The Surprised and the Amazed

By Moshe Feiglin

20 Adar I, 5771
Feb. 24, '11

Why didn't Mubarak send in the tanks? Why didn't Tahrir Square turn into Tiananmen Square? Is the Egyptian regime less cruel than its Chinese counterpart?

How is it that all the dictatorships in the Arab world have suddenly gotten weak in the knees over unarmed civilians doing nothing more than demonstrating? After all, the regime is all-powerful; they have built their security forces over decades in concentric circles so that the inner circle will owe its existence and power to the ruler and will always do his bidding. And if the need will arise, it will always force the ruler's will on one circle after the next until it reaches the very last citizen. What brought about the collapse of all these mechanisms of oppression?

We all look on in amazement as history unfolds before our very eyes. Nevertheless, we must differentiate between the amazed and the surprised. When rightist former MK Geulah Cohen stood up in the Knesset thirty years ago and spoke of the aliyah of millions of Jews from the USSR, current President Shimon Peres mocked her and said that she was hallucinating. When the Camp David Accords were signed, there were those who promised eternal peace, while others warned that war was just a question of time and the risk and price were not worth the return. And then came the Oslo Accords, when the "surprised camp" euphorically reveled in the New Middle East and World Peace, while the "amazed camp" went out into the streets to warn of the national catastrophe. Why are all the wise men - all the foreign affairs commentators, former ambassadors and professors - always surprised, while the regular people look on in amazement, but are not surprised in the least?

The answer is simple. The "surprised camp" is the camp of the utopian hallucinators that detached itself from reality - the Holy One, Blessed Be He. They pretend to create reality themselves and when that doesn't happen, they are surprised.

The "amazed camp" is made up of the people connected to reality. These are the people who knew that the Egyptian regime was a dictatorship that would fall sooner or later. They knew that the all-out war between decadent and decaying Europe and the sword of Islam would not be settled with the Western-style democratization of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. They are the same people who, even at the entrance to Auschwitz, knew that one day the Jewish Nation would return to its Land, as the Creator had promised. They did not know how it would happen, just as we do not know how the Jewish State with Jerusalem and the Temple Mount as its spiritual center will take shape and form. What we do know is that it will happen and that it is more certain than all the learned pontifications of the "surprised camp." We stand amazed as we watch the tapestry unfold, just as Eliezer the servant of Abraham watched in amazement as Rebecca drew water for him, understanding that G-d had crowned his journey with success.

What is causing the revolutions taking place before our eyes?

Sovereignty in any type of regime is always in the hands of the nation. When the nation does not view the leader as being legitimate, all the mechanisms propping up the regime are of no avail. They will all collapse like a house of cards. This is true for dictatorships and democracies alike. The difference is that in democracies, a mechanism is in place for the orderly transition of government. Often, the regime will manipulate democracy to fool the public and into thinking that it chose the existing regime and that it desires its rule - even though nothing could be farther from the truth. These tricks can postpone the revolution - but they cannot prevent it.

Here in Israel, we are somewhere in the middle. Israel is not a dictatorship by its simple definition. It has broad freedom of speech. But where the borders of freedom of speech end, democracy also ends and turns out to be a dangerous illusion. And woe to he or she who expresses an opinion that is beyond the limits set by the Israeli Thought Police.

We live in a dictatorship of thoughts, constantly under the watchful eye of the Thought Police. It is not easy to sense our dictatorship. That is why people in Israel are not demonstrating in the city squares. But the suffocation feels the same - the suffocation that doesn't even have a Tahrir Square to light up the end of the tunnel.

But there is something we must remember: The Egyptians did not go out to the streets because their economy was bad. Is the average Egyptian worse off now than he was five years ago? All the attempts to explain the revolution in Egypt with one reason or another do not adequately explain what happened. It isn't the economy, not the oppression, not Facebook and not Twitter. It is simply the Divine removal of the legitimacy of the regime. While it may seem overly simplistic to say that the revolution in Egypt was Divinely inspired, that is the basic truth.

Does this mean that we can go home and wait until G-d hands us the leadership on a silver platter? Certainly not. We must be on the playing field, in the best shape possible and completely prepared. But we must understand that the necessary process of faith-based revolution - a process that will surely occur, for we have no other option - has its own timetable that is not dependant upon us.

We will do our part and when the time comes, the legitimacy will be taken from the current regime, will return to the nation and from there to the faith-based leadership that it deserves. We must take the responsibility to prepare for that day and pray that it happens soon.