Two Israeli prophets of doom, two thousand years apart
There was a pervasive sense of despair and hopelessness for many Jews like myself this past weekend during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
We have looked with mounting horror at Israel’s incredibly bloody, out-of-control reaction to the Hamas attack of October 7. It’s accompanied by a bitter feeling of frustration and hopelessness –the hopelessness that comes from watching a genocide being carried out not in the murky shadows of the past but in the broad daylight of today. By your own people.
Those feelings resonated in two passages I read on the Day of Atonement. They were both so heart-rending and pertinent to Israel’s current tragedy. Yet they were written 2,200 years apart.
The first passage was Isaiah Chapter 48, one of the readings for the Yom Kippur service. The writer of those ancient verses criticized Jews who thought they could satisfy God’s commandments by performing hypocritical fasts and empty prayers rather than living authentic lives of righteousness.
I usually never pay much attention to the services. Like most people, my thoughts are elsewhere. But as I read the lines, the verses became incredibly poignant.
“They seek Me daily, eager to learn My ways.
Like a nation that does what is right,
That has not abandoned the law of its God,
They ask Me for the right way, they are eager for the nearness of God:
“Why, when we fasted, did You not see?
When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?”
Because on your fast day you see to your business
And oppress all your labourers!
Because you fast in strife and contention, and you strike with a wicked fist!
….Do you call that a fast, a day when Adonai [God] is favourable?
No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free: to break off every yoke…
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home, when you see the naked, to clothe them……,
--Then, when you call, Adonai will answer;
When you cry, I will say: Here I am.”
I was still marveling at how appropriate that message was 2000 years later when I downloaded the latest Oped of a contemporary Israeli prophet: Gideon Levy, the outspoken columnist for the liberal daily “Haaretz.” Over the years, he has attempted to alert Israelis to the horrors being perpetrated in their name. But his moving reports are wilfully ignored by a nation that doesn’t want to know. More and more, Gideon sounds like another biblical prophet--Jeremiah, who announced that God would punish the Jews living in sin by exiling them to Babylon. He ultimately lived through the horror of his predictions.
This is Gideon Levy's message today.
“The Israeli hubris is back, big time. Who would have believed that a year after October 7 it would return, and at such a scale. After we defeated Hamas and destroyed the Gaza Strip, now we are defeating Hezbollah and destroying Lebanon – and we are already turning to Iran.
The Israeli dialogue is already talking about regime change there, discussing the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and deliberating between strikes on nuclear installations and strikes on oil facilities. Israel is in a state of hubris. From the rock bottom and broken spirit of the October 7 rout – it was compared to the Holocaust – to the heights of arrogance of regime change and of moving peoples all over the Middle East. And all within a year. It will end in tears and blood.
It is the nature of hubris, by definition, that it ends in disaster. It is the nature of such extreme volatility, from fictitious Holocaust to fictitious victory, to come crashing down.
Meanwhile, millions of people are fleeing from the Israeli army for their lives, displaced, refugees, destitute, hopeless, wounded, orphans and crippled in endless processions of suffering in Gaza and Lebanon. Soon in the West Bank and maybe also in Iran. Never have so many people fled in terror of Israel, not even in the Nakba of 1948. They will never forget what Israel did to them. Never. To Israel and the Israelis, it brings not only joy, satisfaction and national pride but also a power trip the likes of which they have never seen, certainly not since 1967.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
The military successes, impressive as they are, are driving Israel crazy. How we blew up the pagers and how we killed their leaders, high-fives all around. The attack on Iran is liable to demonstrate it. But the military achievements are not the most important thing. What comes next?
Israel feels that the sky's the limit for its attacks, its conquests, the killing and the destruction that it is capable of sowing. And there is no stopping it. Never before has it stood like this in front of an empty goal, convinced that it has been given the kicking opportunity of a lifetime. One after another, we have seen the houses of cards that were feared so much fall before us: Rockets from Gaza, missiles from Lebanon, cruise missiles from Yemen and ballistic missiles from Iran no longer impress anyone.
The helplessness of the international community, especially the United States, reinforces the sense of intoxication. Everything is possible. It seems that Israel can continue its Genghis Khan campaigns of conquest and punishment unhindered. America begs it to stop; its pleas make no impression on the Israelis. Rightfully so.
But Israel may find that its astonishing victories are nothing but a fateful honey trap, like the intoxicating victory of 1967 – the rotting fruits of which we are eating to this day. What is depicted as unlimited military capabilities are liable to end in a pyrrhic victory. In Gaza, Israel continues to mistreat millions of miserable people, even after announcing that Hamas has been militarily defeated. Why continue? Because it can. Soon in Lebanon, as well.
The unnecessary and dangerous punishment of Iran has been publicly discussed for days, as if there is no country besides Israel, no limit to its possibilities and no one who will stop its lust for power. In the absence of a true friend who would do so, it will never stop on its own accord, until disaster befalls it. And it is liable to come. Military successes tend to be deceptive and fleeting.
The abhorrence of the world's masses will eventually be joined by their governments, and one (distant) day they will be sick of it. Israel has no international backing except for the United States and Europe. True, they haven't yet lifted a finger, but one day public opinion there could change that.
History is full of power-drunk countries that didn't know how to stop in time. Israel is approaching this. Meanwhile, the thought of millions in the Middle East fleeing in terror before it, suffering indescribable pain and humiliation under our boots, should cause every Israel to shrink in shame and fear. Instead, they fill the Israeli heart with pride and encourage them to seek more of the same. And there's no stopping it.