Fabrikant hosted Eliyahu Yossian and Reserves Major-General Yitzchak Brick.
It just came out last week (in Hebrew only, sorry):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G9J_2N3eOA
An experienced soldier who fought in Israel's early wars and a man with a lifetime of military experience behind him, Brick achieved national fame in his interview with the extremely appealing Oded Harush on Hidabroot.
During that interview, Brick described the then-terrible lack of preparedness on Israel's northern border, something Brick desperately tried to correct. But Gadi Eizenkot blocked him at every turn.
The video went viral and I'd think there's a good chance of it being found with an English translation online, though I don't have the capability to search for it.
Here's the original link:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pxzkMGWRqw&list=PLTZug04_T3wP0q3oCTU8FmRvXAEgzQMq_&index=59&pp=iAQB
A friend who lives in the North watched this interview and her immediate reaction was they were all going to die.
Turns out everything Brick said and predicted ended up being true at the Gazan border on October 7th.
Eliyahu Yossian has been discussed on this blog previously:
thought-provoking-ideas-from-eliyahu-yossian-we-are-in-the-middle-east-and-in-the-middle-east-you-speak-theology-religion.html
According to what I've heard, after Yossian's renown spiked via interviews on a variety of news channels, Israel's Leftist and radically liberal mainstream media suddenly refused to host him anymore due to his strong views.
It was an interesting conversation, with everyone speaking intelligently and from copious experience. Even when Yossian and Brick firmly disagreed with each other, the did so respectfully.
Brick reminds me of my late father: an older secular Jew with a lot of positive feeling for Yiddishkeit, plus integrity and sincerity. My father was also somewhat traditional, for which I'm grateful as it made my transition to full mitzvah observance much easier.
Anyway, back to the interview...
In the gray box below the screen, there's a handy index of the topics covered, plus the timestamp of when those discussions occurred.
So if you know some Hebrew and you simply wish to hone in on, for example, what Brick and Yossian think of Netanyahu, you can click on the blue 2:58:00 and go right there.
But in conjunction with this interview, I wish to discuss an aspect of Israeli wars (and especially this one) about which I've been very concerned.
We Could Have Ended the Hostage Situation AND the War within a Few Days
In order to win every war, every eligible male must fight in whatever way possible.
The reason given is because the country is so small, it necessitates every eligible man and woman to fight.
This has always been an irrational belief and one opposed by all the Gedolei Hador at that time.
Israel's full fighting force never even equalled the partial fighting force of any of its neighbors, except for the equally tiny Lebanon.
So no matter what, Israel's manpower can never outnumber (or even equal) any of its major enemy nations.
Any wars Israel won always resulted from miracles — and often included the unforgivably high price of Jewish blood (not to mention permanent and debilitating injuries, including PTSD).
Online, you can see a breakdown of how many soldiers, equipment, and weapons each country holds, plus a rating of their qualities. For example: Egypt vs. Israel.
(After checking out Egypt, feel free to view other countries like Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and Jordan. Then add them altogether to the Egyptian stats. To deal with these facts, you either need unwavering enumah in God or a state of all-encompassing cognitive dissonance — combined with a massive dose of egomania.)
As you can see, Egypt alone has vastly more soldiers, equipment, and weapons to destroy a tiny country several times over, chas v'shalom, may Hashem protect us from our enemies and haters.
So with all the honor and gratitude we owe to our fellow Jews who sincerely sacrificed their lives, limbs, and mental health on behalf of Am Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael, the only reason we continue to exist in Eretz Yisrael comes only from God's Mercy and no other factor.
Yet since the relatively new Tziyoni movement, the message has been: "All hands on deck or else we all die."
Got it so far?
This means that no matter how lethal or badly managed a war is, the most devoted citizens feel compelled to enlist and fight.
The only other alternative offered is the mass annihilation of the Jews of Eretz Yisrael.
And because of how the original secular Marxist Tziyonim set up everything and ran everything, this existential threat constantly hanging over our heads is very real.
(As discussed in previous posts, the Torah Sages strove to prevent this torturous either-or dilemma, but the secular Leftists used deceit and worse to foil the Sages' efforts at every turn.)
So with a sinking heart, I watched the military response to the Great Horror from Gaza, knowing that the powers-that-be would heartlessly mismanage this war in their usual way, with unnecessary fatalities and injuries to so many precious Jews, including some of our best and brightest.
Had Israel immediately launched a relentless air-bombing campaign the day of or the day after the Massacre, we would've gotten the hostages back right away and made a strong impression on the wicked people of Gaza — without our soldiers risking life and limb in a dangerous ground attack.
Instead, the hostages have been suffering (or suffering, then killed) for months.
And Jewish soldiers and their families have suffered terrible losses to life, limb, and mental health.
Eliyahu Yossian says exactly this starting at minute 1:32:11, and more specifically from minute 1:50:20, and I think it was obvious from the beginning to any layperson who understands the mentality of the Middle East and of terrorists in particular.
(If there was an equally effective alternative, perhaps the Gedolei Hador could've guided us in a path that saved the hostages and prevented soldier casualties. But no one asks them. And no one listens to them even if they'd say.)
