I don't mean just being struck between the eyes with the fact of there actually being no "innocent bystanders" or "innocent civilians" in Gaza (though that fortunately finally happened too).
So many people woke up to the truth of Torah and mitzvot.
A white kippah and tzitzit — or at least, just the tzitzit — have become part of the uniform of the average Israeli soldier (which has never happened before).
And sure, there are many soldiers wearing non-white kippahs too — ken yirbu!
We have commanders motivating their troops with words of Torah and songs of Tanach verses.
Soldiers themselves sing songs of praise or pray as they engage in combat.
They give Torah classes on the battleground during breaks.
Many, many Jews here have taken on mitzvot and dropped their toxic Leftist ideologies.
Among the already frum Jews, a great many increased their Torah learning and prayers and tzedakah and many other mitzvot.
Many describe how their Tehillim or Shemoneh Esrei or even just saying Modeh Ani in the morning found new life after the Horror.
The light of the upcoming Geula is palpable.
But there's also a distraction here.
And as part of loving each other, we need to pay attention to it.
The Infiltration of Anti-Torah Ideology
As usual, they cannot prioritize their own citizens and soldiers.
For weeks now, a pit of dread drops in my stomach as every day, the names of newly killed soldiers pop into public consciousness.
I can't stand it. One, two, three a day...even ten! — it's TOO MUCH.
WAY TOO MANY.
Eliyahu Yossian already recommended a militarily sound course of action — and it doesn't require Jews to give up their lives.
(It poses some danger to the hostages, but can also free them without the awful price of releasing all these terrorist prisoners and without Hamas playing mind-games about it.)
He advises bombing all of Gaza — WITHOUT sending in ANY soldiers on the ground — and not allowing any humanitarian aid for a month. Eventually, he says, this will starve out any remaining terrorists, who will be forced out of their ruins and tunnels, and then the IDF can go in with a lot more safety than they have now.
(Actually, this idea was first mentioned by a Muslim-Arab politician years ago, as described here: real-conversations-you-will-never-see-in-the-mainstream-media-about-middle-eastern-politics.html. So please don't blame a Jew for saying it too.)
Yossian bases his recommended course of action on his knowledge of Middle Eastern politics, the mentalities of both Sunni and Shia Islam, his first-hand knowledge of Iran and its influence, and his knowledge of the general Middle Eastern mentality.
And, despite what many assume, the problem with Yossian's recommendation isn't the great loss of life of the bloodthirsty "civilians" in Gaza (which is halachically allowable under the horrific circumstances — it's the UNNECESSARY Jewish loss of life occurring now that is halachically problematic).
The problem is the lack of daas Torah in the equation.
For example, only a real talmid chacham can foresee both the short-term and long-term consequence of an action in such a complicated situation.
Just as one example:
How would the obliteration of the current Gazan community affect our enemies in the rest of the Middle East? After all, bad things are happening on Israel's northern border and Egypt has spent all this time building up its military into something that greatly overshadows Israel's capabilities.
(Fortunately, God is in charge.)
Furthermore, only a real talmid chacham can analyze the halachos applicable to how to free hostages and other ethics applicable to this complex situation.
In the current war, the military high mucky-mucks are, as usual, conducting the war with an unforgivably cavalier attitude toward the lives of the soldiers under their command.
The idea of soldiers being cannon-fodder and young men randomly dying in war (without marrying or ever having children) for their chieftains' political interests and power — these are wholly non-Jewish ideas.
After all, it was the Russians who forced their soldiers to lie down in a river, making a bridge of human corpses over which to drive their tanks.
And indeed, much of Medinat Yisrael's early leadership was comprised of atheist anti-Torah Commies from Russia.
Meaning, having discarded their Jewish values, they simply adopted what they found in their culture: Russian militant values and Communist values.
Their ideological descendants remain littered throughout Israel's government and the upper echelons of its military today.
Another issue of great concern to a talmid chacham (and any decent person) — but of no concern at all to the elites — lies in the severe mental trauma resulting from these situations.
PTSD in Soldiers
Former soldiers suffering from months or years of incurable PTSD started making their voices heard.
Some testified before the Knesset.
Someone showed me short clips of their testimony and within 2 minutes, I was racked with tears and sobs.
Something about their raw anguish ripped through me as, with tearful rage, they described seeing their friends killed or severely wounded in battles, then the struggles they fight ever since just to sleep through the night.
