Those elevated and those ruined by October 7 - opinion

The holiest of all High Holy Day Prayers is “Enusane Tokef” where we speak about who shall live and die and “who shall be denigrated and shall be elevated.

With the passage of a year and the coming actual Jewish calendar date of the massacre this Thursday, Simchat Torah in Israel, normally described as Judaism’s happiest day but certainly not this year, it’s time to evaluate who was elevated and who was denigrated this past year.

I will not deal with who will live and who will die as there is no way of quantifying the 1200 innocents massacred on October 7 and the subsequent 800 soldiers, nor even the innocent Palestinian children who died serving as human shields for the terrorists of Hamas. Rather, my purpose is a geo-political and historical assessment of the personalities involved and what we may learn from a sobering year of slaughter and carnage, mixed with victory and, at times, elation.

Elevated

1. The IDF - I have to admit that as the reports began to trickle in a year ago on the Sabbath and Shemini Atzeret, my confidence in the IDF was shaken to the core. Did Israel still have an army? Even at that time I knew that my two sons had already been called up to their units. But how did the terrorists run amuck for more than six hours before any substantial presence of Israel’s army? Back in 2022 in Uvalde, Texas, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos fatally shot 19 students and 2 teachers, while injuring 17 others, it took the police an hour and a quarter to go into the school. And this was seen as a profound dereliction. But six hours as 3000 terrorists raped, murdered, and beheaded?

No doubt when this dreaded war is over a full investigation will be conducted and appropriate fixes implemented.

But none of that changes how exaltedly the IDF has redeemed itself. The Israeli military and the Jewish State’s intelligence services have subsequently distinguished themselves as far and away the bravest and most effective combat force on earth. My son Mendy, who served both in Gaza and Lebanon, told me, “Tatty, when the IDF is allowed to take the gloves off by all the dastardly political pressure of the UN and the EU etc, it’s a miracle to watch. You have to see the bravery of soldiers going house to house wiping out the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists with zero fear. It’s a marvel to behold.

2. Binyamin Netanyahu – Yes, October 7 happened on Bibi’s watch and that will be an inescapable part of his legacy. But unlike Golda Meir who allowed – with full and undeniable knowledge – Egypt and Syria to attack Israel exactly at 2pm on October 6th 1973 in order not to piss off Lyndon Baines Johnson who warned her against a 1967-style preemptive strike, Golda never saw the war to its victorious conclusion.

She stupidly allowed herself to be pressured by Jewish-American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, one of the worst public figures in American diplomatic history and an outright traitor to his people (notice that when Kissinger died at age 100 earlies this year, he was mourned by virtually no one). Arik Sharon had encircled the Egyptian 3rd Army and could have annihilated the Egyptian fighting force. Instead, she gave them food, water, and other provisions and they went home in safety.

Bibi has done precisely the opposite. Against monumental and truly incalculable pressure, he is seeing the war to its conclusion, not just with the targeted killing of the demonic Hanan Nasrallah and the satanic Yahya Sinwar, but with the total evisceration of both Hamas and Hezbollah’s military capacities to attack Israel, God willing. 

History has many examples of leaders who blew it by allowing a surprise attack – most notably Franklin Delano Roosevelt – who went on, through the demand of unconditional surrender, to not just redeem themselves but emerge as incomparable wartime leaders. Today, FDR is rightly considered by historians among American’s three greatest Presidents (although his refusal to bomb the train tracks to Auschwitz or allow more Jews to enter the US during the war will forever tarnish his legacy.)

Bibi has now emerged as one of the greatest Jewish military leaders of all time, and this while getting almost zero credit from the Jews and being completely excoriated by the rest of the world. He couldn’t’ give a damn. His job is to protect Israel and annihilate its adversaries, something that few historical leaders have ever done as effectively.

3. American pro-Israel social media influencers – From the beginning of the war we saw thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish lovers of Israel go to their phones and laptops and push back ferociously against the incessant blood libels against the Jewish state. Remember, this is an all volunteer army and they have done an outstanding job showing the reptilian likes of antisemite Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and the repulsive Hadid sisters that if you falsely attack the Jews you will pay an incalculable reputational price.

4. Parents of the hostages – If anyone needed any convincing of the Jewish value of promoting and protecting life, you need not look any further than the relentless campaigns of the suffering families of Israel’s hostages to have their children and relatives rescued or release.

They dominated both Republican and Democratic conventions, made the identities of their children household names in the United States, and organized massive demonstrations throughout the world to ensure that their loved ones are not forgotten. While Palestinian parents were ululating for their children who became “Shahids,” murderous terrorists who killed Israeli babies, their Israeli counterparts demanded neither retribution or revenge but simply the return home of their loved ones.

4. The State of Israel – Tell me one example of any country in history that is fighting a six front war – Hezbollah, Hamas, Houtis, Syria, Islamic Jihad, and above all else the barbarians in Tehran who not only do not quit but fight like lions to defend hearth and home.

Ruined 

1. Kamala Harris – Never forget that the Vice President warned Israel repeatedly not go into Rafah as there was no worthwhile military objective and that the Palestinian population of some one million could not be moved out of harm’s way. The pictures of Sinwar, the Hamas Hitler, with a bullet in his brain gave the lie to that absurd admonition and Israel succeeded in moving nearly all the residents to safer ground.

2. The United Nations – The UN was created by Franklin Roosevelt to ensure that a Hitler figure would be stopped in the future by “the four policeman” (later five as China was added) of the Security Council. I often visit FDR’s grave in Hyde Park, New York, to thank him and Winston Churchill for saving the world from Germany and the Nazis. If he saw the UN today, or its International Court of Injustice, which equated Bibi with Sinwar, he would turn in his grave. 

3. Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro – It’s time to tell the truth. Neither Dennis, whom I looked up to for thirty years, nor Ben, are defenders of Israel. Rather, the war showed that they are merely Conservative and Republican talking heads. We’re lucky that the GOP is so amazingly pro-Israel. If it changes its posture, they would likely change their support as well, a fact easily proven by the millions of dollars each of them made creating and promoting arch-antisemite Candace Owens and refusing to donate the ill-gotten proceeds to the widows of IDF soldiers.

Shapiro is known for his U-turns based on what works in terms of getting subscribers for his Daily Liar website, as he did with his initial excoriation of Donald Trump only to become one of his most avid supporters. And Dennis and Ben actually defended Candace well after she emerged as America’s most demented antisemite and Shapiro only fired her when my daughter Rochel Leah Taktuk and I put enough public pressure on him where he had no choice but to cut ties with a woman said the IDF are genocidal and accused Jews of drinking the blood of Christians.

Ben Shapiro then disgraced himself by attacking Second Gentleman and super-mensch Doug Emhoff as being “as Jewish as a ham sandwich.” Shapiro is an utter ignoramus when it comes to Judaism which states clearly that if your Mom is Jewish so are you. 

4. Jewish students on America’s Elite campuses – How is it that Harvard, which has 4000 Jewish students, NYU which has 6000, Columbia which has 5000, Penn with three thousand, etc, allowed activists from Students for Justice in Palestine take over whole campuses and rely only on the police and the Administration to protect them. Where were their voices?

It's been a year since the Jewish people suffered their greatest tragedy since the holocaust. It’s time for all of us to wake up to the lethal and genocidal threats that we Jews face all over the world and finally fight back.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international best-selling author of the newly published guide to fighting for Israel “The Israel Warrior.” Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.