Israel's Leadership Needs Faith-Based Lenses

By Moshe Feiglin

And the donkey saw the angel of G-d and she pressed against the wall and she pressed Bilam's foot into the wall and he continued to strike her. (From this week's Torah portion, Balak, Numbers 22:25)

From the lofty heights of his saddle, Bilam's perspective should have been better than his donkey's view on the world; the donkey had to keep her eyes on the ground, while Bilam was able to look ahead. Israel's public is busy with its daily routine, certain that the leadership that rides on its back and is funded by its taxes - free to see far and wide and privy to the latest intelligence reports – certainly sees the real picture of events as they unfold.

In the Land of Israel, though, one cannot see the real picture without lenses of faith in G-d. Israel's faithless leadership is blind. It is a vision-less leadership that busies itself with tactical calculations instead of solving Israel's strategic problems. It is a faithless leadership that is condemned to waging a prolonged, hopeless, dead-end battle for its survival.

Every donkey understood that the Expulsion was a bad idea – nobody argues otherwise today – but the vision-less people that rode on the back of the public then could not see the truth. Those same people still ride on our backs, today. They still cannot see and they still continue with their ill-conceived series of blunders.
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Even donkeys understand that Israel's leadership has not even come close to distancing the Iranian threat from our country. Instead of strengthening its position, Israel is rapidly becoming an extraneous ship of lepers on the face of the globe. Only our leadership remains stubbornly blind to reality, relentlessly striking the nation upon which it rides instead of courageously protecting our country.

On our way to the faith-based revolution we must remember that the ordinary Jew with faith in G-d sees a lot more clearly than the faithless leader with the most sophisticated intelligence resources. When G-d is not in their picture, the most obvious facts are outside our leaders' field of vision.