And their desperate accusations: "AND NOBODY CARES!"
They speak of the psychological treatment which didn't help, the support and suffering of their families who suffer along with them, and the medications they take which do not ultimately help.
(Western society suffers from the delusion that therapy provides a cure for all ills. Yet Godless therapy and morality-free therapy cannot help as much as claimed. Furthermore, some traumas run so deep, therapy either cannot help or would take years before it helps.)
These are wonderful caring young men in great pain because they are decent people thrown into horrible situations.
Act Now, Pay Later?
Consequently, they immediately lost many soldiers, sometimes several within one unit.
When interviewed about it, you see by their body language and facial expressions that they have not had the opportunity to process it.
Their upper body swings back and sometimes they step away from the reporter.
Watching their faces, you see how they disconnect mentally and emotionally from the topic, speaking with auto-pilot bravado, "Hey, there's no time to focus on them now. We just need to keep going, we just need to keep fighting to protect Am Yisrael!"
In this state of partial disassociation, they say what they need to say so they can keep going.
They believe with all their hearts that God is on their side and that they're mosser nefesh for Am Yisrael.
They also must portray themselves as infatigable warriors, both to bolster the morale of Am Yisrael and also in case the enemy is listening in, to present a fierce and intimidating image, which is very important in the Middle East.
But they also care deeply for the friends they've lost and they're in great pain over the way they lost these friends and over what they've witnessed.
They cannot process it now.
But their own psyches will force them to deal with it at some point.
And what then?
Raised in a charedi community his whole life and not yet finished with basic training, he was unexpectedly called up on Simchat Torah & Shabbat to violate Shabbat for pikuach nefesh (saving a life), and informed that a horrific event had happened and was continuing to happen in the South.
And that's where he needed to go.
(The details of that appear in this post: our-personal-experience-with-the-war-that-started-on-simchat-torah-57842023.html)
Unbeknownst to me at that time, he landed in some pretty dangerous situations.
First, he was in Sderot, which still suffered from constant rocket bombardment.
At one point, while lying on the ground next to a cement wall as the sirens blared and rockets smashed into the Iron Dome exploded overhead, rocket shrapnel flew toward him, hitting the wall just above him, and then landed on the pavement right next to him.
Then his unit needed to help "purify" the invaded kibbutzim.
Yes, armed terrorists were still walking the country side after the army (finally!) managed to seal the border.
Not all the terrorists and their ghoulish leeches managed to get back into Gaza before the army closed the breaches.
(Feel free to contact me if I'm wrong, but I think the media did not report on this, that even after it looked like the army had everything under control, armed terrorists and their ghoulish looters were still wandering around that area. Did you guys know that in the week following the Horror, armed terrorists and their depraved scavengers were still wandering around our country?)
Part of the purification of the kibbutzim meant the soldiers needed to stick their guns through the shattered windows, randomly shoot, then go in and make sure no live terrorists still hung around.
And also hope that, if a live terrorist somehow remained, he wouldn't shoot back.
(By the time my son arrived, Zaka and other parts of the army had already been through the kibbutzim and the site of the party to remove all the Jewish bodies and blood. I'm not sure how it all worked and why my son was shooting into houses already swept through by Zaka and other combat units. I guess because a terrorist could've been hiding there and not revealed himself when Zaka came in with the armed units. Not sure.)
My son and his unit also went through the site of the infamous nature party.
At the site of the party and the kibbutz and along the border, my son saw dozens and dozens of dead terrorists rotting in the hot sun. (It was still hot at that time of year.)
This wasn't one day of gruesome scenes, but several.
He saw the destruction, the bullet-scarred pastoral homes, the smell of scorched everything in the air, and a bullet-ridden totally scorched Alfa Romeo.
(For some reason not completely comprehensible to me, he and his older brothers found this scene to be one of the most impactive. Not that they consider an Alfa Romeo more important than human life, but it symbolized something to them that summed up everything. If I were male, I think I would understand better, but perhaps it's symbolic of the ruthless destruction. For example, even the most sociopathic young male would rather steal an Alfa Romeo or at least, sell its parts as is common among Arab car thieves in Israel. The fact that these male terrorists from Gaza preferred to totally trash the Alfa Romeo perhaps symbolizes to the young male mind the terrorists' desire for ruthless & unchecked annihilation. That's my guess, anyway.)