But in direct opposition to basic common sense, the military elite sent in mostly Jewish soldiers on foot and in tanks, with the accompanying ongoing casualties (including the extremely traumatic incidents of "friendly fire") ever since.
As Yossian states at minute 28:25:
A week ago...they sent soldiers into booby-trapped buildings when they KNEW the buildings were booby-trapped. And they could've knocked them down via the air force.
So they risked the lives of the soldiers — and brought them back in coffins!
And I'm coming to say that commanders of that type are not fit to command!
But what Major-General Brick reveals below brings out even more disturbing information.
The Truth about What's Really Happening in Rafah
We're in the midst of a terrible disaster. We entered at too late a date.
Initially, there were 250,00 refugees there [in Rafah] and now there are 1.4 million because of those who fled there and all sorts of — well, it doesn't matter why.
Anyway, we went in and started telling fairy tales to the public. We are outright manipulating them.
That's why I want to tell you that everything they reported — "We went in easily!" "A million fled!" "They went elsewhere and we're sitting on the Philadelphia Corridor!" — and whatever else the army is broadcasting all the time to the public...they keep reporting that we captured the "oxygen balloon" of Hamas, those same tunnels within Sinai via which they transfer all their supplies and we achieved total control over all that — it's all complete and utter blarney.
A gigantic bluff!
Some of those tunnels are nine kilometers from Kerem Shalom until the sea on the Philadelphia Corridor along the border of Egypt — and lie 50 meters UNDER the Corridor on which we sit.
In order to obstruct these tunnels, we must dig a trench 50 meters in depth and 9 kilometers in length — which is unachievable.
That's why they turned to the Egyptians, that the Egyptians should do it on their own soil. And they [the Egyptians] didn't agree to it — even with American funding, they didn't agree to it.
This means that today we're in Rafah — NOT in the heart of Rafah; we didn't get there — yet we're telling Am Yisrael that we're there and that we're in control and that we're soldiering on!
And day in, day out, we're having our people blown up and killed!
We live among thousands of Hamasniks who walk around us freely in civilian clothing and we don't know they're Hamasniks.
We live among tens of thousands more in the underground tunnels — and we're there [in Rafah] and getting killed and wounded.
We take young men because we have no others, and they get blown up — and we discussed this earlier* — and they close military training courses because of this.
And in reality — we have done nothing of significance.
In Other Words, What the Haters Really Mean is: "You're Not Sharing the Burden of being Cannon Fodder!"
We've arrived at a point in which we have a lack the full amount of troops.
Everything is dumped on those same people fighting in the reserves because half a year after fighting and being released, they're drafted again — and they break down emotionally and physically.
If this continues, there will not be an army because they'll vote with their feet.
Brick describes how they then take these very young and inexperienced soldiers to a place like Rafah (along with their 22-year-old commander — also young and relatively inexperienced), tell them all the risks of entering a particular building, then recommend he go in.
"Now what will that boy tell them?" Brick asks rhetorically. "That he refuses to carry out the mission? That he's a coward? So he goes in and gets blown up." Nearly in tears, Brick adds, "And it happens every — single — time — all over again."
Now I understood our son's experience, which caused me distress and confusion back then (and wrote about here) because our 19-year-old and his unit were called up on Simchat Torah when they hadn't even finished basic training.
This chilling observation also explains why the Left and military elite insists on charedi enlistment:
By burning through the combat troops, they're running out of cannon fodder.
(And what shall we say about those who insist that fighting in these wars is a milchemet mitzvah?)
And the secular Left scream accusations at the frummeh for not going like sheep to slaughter, calling charedi draft-dodgers "parasites" and accusing them of "not sharing the burden."
(You'll see in the next post who is really a parasite and not sharing the burden.)
These secular Leftists represent the same type of mindless loudmouth who accused Holocaust victims of going like sheep to slaughter (which was not true, seeing as the victims were outright lied to & manipulated, starved into the physiological reality of physical weakness and mental lethargy, plus threatened not only with their own death but the deaths of others if they did not obey), yet hate the charedim for not going like sheep to slaughter to meet the political and material demands of the secular Left.
The terrible mismanagement of this war (and the previous ones), accompanied by all the expected unnecessary fatalities and injuries, are a topic discussed by frum bloggers for a while now.
Yet here we have an experienced and knowledgeable Major-General passionately making these same points.
I don't have much commentary to add to this, seeing as several of us frum bloggers already made these points, just that Major-General Brick provides us with more facts to prove it.
Oh, and I think it's worth asking ourselves why the military elites continue with their methods, knowing full well that soldiers die, get severely wounded, and suffer PTSD to the point where they can no longer function as soldiers — as indicated by their sending davka very young and inexperienced soldiers into combat (because they know they cannot send the older, experienced soldiers).
So these are the issues. But the solution will only be found within daas Torah.
May Hashem please bring the Geula b'rachamim and SOON!
Vitally important to read this before relying on the solutions of well-intentioned (or not) Jews who are not shomer Torah:
proof-of-rav-avigdor-miller-being-right-yet-again-anybody-who-is-not-a-shomer-torah-is-not-going-to-help-us.html