We are once again receiving a painful reminder in recent weeks that our enemy is waiting for every opportunity to attack us, and that we do not have the privilege of neglecting the issue of security even for one second. Because our military and economic power does not succeed in deterring our enemy and is not strong enough for us to allow ourselves to transmit weakness even for a single moment.
This is especially against the background of the geopolitical changes taking place in front of our eyes these days. The old allies of the United States are forced to look for other anchors and find them in the form of China, which is pressing for cooperation with the previous adversaries, and this presents a challenge for Israel that we have not had for many years.
This is especially so when the unity of the nation is damaged and this unity is the strong force that always won Israel’s wars, and not the advanced weapons that we did not have then. Therefore we have no privilege to refuse an order, to any of us, for any reason, political or economic or otherwise, however justified it may seem to him, unless he thinks he has another country.
This is especially so when we see again and again that those who stand against us even in this generation do not accept our victory in our war of independence for one simple reason - because we did not win it. Because we are at war. Not again. Still. We always were. There is no campaign between the wars. Because there is no between wars, there is war all the time and we must not forget that and release the fist.
The Israeli government cannot afford not to deal with security at any moment, to keep a defense minister on probation or not to pay maximum attention to the security challenges, at the cost of dealing with another issue, however important it may be in its eyes.
Those who thought that the world was busy with Ukraine and Iran and forgot about the Palestinians, are invited to notice that the American Secretary of State in Lincoln and the European Union’s Foreign Minister Burrell in joint statements in Brussels a few days ago do not mention Iran and also mention the Palestinian state.
Around the Seder table, when we remembered that we were slaves and that in every generation our brides stand before us, we should not dream and delude ourselves that this is a story of the past. The world has not changed. No new man has been born since Egypt or the destruction of the house or the Inquisition or Auschwitz. When we repeated the reading of the Haggadah again, we remembered that we left Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, following the cruelest blows imposed by the Jews on Pharaoh, and not following negotiations or the explanation of justice and the reasoning of Moses and Aaron, as good as they were.
True, there are important issues in the field of law and identity and economics, but we can only deal with them with one hand, while the other hand continues to hold a sword. Anyone who thinks otherwise is closing his eyes and daydreaming.