Then as his unit patrolled the border, their commander received intel that either a pair or a group of terrorists remained in close proximity to them.
At night. In the dark.
And that my son's unit needed to ambush and liquidate them.
Using night-vision goggles, the unit's sniper caught sight of the pair and fired 3 times. Then the commander gave the order for the rest of the unit to blast their rifles on fully automatic in the direction of the terrorists.
Then they decided to go and check whether they actually eliminated the terrorists.
In the dark.
As they proceed to look for the hopefully dead terrorists, they encountered a commando unit, which basically said, "Whoa, what are you guys doing? This isn't for you. We'll take care of it."
Then the commando unit came back and said, "We couldn't find anyone. You probably just shot some Arab coming back from work or something. Maybe he's wounded and got away or hiding. Or maybe he died and we can't find him or he'll die later."
Yikes.
So now they need to deal with the feeling of having shot an innocent person — not even one of the ghoulish scavengers from Gaza, but just an innocent Israeli-Arab guy in the wrong place and the wrong time.
A week or two goes by, and then a unit on patrol in that area finds two dead Arab bodies with rifles, bullets, and grenades on them.
Armed terrorists from Gaza.
Forensics determined that, according to the bullets & timing & location, these are the terrorists shot by my son's unit. Using night-vision goggles, the sniper (a former yeshivah bachur) downed the 2 armed terrorists with 3 bullets.
And he still hadn't finished basic training at that point.
Pretty impressive.
But do you see what a mind-game that must have been for my son and his unit?
I don't blame the commandos because they did the best they could in the dark in a dangerous situation, when everyone was overwhelmed and traumatized.
But nonetheless, for a week or two, my son and his unit must have been repressing the fact they thought they killed or harmed an innocent person.
Do you see how up-and-down and intense this all is?
If you look at what my son (and all the others) went through, it's this:
- hadn't done more in life than yeshivah and kosher low-skill employment before enlistment
- just turned 19
- hadn't finished basic training
- called up completely out-of-the-blue on Shabbat/chag to deal with a life-threatening situation
- nearly got hit by rocket shrapnel
- thrown into a situation of gruesome scenes & smells
- thrown into a dangerous situation of armed terrorists
- thinking he was part of killing an innocent guy
- suddenly discovering he was part of eliminating Jew-murderers
And the main part of it all occurred within a few days (the discovery of the dead terrorists occurred within 2 weeks).
And of course, like most young males in the army, he's acting like it's a lark to shoot into homes to flush out terrorists or to shoot at terrorists in the flesh.
In other words, he exhibiting a lot of cheerful bravado about it.
Everything's fine! Everything's under control! I got it covered! I can handle it!
A totally normal response for guys in this situation.
Yet at no point (as far as I know) did anyone talk with them about any part of it or help them process it.
Yes, the army offers counseling services.
But whether these services are available at the right time, whether it's left up to the soldiers to decide if and when to avail themselves, and how effective these services end up being...
That didn't happen here.
They have just been left on their own deal with everything and they instinctively respond with high-spirited bravado.
Furthermore, around a third of my son's unit are lone soldiers from outside of Israel, so they don't even have a supportive family to return to for Shabbat or on leave like our son.
Look, they also know they're fighting for Am Yisrael and to prevent such a horror from ever happening again. They're right and righteous.
But the rest of the reality remains nonetheless.
This Next Section is Sick & Disturbing, So Feel Free to Skip It If You Can't Stomach It. I Couldn't & Still Can't Stomach It Either. At the Same Time, I Feel Compelled to Testify on Behalf of Those Who Will Never be Able to Do So Themselves.
But it's very disturbing and it continues to disturb me.
If you don't want to read it, then please skip down to the next section.
Again, like everything else I'm writing about this topic, it's to fortify the stance of those who already know what side they're on and not to convince anyone who isn't horrified and anguished by what happened to the Jews.
My younger married son (age 20) stopped by the house soon after the Horrific Slaughter and asked me if I remembered a certain friend of his from yeshivah.
Though I didn't think I'd actually met the boy, the name was familiar to me from phone calls and stories.
Anyway, this friend decided to enlist, I'm pretty sure in one of the Nachal Charedi units.
And his unit was at one of the sites of slaughter a day or two after it happened.
Anyway, my son said they brought them to a place where there were around 40 dead Jewish babies lying on the ground as if they'd been flung there.
And my son's friend was one of the soldiers ordered to help pick up the babies and put them in an army truck.
