Ofer Winter and Amcha Yisrael: The Courage Israel Needs

The right-wing public needs courage.

Fighting on the battlefield apparently isn't enough. Nor is losing friends, or raising a generation of heroes to charge forward for the sake of all of Israel. Even 400-500 days of reserve duty won't be enough. Nor will double or triple that. And it will never be enough. It's like pressing the gas pedal all the way down in a powerful car that's stuck in mud.

We have a generation of lions and lionesses, and a leadership of pathetic rabbits. Yes. Pathetic. Another building blown up, or another block flattened by a D9 bulldozer, won't bring any victory either. For victory, you need leadership that knows how, wants to, and is determined to translate all these efforts we've made over three years into a winning strategy.

You know this deep inside. You've felt for three years now that something is rotten. It can't be that all these efforts, all this devotion, all these resources, and all this sacrifice and bereavement… and we go right back to 10/6 [i.e., back to square one, the day before October 7], releasing masses of murderous terrorists in secret, building a Qatari-Palestinian Hamas state in Gaza, withdrawing from Lebanon again and again, and signing a peace agreement that isn't worth the paper it's written on… a disgraceful and humiliating hostage deal — and all this time, giant trucks keep entering and sustaining the murderers of our children and the rapists of our women, while Hamas is still there, alive, smiling and laughing at our expense, still holding weapons. Against all the promises. It's all lies.

How does this happen? It's all the leadership. It's all right there. They have excuses galore. Words. Lies. A magnificent propaganda machine, tons and tons of lies. They explain there's no choice. That's just how it is. That it's the left-wing bloc's fault. That grandma has no wheels, and the wheels are stuck in the US under an embargo. But with excuses, you don't win, you don't survive, and you certainly don't bring redemption to the world.

Now suddenly someone new has come along. A hero. A righteous man. He studies Daf Yomi and studies strategy, he's one of us, and he spent years in the vicinity of decision-makers. A graduate of the Eli [leadership academy], Maglan, Sayeret Matkal, Givati, the Marines, Division 98, military secretary to four defense ministers — and he has risen up with courage, and where there are no [real] people (or where there are corrupt and weak people), he is ready to be a man.

So what's required of us? Courage. And just once. Just once, to get out of this terrible exile, in time.