gaza alone, and on top of that there's the biggest chillul Hashem in the history of the world with this crushing of Gaza.

Zionists don't care. Originally, they cared only about the land. But today they have very little to do with it. So now they only care about their completely dysfunctional state. 

Rav Hirsch:

It was not the land that Moses had been commanded to proclaim to his people at the outset of his mission as מורשה, as the inheritance they were to preserve (Ex. 6,8). The Law, to be translated into full reality upon that soil, was to be the true מורשה, the one true, everlasting inheritance, the one true center around which the nation and its leaders were to gather as one united community. Herein lay the goal and the destiny, the character and the significance of the people.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "The Kehillah," Collected Writings, Vol. VI, p. 62


The land of the Divine Torah is there for the people who live in it. Its most valuable product, the purpose and goal of the whole of God's Blessing directed to it, is every human life nourished by it, through its means able to dedicate itself to making God's Torah into a realisation. The land is only given on the condition of every human life respected as being unassailably sacred to the Torah. One drop of innocent blood shed and no notice taken of it drops a stitch in the bond which connects the land with the nation and both with God. (see verses 33 and 34). This holding human life to be so sacred is to be made evident immediately on taking possession of the land in the division of it by instituting the arrangement which the Torah had already referred to in the fundamental laws of Torah social life. (Ex. XXI, 13).

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on Bamidbar 35:10

20,000 permanently disabled!

 

Wounded IDF veterans find a home in Israel’s state-of-the-art rehabilitation centers

The Zahal Disabled Veteran Organization’s Beit Halochem centers expect to welcome a large portion of the projected 20,000 permanently disabled soldiers from the war this year

https://www.timesofisrael.com/wounded-idf-veterans-find-a-home-in-israels-state-of-the-art-rehabilitation-centers/

20,000 permanently disabled! That's along with the 850 killed so far.

[Side note, I guarantee that the facility is not state of the art.]

Why? Is Israel being attacked by an army, you know, one with actual tanks, fighter jets, and battleships? Did the Turks attack Israel and nobody told us? Is this all because a year and half ago some hoodlums climbed over a fence that the IDF couldn't manage to guard? When you get revenge, it's supposed to be sweet. This is pretty darn bitter. 

If you start a country in the Middle East, particularly if you start it where 500,000 people are living (and you mistreat them) you are going to have to live with a certain amount of hostility. There will be an occasional missile that lands in the dirt. You have to just accept it. Killing a thousand solders and maiming 20,000 more is not even going to stop the occasional missile. It helps nothing.

Lets do the math. From 2004 to 2014, rocket attacks from Gaza  killed 27 Israeli civilians, 5 foreign nationals, 5 IDF soldiers, and at least 11 Palestinians. In the ten years following that, approximately 35 rockets were launched from Gaza each year. I believe there were a handful of casualties. But the continuing assault on Gaza over the last year has killed 400 soldiers and has maimed thousands. So 10x as many soldiers have died in the assault on Gaza as people were killed by all the Gazan rockets over a 20 year period. 

Where is the war? Why is the word war even used? You need to two sides for a war. Israel conjures enemies out of fire hydrants. Oct. 7 is over. What is the point of continuing to risk the lives of soldiers and hostages (not to mention the guaranteed killing of Gazan civilians)? And now this:

IDF calls up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of expanded Gaza offensive

Israel's security cabinet unanimously approved expanding military operations in Gaza. According to an Israeli source, PM Netanyahu said that Israel's plan included "the occupation of territory and a sustained Israeli presence in Gaza," and relocating Gaza's population to the south of the enclave. Far-right minister Smotrich said the cabinet decided that Israel will not retreat from territories it occupies in Gaza, "not even in exchange for hostages." The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that the plan proves that the Netanyahu government decided to "give up on the hostages." The government decided not to establish a state commission of inquiry into October 7. (Haaretz) 

Yet 

 "There is a painful truth at the heart of this war: Israel's military campaign, while degrading Hamas' military capabilities, is also devastating the lives of ordinary Palestinians. If there is to be any hope of ending this war without planting the seeds of the next generation's extremists, the strategy must change" – Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Peter Lerner

The people, if you can call them that, who run Israel are crazy. In the last year, they have bombed Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Gaza, and the West Bank. And they keep wondering why people are mad at them? 

Shall I mention that this conflict didn't begin on Oct. 7. In 2018-2019, IDF snipers shot across the Gaza fence into Gaza at a nine month long march and demonstration (held entirely in Gaza) and killed 223 people (including 46 children) and injured 9,204, crippling many. The demonstration was peaceful for months, but then after much IDF sniper fire, they started to burn tires and try to throw rocks 200 meters to the fence. That's what Israel calls a riot. 

Did I mention that the people who run Israel are crazy? But they are not shopping cart lady crazy. They are crazy with other people's lives and limbs.

They refuse to stop. It just gets worse and worse all the time. Don't even think of moving here. It is osur to put the lives of your children at risk. And by that I not only mean physical risk but the spiritual risk of being around lunatics!

Why Fires?

 All of Israel smells like smoke right now. What is Ha-Shem trying to tell us? Let's take a guess.

Destruction is not the goal

"The Lord will cause your enemies who rise up against you, to be beaten before you; they will come out against you in one direction, but they will flee from you in seven directions." (Devarim 28:7)

"The Torah's ways are pleasant ways and all its paths are peace." (1) Therefore even the defeat of the enemies of the Jewish people need not lead to the annihilation of those foes. Instead, they will flee from the Jewish people but continue to live, thereby enabling them to make peace with the Jewish people and ultimately conduct themselves according to G-ds desires, observing the Seven Universal Laws Commanded to Noach and his descendants." (2)

Lubavitcher Rebbe

Likutei Sichos, Vol. 29, p. 307 in The Divine Prism, p. 210.

(1) Proverbs 3:17

(2) Mishneh Torah Hilchos Melachim 9:1