Only a Healthy Slathering of Blood Keeps the Sword Free of Rust!

On Attacking vs. Defending.

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Kudos to Rav Yehuda Richter on a wonderful shiur (found HERE) that expands on the importance of attacking our enemies—rather than just responding to their serial assaults.

The good Rav concludes that too little faith in the Holy One lies behind the Simchat Torah attack (among others), and, of course, we concur.

It was the great and glorious “Provoke The Goyim” who first brought this to our attention back in the spring of 2015 in a post entitled— Scared To Strike First.

We reproduce it here in full.

Take a moment to consider it:

There was only one war the Israelis ever launched themselves.

One war in which they took the initiative and denied the enemy a first strike, unleashing instead the full fury of their own potent military force…

That war, of course, was the six day offensive of 1967 – not only the country’s shortest military engagement, but by far its most successful.

In the span of less than a week, the Israelis managed to destroy the entire combined air force of three enemy states, retake the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, Yehuda and Shomron, the Golan Heights, reunify Jerusalem and restore the Temple Mount to its rightful owners. 

And more.

At that moment, there was not a nation in the Middle East that didn't tremble in awe. All the world was in awe.  Could it be that the Jews were, indeed, G-d’s Chosen People?  Could it be this was the proof?

In the end, alas, it was too much for the Israelis.  Too much success.  Too much G-d in the picture.

Instead of becoming a model for future wars and a tool from which they might leverage a compelling deterrence, the Israelis turned their G-d given victory into an embarrassment of riches, cast guilt upon themselves for having succeeded, and thereby lay the foundation for the ensuing decline of the Israeli state.

The Creator of the Universe had been kind to them.  Gave them a gift.  Showered them with eminence.  He glorified His own great name through them.  And they snubbed it.

Know it well: an Israeli first strike is a proud, faith-inspired proposition that brings with it the full measure of heavenly fortune.

It's precisely what the Holy One desires.

More recently, the Rav Amnon Yitzchak has said that a Jewish army has nothing to do with haganah, and never did.

…That Hashem alone is responsible for haganah.

The first prayer of the amidah, after all, is directed to HASHEM, MAGEN AVRAHAM.

That is—no one else protects the Jews.

But if you have NO FAITH IN THE MAGEN AVRAHAM, says Rav Amnon Yitzchak, then of course you'll have to turn to a tzavah haganah and billion dollar walls and iron domes and high tech surveillance cameras, etc, etc., to "protect" you.

He concludes by saying that the sole purpose of a Jewish army is to attack.

And if it's not doing that... it's useless.

Would that TzaHaL were, indeed, a Jewish Army.

And did as Jewish armies once did.

Dean Maughvet