It is hard to believe that foreign reporters would report IDF positions, effectively enabling the enemy to spy on Israel through their lenses. Are people that low? That’s worse than ambulance chasing, a lot worse.
We love to have friends. We love to have allies. American warships off the coast of Israel means more than just extra security. It means that someone sides with the Jewish people, something we, as Jews, desperately long for. We’ve been alone for so long and had so many enemies that any nation that stands up for us, or at least against our enemies, is worth more than their weight in gold.
They don’t even have to like us that much. Mutual benefit can be enough of a relationship as long as they come out in our favor, or at least don’t fight against us. Deep inside we probably know that the Midrash is right, that Eisav will always hate Ya’akov until Moshiach comes, but will take any lull in that hatred as a gift whenever we can.
It could be that we will have allies in the final War of Gog and Magog. Maybe only most of the world will turn against us, setting up their own downfall. Perhaps one of our oldest and most reliable allies will remain that way, either by choice or because they are forced to by the events that transpire.
But even if they do, it won’t be because they reasoned it was the right thing to do. It won’t be because their hearts went out for the Jewish people. It will be because God, because of His master plan, wanted them to remain our allies until the end. Just as God compelled Lavan to be Ya’akov’s ally for 20 years, He can compel an entire nation to the do same if He chooses to. It’s the only reason anyone has been our allies until now.
Or, God can withdraw His pressure on them, as He did with respect to Lavan, and they will revert back to their former unsupportive selves. Let’s face it, there are plenty of anti-Semites in the Western world who do not support their government’s support of Israel, and would do whatever they could to end it.
Because of them, it takes but one switch of government to completely and dramatically change the situation of the Jewish people. That’s all that happened in Egypt, as it says, “A new king rose up who did not know Yosef,” and with that began 116 years of Egyptian enslavement of the Jewish people.
The other thing has to do with our loyalty to and dependence on God. He wants both, demands both. He works through messengers, Heavenly and Earthly, but we’re supposed to know that. We can trust people as people, but we can never trust them as God. If and when we do, we are asking for allies to become enemies.
But it is so very tricky, and alarmingly easy to make a mistake. How do you shake someone’s hand and thank them for their help, all the while thinking that it was God Who worked through them? You don’t, which is problematic, unless you walk around all the time with that perspective in your head and heart.
You have to hand it to Russia, though. They’ve been fighting an unprovoked war with the Ukraine, pulling out all the stops just short of nuclear war, and they have the audacity to tell us to not enter Gaza to end an provoked war and inhumanely savage enemy. Eisav at his arrogant and duplicitous best.
But even the rest of the world is once again standing up for Hamas and fellow Gazans. How can you demand humanitarian aid for people who do not have humanitarian lives? Not only do the Gazans support such attacks against Israel, they even participated in this one. Besides, Hamas steals most of it and then blames the Israelis for what is missing.
And whatever Israel does in the end to end the threat of Hamas in the future, it will be considered disproportionate to what Hamas did to us. It could never really be, but that’s what they will say. That’s how they’ll just increase pressure on Israel to stop defending itself or to prevent them from winning a war they need to win. That’s how the anti-Semites will turn themselves into zealots as they attack Jews worldwide in revenge.
But who are we trying to convince otherwise? Not only are they only human beings, but most of them lack sufficient intellectual and emotional ability to properly grasp the situation, and what it should mean to them, and not just Israel. Some are even worse off, and even more dangerous, and can’t hear any truth that makes Israel look as innocent in all of this as they are.
Jealousy is blinding. Hatred is blinding. We’ve seen it make people do all kinds of irrational and careless things in the business world and elsewhere, especially in politics…especially when it comes to Israel and the Jewish people. Even Jewish people against other Jewish people. We’re the only people who can assimilate into another people and become just like them and still be hated as if we didn’t.
But the most blinding things of all? Limited intelligence. Underdeveloped emotions. Very smart people make terrible mistakes when they lack the right intelligence, or have emotional hang ups, so how much more so when they are not as smart, and that is the vast majority of the world, including many Jews as well.
Because there is knowledge, and then there is Torah. A secular businessman once came into my Bais Midrash and met with some of the young men learning there. He was given the grand tour because he had become a donor, “convinced” by a North American branch leader to do so. It was his first exposure to the Torah world on such a level.
At the end of his visit he said that he would fire his staff and hire everyone in the Bais Midrash if he could to run his business. He was impressed by the wisdom such young men had from learning Torah, and the traits they exhibited because of it, more than he was by the college degrees of the people who already worked with him.
Obviously he didn’t completely mean what he said for obvious reasons. But it was his way of saying that he wished the people who did work for him already also had this wisdom and these qualities as well. The Torah had made and proved its point to him, and he was already a very smart and successful person.
And honest too, to be able to make such an admission, given his background and previous opinion about Torah Judaism. But that is not the rest of the world or its present-day leaders. They may be smart, hopefully, but they are not sufficiently wise to appreciate the reality of the situation for Israel and the world, their world.
This makes them susceptible to misinformation, and an eventual change of loyalty. The situation as it stands and seems to be heading will make this clearer as history becomes more intense, and pressure builds up against Israel once again to not win a war that was thrust upon them.
This will have major consequences, not just for Israeli Jews, but for Jews worldwide, and perhaps even more so. We are where we have to be at the end of history, but Diaspora Jews are not. It is one thing to be reviled by the world while living in your own homeland. It is something much more dangerous when you are living among the revilers.
Ain od Milvado. There is none other than God. He is our own truly Ally, the only One we can call on and the only One we can trust. It’s when we don’t that we are hit with disaster, as the following says:
One who trusts in God will be surrounded by kindness (Tehillim 32:10)
Even an evil person who trusts in God will be surrounded by kindness. (Midrash Tehillim 32:10)
Many are the agonies of the wicked…because they do not place their trust in The Holy One, Blessed is He.
If it can work for evil people, how much more so does it work for those who try to be good.