by Dr. Rafael Bardaji
Let my words go, first of all, to honor the victims, civilian and military, and their loved ones, devastated by this large-scale terrorist attack carried out by Hamas. 600 dead and over 2000 wounded demand not only remembrance, but justice. The State of Israel was created to protect the Jewish people from its many enemies, and it must continue to serve that function.
The Middle East is not a place for do-gooders and much less for that virus installed in the West under the false name of Wokism. Rather than an “awakening”, the woke mentality does nothing more than mask reality, disarm good citizens, morally and physically, and leave society at the mercy of barbarism.
The citizens of Israel have known this well since the very day of the birth of the Jewish state on May 14, 1948. Its declaration of independence was answered with an invasion by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon which, had it not been repelled and thwarted by the Israeli defense, would have meant the end of the newborn state. I do not think it is necessary to recall all the attacks Israel has suffered since then, either at the hands of traditional armies or at the hands of terrorist groups. It is an irony of history that this new Hamas offensive was launched on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War, October 6, 1973. It is more dramatic that today, as then, Israel’s defenses have been caught by surprise.
I imagine that just as after the strategic surprise of 1973 the Agranat commission was set up to analyze the intelligence failures that prevented Israel from being prepared to prevent or effectively repel the attacks from Egypt and Syria, Israel will again set up a commission to study how such a large-scale attack, from so many points of attack, with prolonged infiltration of Israeli soil, with kidnappings of dozens of civilians and soldiers forcibly taken into Gaza, with sustained occupations of police and military bases, with hostages and a level of destruction and chaos never before seen, was possible and took so much effort to stop.
If that commission ever sees the light, all the tactical and operational lessons will undoubtedly be learned. But this attack goes beyond the tactical and operational. It does not even remain at the strategic and political level. From my humble point of view, and as far as I know Israel, the surprise and unpreparedness to limit this attack is rooted in the accelerated “westernization” of the Israeli people. By “westernization” I mean its latest cultural manifestation, the woke mentality. I firmly believe that Israel has every right in the world to be a democratic, modern, dynamic, and prosperous nation. And indeed, the last 20 years have witnessed a profound social transformation that has put Israel at the forefront of technological innovation wherever it has put its mind to it. But the start-up nation, however much it may want to resemble our democracies in Europe or America, has something that we have not yet experienced in equal intensity and extent: the hatred of its neighbors and their desire to annihilate both the State of Israel and the Jewish people.