Darkest Hour

by Moshe Feiglin




About half a year ago, I stopped all the work in our Zehut Headquarters and in the middle of the day, took the entire Zehut staff to the movies.

The movie we went to see was ‘Darkest Hour’, about Winston Churchill.

Europe had been conquered by the Nazi storm. The British army had been caught in Dunkirk and for all practical purposes, was no longer existent. Roosevelt persisted with his separatism and refused to send even one bullet to England. (Why waste two cents?)

And inside England, all the small politicians scorned Churchill, ridiculed him, humiliated him and planned his downfall.

And to surrender to Hitler.

And they had what to laugh about.

Churchill had failed at everything he had done until then. He was chock-full of human shortcomings. The absolute opposite of the heroic figure. An aging, rotund gent who ceaselessly imbibed and smoked, slept in the middle of the day and had difficulty concentrating.

But from within all the darkness, a unique characteristic that would save the world from destruction shone forth. From within all the general chaos, the fear, the pressure, the anger, the fear-mongering and the ceaseless attempts to force him to face reality and surrender…From within all this madness, Churchill managed to filter out all the background noise and not allow the trees to hide the forest in his sights. Churchill understood the significance of the historical hour. He was not in the present. He was in the future, with his descendants in 200 years. He understood that what he would do now would shape the world for generations.

And with that historical consciousness, he skipped over the here and now. He ignored all the advisors and all the strategists, all the politicians and all the Lilliputian hacks. He turned directly to his nation, courageously and straightforwardly explaining the true significance of the hour and the price that they would have to pay. And he saved the free world.

His actions then, saved us now.

When we left the movie, I said to our staff, “Keep the feeling that you have now, leaving the movie, in your hearts. I have a feeling that we are going to be there”.

All the forces that had abandoned any semblance of vision long ago, any semblance of purpose, any sort of whole greater than the sum of its parts, all those separate pieces that scattered in all directions, whose spice of life is who they are not and not who they are…All those who want just one more day of going to bed satiated and we’ll see what happens tomorrow. All of them – all of them – are going to unite against us now. They will do everything they can so that we will despair and give up.

Because we are preventing them from surrender.

They will hate us because we will not let them surrender.

But we cannot afford the luxury of surrender.

Because the defeat that we suffered in Gaza is just the promo for the great defeat waiting for us next, with the same leaders and the same generals.

We are going to win these elections because we already understand the historic significance of the hour.

We know that we have to be there in the darkest hour.

And thus we know that we do not have any choice

Other than to win.