(Because of the tremendous amount of bodies in the aftermath and the general disorganization during and following the Horror, they didn't even have the appropriate refrigerated vehicles for the job.)
I was absolutely horrified to hear this. Because of my limited access to the news, I did not even know such a large group of murdered Jewish babies existed, so the shock sent me reeling.
But all I could think of was his friend.
I asked how his friend handled it.
"He put one body in the truck, then went to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes. An ENTIRE pack. At one go. And then he went back, picked up another body, put it in the truck, and went off to the side to smoke another pack of cigarettes." He paused, then said, "Mom...he smoked 18 packs of cigarettes that day."
Eighteen.
Because it's so horrific, they spoke in terms of packs of cigarettes.
But that was 18 little Jewish babies — and someone else gathered up the other half of those lying there.
"Yeah, Mom," he said. "And it was so awful because they didn't have the right kind of truck for transporting bodies, and so they ended having to pile the babies in there. Like, as respectfully as they could, but still.."
Then outrage sliced through my shock. "Why did they make HIM do it?" I said. "What about Zaka? What about people in the army whose job it is do deal with this? Isn't there some unit in charge of dealing with morgue stuff? Why does a kid your age from yeshivah need to do this?!"
My son didn't know why; he seemed confused and overwhelmed himself — except he mentioned that Zaka was overwhelmed at that time with even worse situations, so they literally weren't available for this.
Then he mentioned that the older brother of the God-fearing motorcyclist was also involved to gathering and transporting the bodies. That older brother is a commanding officer in Nachal Charedi.
And I just felt like my brain went into shock, like someone hit it with a stun gun.
I couldn't even think. How did those babies get there? How did they die? What was their state after so much time outside in the heat?
And sure, the kid is wearing gloves, but in order to do the job, he must see them and touch them to pick them up and place them in the truck.
Furthermore, in the frum world, you're surrounded by babies. A frum boy grows up with babies, both his siblings and the children of his married siblings, and so on. Frum boys are very familiar with babies, comfortable with them and fond of them.
And these babies on the ground are OUR babies — Jewish babies!
It's very personal.
I can't even begin to imagine what this must have been like for him.
And to do it eighteen times?
Of course, he knows the good religious reasons for doing what he did, like kavod hameis (honoring the deceased), getting these babies to a kosher burial as soon as possible, plus giving their families closure.
But did anyone give him any preparation before making him do this?
(Is it even possible to prepare a young man for this task?)
And did he get any kind of help after?
This kind of situation (not the soldiers themselves) is sick, sick, sick.
It does remind me of certain scenes we've all heard about from the Holocaust.
How is he — or any of the boys there — supposed to be normal after this?
Sure, the army offers counseling services and there are, due to decades of traumatic situations here, therapists available to help people.
But it's overrated.
(Several times, I wanted to ask my son what's going on with his friend now, but I just can't bring myself to ask.)
It's disturbing how society has been convinced that you can just shove young men into severely traumatic situations because, heck, there is therapy and medications available for all their traumas after.
As shown above, it doesn't actually work like that.
And again, why did they make this 20-year-old regular charedi soldier do it?
What, none of our hotshot generals or politicians were available for the job? What happened to "the Israeli Superman"?
What about all the agents and officials who watched all the Hamas plans & practices for October 7, yet did nothing to prepare for the planned invasion?
What about the ones who diluted the security at the fence that day?
What about the ones who blocked Rafael Chiyun?
What, they weren't available for the job of gathering the dozens of dead Jewish babies flung on the ground?
What about the few remaining Leftists, the ones with all the time and energy to attend all those uselessly disruptive demonstrations in the months leading up to this?
They weren't available?
Anyway, as you can tell...it's very sick and disturbing.
And I just felt that someone needed to say it.
Zaka Pushed to Its Limits
In addition to caring for the respectful treatment of the deceased (whether Jewish or not) as commanded by Jewish Law, they also often save lives by being some of the first on a scene of terror (which is why Zaka volunteers — yes, this is unpaid work — are also trained in first aid).
Yet over the past decades, horrific attacks have forced Zaka to get up close and personal with the grisliest scenes beyond imagination.
With the Horrific Invasion from Gaza, even the most veteran Zaka volunteer labeled it as the most gruesome and disturbing images ever encountered in decades of this work.
