Finest Hours

To paraphrase Churchill, as Bibi wears a tallis and thanks Hashem, these are his finest hours
- Having lived in Israel for almost two decades, I’ve voted in countless elections, experienced more wars than I’ve received speeding tickets – but this is my very first war diary. What’s a war diary, you ask. Skeptics might describe the following as an underdeveloped column; an aggregation of musings that – like an American cheese – should have been allowed to mature a bit longer before being served up to the discerning consumer. Naturally, I’m more charitable. I prefer to think of this mixed bag of thoughts (written between sirens) as a first draft of history. I approach war columns like Bibi approaches wars: You begin with a sense of mission, and then hope to see it to a triumphant conclusion.
- So how many wars have I been through in my time here in the Holy Land? For the benefit of the pampered younger generation raised on the Iron Dome (“luxury!” as we say back in Yorkshire), my first taste of the wailing sirens was in the 2006 Second Lebanon War when Israel had no defense at all against Hezbollah’s rockets. Then followed Hamas in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. October 7 and the subsequent war stands in a category of its own, as does surely the new war with Iran. That list is misleading, though because really they all deserve one label: the Israel-Iran war. We’ve been in a hot war with the Apocalyptic Ayatollahs for two decades. Think of Iran as a particularly hideous tarantula whose proxies are the deadly legs protecting the vulnerable body. We’ve been battling the spider’s hairy proxies for all these years – finally the revolting arachnid is getting its brains bashed in.
- There’s a symmetry to the way that the war with Iran is playing out, mirroring the Iran Axis’s three-stage rise. During the 80’s and 90’s Iran created (or adopted) proxies on Israel’s borders. Amal and Hezbollah in Lebanon, plus Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Yehudah and Shomron, were funded by Iran to tie down Israel. From 2000, Iran’s ring of fire was strengthened by both Israeli and Western naivete. Ehud Barak’s hasty withdrawal in 1999 from South Lebanon, and Ariel Sharon’s Gaza disengagement in 2005 created terror states literally on Israel’s border. In tandem, the US unseated Saddam Hussein leaving Iran free to turn Iraq into another hairy proxy. In 2023, Hamas attacked, marking the apogee of the Iranian strategy. It’s been downhill for Iran ever since. First Hamas was beaten, then Hezbollah was devastated, then Assad’s Syria fell and finally Iran itself is under attack. Like yeshivish fashion, geopolitics now feels very retro. Tiny hat brims are back – and it’s also back to the 80’s for the Middle East.
- Boom! That’s the sound of Donald Trump reestablishing his credibility. In the months leading up to this week’s strike, Trump’s image had taken a battering, as he ducked and weaved, blustered and backpedaled on multiple fronts. His reputation for backing down from confrontation in trade wars had earned a derisive moniker from a Financial Times “TACO” - meaning Trump Always Chickens Out – was a bad look for a politician who has cultivated a reputation for unpredictability and toughness. I imagine that alongside the strategic reasons to take out Iran’s nuclear program, the thought of reestablishing his own deterrence was high in Donald Trump’s mind. As Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli tweeted, contrasting Biden weakness with Trumpian strength: “That’s what a Don’t looks like.”
- From where I sit, following the news is a bit like watching a lethal tennis match. Their missiles come in, and then our jets go out. Our F-15’s land, and then their rocketeers have a go. What us denizens of the air raid shelters want to know is, when can normal life resume? The only people who can answer that question are also in a bunker now – over in Tehran. Even without a nuke, Iran’s ballistic missiles are an enormous threat to Israel. Until those missiles are knocked out, there’s lots more housekeeping to do. I use that domestic term advisedly: the Americans have dropped their Massive Ordnance Penetrators bunker busters, charmingly known as MOP. Now Bibi’s working through his bucket list. A line of strikes on key government targets this week show that his agenda is clear: If enough cracks appear in the regime, maybe the Iranian people will repossess their home.
- Not that anybody asked me, but I wish that Israel had been able to go it alone against Fordow. Since Ben Gurion’s time, Israeli leaders have known that they could never call on foreigners to the job for them. No one was offering back then — Israel only struck pre-emptively in 1967 once a proposed international coalition to break Nasser’s blockade of the Straits of Tiran had failed to materialize. But even if they had, those leaders might well have declined. Because there’s no such thing as equal partnership with a superpower. When Uncle Sam moves in, he takes over. That doesn’t detract at all from what Trump has done – it’s something that will be remembered gratefully by the Jewish people. But it’s the natural order of things, and it means that the president will have a giant share in deciding the post-war order. And if, chas veshalom, things don’t work out as planned? The anti-Semitic margins of MAGA world – silenced for now, angered by Trump’s intervention – will come back spitting with fury, blaming it all on the Jews who led Trump by the nose.
- The IDF graphics department have risen to the occasion recently, producing a fine animation of the daily flights to Iran conducted so ably by the pilots who rattle my windows. The digital mockup shows a few planes lifting off from Israel, crossing Syria and Iran, then dropping their payloads on some poor, innocent Tehran butcher who happens to be called Salami. Those graphics are missing only one thing: an opening frame with a nice בס"ד. The very fact that there is an air corridor through Syria is incredible. Obviously Israeli pilots needed to sweep the path clean of surface-to-air missile systems. But without the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December, it would have been infinitely more dangerous for Israel to keep flying over what was then an Iranian ally. Those blessed open skies are a testament to the way that Hashem has swept away our enemies in a fall of dominoes.
- Eye-opening moments are everywhere – just ask one of my old schoolfriends (and current neighbors). Two weeks ago, on the Thursday night when Tehran started blowing up, he had a bout of insomnia unconnected to the war (as far as I know, he’s not a Mossad agent.) So, he went to get a drink of water and ended up heading next door to a neighboring shul to learn. For some reason, he felt the need to daven. He stood next to the Aron Hakodesh in the empty shul and said Tehillim. The time was 2:50 am – precisely as the Israeli pilots approached the firing zone over Iran.
- Remember when someone took a nuclear and biological warfare suit and turned it into the standard yeshivish rain coat? Whichever illuy did that, I have another idea for them. How about making something appropriate for wearing in a bomb shelter? Thankfully, my apartment has a mamad – or personal bomb shelter. But spare a thought for the 1.6 million households who aren’t similarly blessed. Back in the Blitz, Churchill popularized what became known as the siren suit – a set of overalls good for scrambling into shelter. Who will be the sartorial pioneer of this war? If you see Bibi wallowing around in a ShayneCoat, remember where he got the idea.
Since writing a profile of Bibi’s rise as war leader last week, more evidence of his turn to the language of faith has emerged. A second post-attack visit to the Kosel was followed by interviews in which Netanyahu referenced “Siyatta DiShmaya” as the largest “siyah” or political party in his coalition. I know that talk of any belief triggers uneasy rumblings in certain quarters, so permit me just a couple of notes in my own diary. First, Bibi is no Menachem Begin, bread and buttered in Brisk. Given the secularism of his home, these steps are giant leaps. And secondly, even if they are only nods to his base – encouraged perhaps by Donald Trump’s own emotional thanks to G-d – look at it this way. Think how far we’ve come since the secular hubris of the Six Day War, when the generals strutted, and any mention of Divine help was scorned. To paraphrase Churchill, as Bibi wears a tallis and thanks Hashem, these are his finest hours..
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1067)
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