Antonio Navalón
As the chosen people, for having accompanied Moses since the Exodus or for having stood up against the one who presented himself as “I am who I am”, Israel is a people difficult to understand. It is a nation with a tradition of experiences filled with pain, blood, sweat, tears, and diaspora like no other people. The Holocaust is not the only tragic episode in Jewish history. However, it is also necessary to point out that the fact that the Nazis killed more than six million Jews does not exempt them from any moral, political, or social judgment.
The Jews occupy a geographically small territory, representing but one advantage: according to the Holy Scriptures, this is the Promised Land. Since the trumpets of Joshua brought down the walls of Jericho until today, the path of permanence of the Jews in the land chosen by their God has always been one of hardness, sadness, and with the latent threat that at any moment, the claw of uprooting and genocide will attack them again.
The Israelis have always been aware that enemies surround them. Despite this, they have been victorious in every war they have fought. Everyone knows that Israel will succumb the day it loses a war. Moreover, if the Holy Scriptures announced God’s actual plan for the Jewish people, Israel would be the Third Temple and, as announced, after its destruction would come either the end of the world or the return of Jesus Christ.
It was Saturday, and while many Jews were disconnecting from the outside world and celebrating the Sabbath, an unprecedented attack by Hamas, which has caused hundreds of deaths, brought them back to reality. Last October 7, in addition to the tragedy, also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the most bitter awakening in the day of a hero named Moshe Dayan. In 1973, Golda Meir’s former Minister of Defense became aware of the news announcing a possible attack against Israel. Still, after analyzing the information and rumors, it was concluded that it lacked sufficient elements to interrupt Yom Kippur. It is a day known as the day of atonement in which Jews ask, pray, and hope that God will continue to write their name in the Book of Life so that the following year will continue to live. Israel was very close to disappearing and being defeated during the Yom Kippur War. A coordinated operation between Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, and others was able to move into Israelite territory and bring them to the brink of destruction. It has always been an open question whether the failure to act on the information he possessed was the cause that prevented Moshe Dayan from becoming prime minister.
What happened, and what prevented him from having the necessary preparation and measures to face the attack that started the Arab-Israeli war of 1973? An onslaught that, after crossing the Sinai and the Golan Heights, was successfully stopped less than sixty kilometers from the Israeli capital, causing unprecedented destruction. Since its creation and despite being in conflict with the Palestinians since 1948, this has been the conflict that has caused the greatest fear among Jews. And rightly so, fear nests in the heart of every Jew. It is a historical constant that we suffer from, that at any moment, everything could end, and that there is no difference between the great Diaspora of Nebuchadnezzar’s time and the current situation.
The truth is that Israel has been living for 50 years with the syndrome of arrogance, of security, and with the conviction that their intelligence and army are capable of protecting them from and against everything. It was unbelievable, and they thought it was impossible for what happened to happen. The Hamas attack has been the greatest territorial vulnerability of the State of Israel since the Yom Kippur War, and it is and will be a watershed – in this case, in the Middle East – as was the attack on the Twin Towers.
Today, the world is not the same. It is not because of the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis, or the multiple and parallel social crises around the planet, and neither is it, in short, because of the declaration and the beginning of the war between Israel and the extremist Islamist group Hamas. With the knowledge I have about life in Israel, I am at a loss to decipher what went through the minds of the Israeli army and intelligence corps when they saw the cloud of gliders descending on a Saturday morning over their territory. They did so in a situation where apparently no one warned or deceived them that it was a dummy army. In any other case, the Israeli armed forces would have opened fire immediately; however, the question remains as to what happened and what resulted in a total tragedy.
Never before had Hamas perpetrated an attack of this magnitude. An operation that makes it clear that it was carried out in a precise, coordinated manner and after months of training and preparation. These commandos who invaded Israeli territory did so intending to make any Jew’s worst nightmare come true: to enter their home, threaten their family, murder them, and then take the children – and in some cases also the women – as hostages while they attack and desecrate what matters most in the Jewish religion, which is the corpse.
Intelligence failed. Security failed. The thousands of satellites and protection mechanisms the Israelis have established and perfected for years failed. It is enough to watch an episode of the “Fauda” series to see the entire security apparatus Israel employs to guarantee its territorial preservation. There is continuous and permanent monitoring of what is going on; how come nobody noticed or did anything to at least check such unusual movements? The most serious thing is not the assassinations but, as happened to the United States after September 11, 2001, the fact that Israel has gone from being an untouchable country to a touchable one.
The new generations of Israelis know a lot about applications and technology; they know a lot about the stock market and financial world, and they know about the great evolutions to consolidate individual freedoms. However, I am afraid they don’t know anything about the Arab mentality and, what is worse, we have all been able to learn and see how more than seventy years of conflict has only led to a generation of homicidal hatred not seen since the Mau Mau Rebellion in its war of independence that began in 1952 and ended in 1960.
The worst of this lesson is the complete social failure of integration. However, you may tell me that integration becomes impractical and impossible when you don’t have water, food, electricity, and not even hope for a better tomorrow. And you would be right to tell me that. As with the United States and Latin America, social failure is the most significant liability of the world’s leading nations. Instead of taking advantage of power and victory to consolidate development for all, these nations became insensitive. They did not realize that the only thing that could protect them would be to guarantee stability and peace in those countries where they had some interference.
A new era is beginning. Israel is afraid. I do not doubt that it will win the war. However, it is a war in which it is advisable not to make a mistake. As happened to Adolf Hitler during the Spanish War, in which he had the opportunity to test new weapons, today, we are in the midst of a similar and terrifying situation. The new generations of missiles currently being used in Ukraine can break the Iron Dome and explode in Tel Aviv. Not only that, there are also new generations of drones and technologies that play a decisive and deadly role in modern wars.
We did not do anything or educate people to want to have a life in peace and prosperity, but what we did do was to promote the hatred between us to the limits. Today, all wars are transmitted live, with flat images, and streaming is enough to share what is happening worldwide. If this operation seeks to prevent Saudi Arabia and the Saudis from being in a condition of superiority against the Shiites of Iran, it has undoubtedly succeeded since it will at least delay the phenomenon. As for the global situation, it is necessary to realize that, after this new Yom Kippur Day, Russia now has a world that is confronted, that is more divided, that is afraid, and that seeks to fight for itself. But what stands out most of all is that the Russians will surely realize that they will no longer have the time, the money, or the will to lead other countries like, for example, Ukraine.
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