A wife of one of the heads of Zaka recalls seeing a change in her husband after he came home from dealing with the aftermath of the Horror.
Her husband, possessing the cool-as-a-cucumber personality necessary in this work, never brought home his work with him, no matter how tragic or disturbing.
At home, he always maintained total composure. His family did not see the effects of his work on his personality.
But upon coming home from dealing with the aftermath of the Horror from Gaza, he suddenly behaved shaken up and agitated for the first time.
That's when she knew how bad it had really been.
Despite their religious focus and adherence to halacha, which transforms their task from the gruesome to the holy, it nonetheless remains disturbingly gruesome work — and they most often deal with the aftermath of their fellow brothers and sisters...their fellow Jews.
Not to mention, the paralyzing moral quandaries they face in their work, as described in this post here by my son, who experienced it first-hand (the-lag-bomer-tragedies.html):
A member of Zaka arrived at the gas station in a state of shock & wearing stained clothes.
He plopped down to rest and his traumatic experience came pouring out to the people around him, saying:
"There I was zipping a body into a body bag in order to prevent bizayon hameit [desecration of the dead] when the front of his jacket started vibrating—his cell phone. I took out the cell phone, glanced at the screen, and saw the word Ima [Mom]. What could I do? What was I supposed to do? Answer and tell her I'm right in the middle of declaring her son a fatality? What exactly was I supposed to do? What?"
(Judaism absolutely forbids the murder of any human being whether Jewish or not. Killing in self-defense = permissible. Murder = totally forbidden.)
Especially in this most recent frenzy of anti-Jew torture, kidnapping, and slaughter (with the blood-thirsty and greedy participation of Gazan men of all ages, including women, children, and the elderly), the whole "innocent civilians" issue has become moot.
Rav Avigdor Miller addressed that issue here too, but I'm not going to discuss it here now.
But let's just say you needn't be as concerned with their casualties (in this specific case) as the world thinks you should be.
The issue really is that we can't just continue with the attitude toward decades of tragedies of:
"Well, Zaka will just clean this up, and the hospitals and occupational therapists will take care of the wounded, and the therapists and social workers and psychiatrists and pharmacists will take care of the traumatized, and the army will take care of the deterrence, and the security will take care of the prevention, and the average person will chip in wherever needed, and shalom al Yisrael."
The country is not being run well.
And the wars are not being conducted appropriately at all.
After what happened on Simchat Torah, I also want to see all its participants and supporters obliterated.
Most Jews here feel the same, which is why there is this massive push for the war (in addition to rescuing the hostages — which could also be done more effectively and quickly with daas Torah...or heck, even just plain daas! After all, Thailand managed the situation with their hostages beautifully).
But in this lethally haphazard, irresponsible way? No!
At the very least, the lives of a country's citizens (and soldiers are citizens too!) MUST stand as a priority.
All this rah-rah over going to war, and supporting it regardless of the costs TO OUR OWN PEOPLE, is not appropriate.
All these soldiers unnecessarily murdered in the line of duty should bother us very much.
Look, prior to the establishment of the State, all the great Torah Sages warned this would happen and did everything they could to prevent the loss of lives and the traumas that occurred, both when fighting the British and then later the Arab armies and terrorists.
Who were these great Torah Sages? Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Rav Shmuel Salant, the Chafetz Chaim, and many, many more.
They sought to expand Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael under the banner of Torah WITHOUT loss of life (or, as much as possible under some very dangerous circumstances):
a-review-of-guardian-of-jerusalem-the-life-times-of-rabbi-yosef-chaim-sonnenfeld-why-it-challenged-everything-i-thought-i-knew-about-the-modern-history-of-eretz-yisrael.html
At times, Rav Sonnenfeld even risked his life to publicly confirm the Jewish right to walk through any part of Eretz Yisrael.
And what did they receive in return for all their heroic efforts?
Insults. Smear campaigns. Rabid opposition. The theft of money designated for their impoverished religious fellow Jews. The literal starving-out of their communities.
And even the assassination of their most effective supporters.
We really need daas Torah here.
If there's a way to accomplish our goals without war, then that's ideal.
Remember, when Rav Mordechai Eliyahu forced the sheikh to capitulate to the Jewish demand of rolling up the rugs at OUR holy place, he did so without offering concessions AND without killing anyone.
They know how to get the job done.
They're really who we should be consulting.
After all, the Jewish death toll and the toll on the Jewish nefesh is unconscionable.