On our recent trip to Israel we toured the devastated areas and got a real sense of the tremendous tragedy that befell our nation.
But the question we can’t shake, the question on all of our minds is: How was the mighty IDF caught so completely off guard on October 7th? How were 3000 bloodthirsty terrorists able to take us by surprise and overrun all our defenses? How could this happen in Israel, whose intelligence capabilities are among the best in the world?
Of course, everything in this world ultimately comes from G-d; nothing happens without Him. But I wanted to know what the army thought—how did they explain this massive breach?
As we visited and spoke with people in the border towns, I asked this question multiple times.
And then, at the site of the Nova music festival, right by the picture of Raz Mizrachi who was brutally murdered there, I saw an old friend who is now in the army. I posed the question and he gave me the best answer I’ve heard so far: “We thought they wouldn’t dare.”
“We simply thought they would not dare. We had grown accustomed to living side by side on the Gaza border, literally a mile apart,” he explained. In Kfar Aza, our tour guide described to us how he would travel daily to the Erez junction and give rides to sick Arabs, taking them to hospitals for treatments. “We thought they were our friends; we were so nice to them!” he said.
Israel had clear intelligence from multiple sources indicating that Hamas was going to attack, but the higher ups in the army completely ignored it. They truly believed they wouldn’t dare.
I thought this was the best explanation that I’d heard. Obviously the army will have to learn its lesson and institute new protocol, but it strikes me that there is a tremendous lesson here for each and every one of us.
You see, we all have a yetzer hara, an evil inclination that tempts us. But the yetzer hara acts like he is our friend. And he starts by tempting us with the smallest things. First he gets us to wake up late, telling us that we’ll have a better day if we skip davening and get some more sleep. Then he gets us to eat a small little piece of non-kosher, all the while explaining to us how it’s no big deal. Next he convinces us to violate Shabbat, and that it’s no skin off our backs to steal some money that’s owed to us. The sums become bigger and bigger and slowly but surely—without our even realizing—we’re trapped. He has us firmly in his grasp.
And we thought he was our friend! We never imagined he would dare do this to us!
But the yetzer hara dares.
And Hamas dared. Oh boy, did they dare. They showed their colors in an unparalleled and indescribable display of evil and brutality.
So it’s up to us. We need to recognize evil for what it is: evil. And there can be no compromise when it comes to evil—the yetzer hara inside of us and the evil around us. It needs to be completely eradicated.
We pray for a day that G-d will erase all evil from this world, and for the safe and immediate return of all our hostages from Hamas captivity. Amen.
Shabbat Shalom