1. In the prison of inverted commas

Many of us have an intuitive feeling about the tragic connection between the dreadful year we went through before October 7, the year of the "Wars of the Jews," and the massacre and war that followed. It is a deep, almost spiritual feeling of "Crime and Punishment." Our enemies too made their reckoning in the light of what they saw as the demise of Israel's social solidarity, and they sought to take advantage of our weakness to attack us.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from the events of the last few months, it is the call that we have heard at every stage of the war, from the soldiers returning from battle, from the resonant words of prophecy of the mothers and fathers over the graves of their sons who fell defending us: our victory depends on unity, on the understanding that we are dependent on each other, that we cannot move forward as individuals in history's great march, we can only do so as one people.

"Unity" is often perceived as a cliché. In recent years we have refrained from using that term, perhaps because of the large gap between the significance of that word and the cynical reality that our innocence has given birth to. Today, in light of the challenges of the times, it is imperative that whoever desires hope for Israel and the redemption of our souls, must free the word "unity" from the prison of inverted commas and bring it back into the vernacular.

2. The election oxymoron

On the issue of "unity," we have recently seen a spate of propaganda advocating elections now "to heal the rift among the people" and "prevent division," because "we want to stay united." You heard that right. We will stop the war, and devote ourselves to party propaganda in which from morning to evening the parties will tell each other how bad they are, how evil they are, how much worse the other side is than our enemies, how that person and party recall dark times, and other terrible forms of incitement against each other. At the front, our soldiers – who are after all part of the electorate – will make an effort not to be affected by these mutual recriminations; they will fight together, shoulder to shoulder, with the "bad guys," the "evil ones," the "worst of our enemies" and those "who bring to mind dark times."  The call for elections is an irresponsible campaign "for unity" that even calls itself "Hatikvah," in the hope it seems that we will forget what we went through last year and replace the meaning of the word until we believe that an election campaign will bring unity.

I have already noted in previous columns how Josephus Flavius in his "Jewish War" described Vespasian's meeting of his military generals outside the walls of Jerusalem. A civil war had broken out in the besieged city, and the Roman officers urged their generals to storm the city and take advantage of the commotion, but Vespasian told them to wait and watch how the Jews consume each other. Jerusalem will fall into our hands like a ripe fruit, he promised. What is it that people don't understand? The calls for elections are part of the failed "conception" of pre-October 7. The prophet Isaiah (5:20) signified this in the eighth century BCE: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

3. Our glorious brothers

Rest assured; the general public does not buy the propaganda about "settler violence." The same ideological school that calls for elections amid a fateful military campaign, incites us against the pioneers in Judea and Samaria, and this at a time when many of them are fighting in Gaza. This ideological school is confused; the settlements in Judea and Samaria are the guarantors of our security and they justify our hold on the land of our forefathers.

Gaza is just above sea level and look how much damage and evil came out of it after we withdrew and allowed them to establish a state. Think of a terrorist state committed to our destruction that sits hundreds of meters above our large population centers. Now multiply the damage dozens of times over. The pioneers of the Judean and Samarian hills are the ones who prevent this from happening; it is they who stop our murderers and those who seek our death from receiving a reward. Now, when we see their dedication to the residents of the Gaza envelope, they should be hailed as an example of idealism and as a Zionist response in an age of cynicism.

4. According to the Law of Moses and Israel

Last Sunday, the 25^th of the Hebrew month of Shvat, we marked the 82^nd anniversary of the murder of Avraham "Yair" Stern, commander of the Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), a dreamer and visionary. When I was nine years old, I read Galila Ron-Feder's book "The Rebel," which struck my soul. I used to carry with me a book of poems by Yair and in eighth grade I put his words to music: "You are consecrated to me homeland/ According to the Law of Moses and Israel, / A slave crouched, kneeling and lost, / I am to you a husband and a redeemer." (Look it up on YouTube in Hebrew)

Yair, who had a bright future ahead of him in the field of classical studies, was well acquainted with the humiliations symbols of the Jewish people. "Judea capta" (Judea has been conquered) coins minted by the Romans commemorating their victory in the Great Jewish Revolt, showing our people in the form of a defeated submissive woman alongside a victorious Roman soldier. With the collapse of Rome, the image changed to two women, Ecclesia et Synagoga, the church and the synagogue, or Christianity and Judaism. The Church as a proud woman holding a cross in one hand and a goblet of wine in the other, and Judaism as a humiliated woman blindfolded - a symbol of the blindness of the Jews - and in her hand the Tablets of the Law, a symbol of the Old Testament that was abolished. In his poem, Yair takes it upon himself to be the husband and redeemer of the crouched, kneeling, and lost slave, to free her from her foreign masters, and in fact to redeem our country from foreigners.

Source - Israel Hayom/X