Another Israeli holiday, another jihad attack

Arab Muslims do not squander the most sacred days of their enemy. Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Yom Ha'atzmaut... Holidays such as these are not for isolated little knife attacks, a car ramming here, a traffic jam shooting there. Such auspicious days are for starting wars, launching Holocausts and burning Israel to the ground. And they get it right. Yom Kippur in 1973 fell and was observed on Shabbat; they attacked on Shabbat. Simchat Torah 2023 (also the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War) fell and was observed on Shabbat; they attacked on Shabbat. This year, Yom Ha'atzmaut falls on Shabbat, but was celebrated two days earlier; they attacked two days earlier.

Sacred days, like sacred monuments, like the honour of men, like the modesty of women, like the sanctity of dead bodies, and of course, like military installations and personnel, are all targets. While we are not suggesting that Israel does the same, it is not the Arabs' fault that their enemy insists on attacking only military installations and personnel; there are ways of denying them an advantage without becoming like them. As for significant dates, the point is to corrupt, damage, spoil, and pervert the association the Jews have to their most important days. Jalal Tagreeb warned about this in his excellent article Victory by the Moon: The symbolic game of dates.

In the attack on Yom Kippur 1973, the standing armies of two recognised Arab states plus expeditionary forces from eight other Arab states, aided by their ideological allies, Cuba and North Korea, assailed Israel, while Arab "civilians" cheered from the sidelines and danced in the streets.

In the attack on Simchat Torah 2023, no standing armies of recognised Arab states were involved, only one jihad terrorist army of one unrecognised Arab state, marginally-assisted by four other jihad terrorist armies and two recognised Muslim states, one Arab, one not, breached the Gaza border to go on a killing spree in Israel, while "innocent Palestinian civilians" followed right behind them to plunder the property of the murdered and captured Jews, swore at, cursed, spat on and beat the captured Jews as they were brought into Gaza, held them captive in their houses and made sure the IDF never found them.

In the attack on Yom Ha'atzmaut 2025, no standing armies of recognised Arab states were involved. No jihad terrorist armies were involved. Only "innocent Palestinians civilians"—or should I say, "innocent Arab citizens of the State of Israel"—armed with no more than matches and cigarette lighters (a step down from 5-shekel knives), this time did it all. When you say, as so many Israelis do, that you cannot fight the ideology, this is what you get: ideologically-driven attacks on your ideology. In an ideologically-driven war, your body is your weapon of last resort.

The fires that the Arab Muslims ignited all over Israel are simultaneously an attack on Jews, Judaism and Zionism. That it was carried out on Yom Ha'atzmaut has to be seen by Israelis as the most profound repudiation of David Ben Gurion's fantasy of sharing the land with the Arabs. What land? Who shares? The Arabs would burn it all down before they shared it with him. Whether Palestinian Arabs starve captives in their attics, hobble into Be'eri on crutches to plunder, put matches to grass around Jerusalem, stab worshippers outside synagogues with 5-shekel knives, spray Kalashnikov bullets into young revellers, fire RPGs at Merkavas, set off barrages of rockets at Sderot or paraglide deep into Israel to bring death from above, the Qur'an is in each of their hearts. If you still want to keep "innocent civilians" out of all this, then the fires were started by magic crows that can read maps and identify armistice lines on the ground.

It is commonly asserted that Yahya Sinwar jumped the gun on October 7, to the surprise of Hezbollah, Iran, etc. Sinwar was a barbarian and a monster, but he was not stupid. More plausible is that Sinwar, who knew the psyche of Jews far better than any of his brothers, had calculated that a coincidence of Shabbat, Simchat Torah and the fiftieth anniversary of Yom Kippur was more valuable than waiting until everyone was ready. A later attack, albeit together with Hezbollah, the IRGC, the Houthis, etc., would be purely kinetic and forfeit the opportunity of a crippling psychological blow, as was indeed achieved, and hampers Israeli military efforts in Gaza to this day, more than eighteen months into the war.

How sensible is it to assume that the more than 100 fires started around Israel on 30 April, were not also designed to tie down the IDF while Syrian forces attack the Druze where Israel had undertaken to protect them? Would the point not be to demonstrate, on Israel's Independence Day, that the IDF is unable to protect the Druze, and hence anyone else? To think only of soldiers, battles and military hardware is to lose sight of most of the war.

Israelis who are relieved that Hamas had "jumped the gun" and thereby saved the IDF from having to fight on multiple fronts are mistaken. The planned multi-front kinetic war would not have occurred on a day of such extreme psychological vulnerability for Jews. A case can be made that the psychological damage done to Israelis by what is erroneously called the "intelligence failures" would have been mitigated within the context of a later, wider war, and in the context of the extreme emotional manipulation of the nation in the abuse of the captives to blackmail the government to capitulate to Hamas.

In short, a later war on multiple fronts could have resulted in a psychologically less vulnerable and hence more united country, one able to make a stronger case for an armed citizenry. By now it should be clear that Israel's leaders can turn on a dime: the same Ariel Sharon who led the IDF to within 100Km of Cairo, later expelled 10,000 Jews from Gaza; both Menachem Begin and Ehud Olmert had bombed nuclear reactors under construction in Arab countries, yet Begin gave up Sinai in exchange for peace, while Olmert in 2008 was on the point of giving up Judea and Samaria for the same reason. It is the leadership of the IDF and the Shin Bet that systematically eroded Israel's ability to defend herself and manoeuvred both for the PA to survive and for Hamas not to be defeated.

If two things become clear from this catalogue of fiascos, it is that the defence of last resort can only be an armed citizenry, giving real meaning to "defending ourselves by ourselves" and that psychological warfare must be embraced as indispensable, especially as Israel's enemies have so amply demonstrated their mastery of it to such devastating effect on the Jewish people.

Picture credits:

Israel Defense Forces - IAF Flight for Israel's 63rd Independence Day, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34382887

http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/IsraelAt50/Pages/The%20Flag%20and%20the%20Emblem.aspx