The Concept

By Moshe Feiglin

15 Av, 5770
July 26, '10

Translated from the Makor Rishon newspaper

The Eiland report on the Gaza flotilla fiasco makes it clear that no facts were hidden from the people who planned and carried out the operation. The Navy commander displayed leadership; he did not watch the operation on a plasma screen, but was present in one of the boats at the scene. He saw the first attempts of the commandos to climb onto the boat and understood what type of welcome his soldiers would be receiving.

The presence of senior commanders in the field in this case turned out to be an impediment. The person who eventually came back to his senses, shook off the false assumptions and unfounded concept upon which the entire operation was based was S.S. - one of the regular commando soldiers. He killed six of the Turkish attackers one after the other and turned the situation around. We can safely assume that if less senior commanders had been on the scene, reality would have detached the ropes of the erroneous concept sooner - and the desecration of G-d's Name with the humiliation of Israel's soldiers - would have been prevented.

Paradoxically, the Eiland Report reveals that the authors of the report, themselves, are also captive to the same concept that determined the planning and execution of the operation. They cannot even understand the implications of their own conclusions; conclusions that every child sees clearly: The flotilla fiasco was a serious defeat for Israel. The Report does not examine the concept - it simply examines if the procedure that was supposed to implement the concept was properly performed. And if the procedure was properly executed and all involved acted faultlessly, then the only conclusion that we can reach is that the operation succeeded.

The depth of the dependence on the concept that was revealed in the commando cooperation is no more than an illustration of a mindset that is much more broad and faulty. The entire existence of the State of Israel is founded on a concept detached from reality that repeatedly explodes in our faces. But just as with the flotilla, due to the fact that we were born into this mindset, we cannot think out of the box to change it.

As far as we are concerned, if we have managed to put off US pressure until after the congressional elections, if we have squeezed a smile out of Obama, then all is well. The mindset is that the Nation of Israel is a nation like all others; that the Nation of Israel returned to its land out of purely nationalistic aspirations and that the G-d of Israel must be left in exile - outside reality. Alternately, He may be encased in the synagogues and yeshivot in Israel. The religious sectors also share this faulty mindset. At most, Jewish faith and culture are nothing more than obligation-free folklore (on the national level). Certainly - the mindset continues - Jewish faith must not be allowed to influence national concerns.

Since the first days of Zionism, this concept has ruled. At its inception, it looked like it had even proven itself. The opposite concept - that the Nation of Israel must cling to the G-d of Israel and leave the Land of Israel outside the political game - seemed like a total contradiction of reality. Its negation was the secret of the power of Zionism. That is how we established a state without G-d; a state whose existence in the impossible reality that surrounds it is dependent upon the American superpower.

Since the Six Day War, the Israeli leadership has done all that it can to empower this basic assumption. As a result, our national frame of mind depends on which side of the bed Obama wakes up in the morning. This morning - until the congressional elections- Obama is smiling, the erroneous concept gets a temporary reprieve and just as with the Eiland conclusions - everything is fine.

But everything is not fine. The sinking feeling in our collective stomach and the national distress after the flotilla fiasco are alive and kicking. The existential distress engulfing all Israelis as our international standing relentlessly sheds the "nation like all other nation" concept is becoming ever more pronounced. Everyone feels that the Western world is turning its back on us. As we have no alternative concept, the existential distress gets worse and worse.

"Israel does not have foreign policy," Henry Kissinger once stated. We cannot have a foreign policy because we are always busy with simple survival. Not our personal survival: The survival of the concept. If we were really concerned with our own survival, the Marmara would have been stopped at sea - above the water or under it. But within the framework of "the family of nations" it is impossible to act at sea as reality would dictate. We sacrificed the Navy commandos for the survival of the concept - not for our own survival.

Time and again, leaders of the Right come into power and after a short while, the Right is back on the streets, demonstrating against its new leaders. The assumption that lies at the foundation of the demonstrations is that we could do better from within the existing concept. The time has come to understand that that is a false assumption. If the people demonstrating would come into power on the arena of the existing mentality, they would find themselves taking measures strikingly similar to those that they are protesting today.

The existing arena is disintegrating from under our feet. Our role is to create a concept that befits the historic destiny of the Nation of Israel and to prepare our nation for the alternative arena - an arena in which G-d is the decisive factor.