Credit Where Credit's Due

But where is that?

Nearly all of us are hoping that this deal goes through, that the hostages will be returned to their families, even at the cost of releasing terrorists and making it more challenging to destroy Hamas, since getting all the hostages back any other way seems impossible, and further fighting Hamas has diminishing returns and comes at immense cost. (I write “nearly all” because Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and most of the others from their parties voted against the deal and thus presumably want it to fall through.)

I must confess that I, like many others, were wrong. We thought that Hamas would never agree to release all the hostages, since they would only agree to it in exchange for their own guaranteed continued survival, which Israel would not be able to offer. But it turned out that with a combination of military pressure on Hamas and its supporters along with political pressure on Bibi, we have a situation in which Hamas has been enormously weakened, and believes that its survival in at least some form is more likely to come about as a result of releasing all the hostages than by keeping them, since after releasing them there will be enormous pressure on Bibi not to continue fighting.

So, assuming you believe that this is overall a good thing, who deserves credit?

Trump, of course, deserves significant credit, no matter what your opinion of him. As someone said to me yesterday, he might be steadily dismantling the Republic, but at least Israel is benefiting from him! It’s hard to imagine that Kamala Harris could have accomplished this, and other Western leaders have been worse than useless.

What about Bibi? Opinions on this wildly diverge. Personally, I will say that although I think he has been a terrible Prime Minister in terms of failing to even try to unite the nation during a war, from a military perspective overall I think he handled things fairly well, though he could certainly have done more to prevent the massive diplomatic fallout whose consequences we will face for many years to come. And if you’re going to assign credit to him for what has been accomplished, you also have to assign some responsibility for how the entire awful situation happened after nearly twenty years of his being in power. A State Commission of Inquiry is required, which of course Bibi is fighting against.

But what about the IDF itself - the combat soldiers who valiantly fought against Hamas at immense cost, the pilots who bombed Hezbollah and Iran (and Qatar), all the behind-the-scenes army staff? Obviously they deserve immense credit, right? After all, if they hadn’t massively weakened Hamas and Iran’s Axis of Resistance, then Hamas would never have agreed to this!

Well, not according to everyone. The standard charedi perspective is that the IDF didn’t do anything at all. It was all Hashem. Hishtadlus doesn’t actually genuinely accomplish anything. Everything only happens because Hashem wants it to.

Aryeh Deri even claimed that for this reason, there should be no State Commission of Inquiry as to how Hamas managed to be so successful on October 7th! “Why look for explanations?” he said. “As believers, we believe that it’s all from Hashem!”

The charedi perspective is that everything only happens because Hashem wants it to - and Hashem in turn decides things solely based on our spiritual merits. (Which in turn, from a charedi perspective, pretty much solely involves the Torah study of charedi men age 18-30.)

It’s amazing how widespread this perspective is, how much it’s considered to be absolutely normative Judaism, indeed the only conceivable approach to Judaism. I’m embarrassed to admit that even I myself, despite being the author of “Rationalist Judaism,” flinched at the thought of saying “No, it wasn’t due to Hashem, it was due to the efforts of the IDF.” I guess you can take the guy out of charedi yeshivos, but you can’t take charedi yeshivos out of the guy.

Yet if you take an honest look at the Torah, and Chazal, how it is explained by the Rishonim (including Ramban and Rabbeinu Bechya as well as Rambam), the picture becomes clear. Saying that it was due to the efforts of the IDF - with gratitude to Hashem for making our existence and resources possible, and with Hashem obviously being in charge of the final outcome - is exactly the authentic traditional approach. To quote Rabbeinu Bechaya:

“The horse is prepared for the day of battle; but victory comes from God” (Proverbs 21:31). In this verse Solomon warns everybody to do whatever is in his power by using natural means to achieve his success, and to leave whatever is beyond that in the Hands of Heaven. A miracle occurs only when all natural means have proven to be inadequate to produce the desired result. Man was created to exist in the framework of the laws of nature, and therefore he needs to do whatever actions and arrangements are ordinarily required to achieve his desired aims.

And even with charedim, when it comes to things that are really important to them to get done and that they can’t offload to others - such as everything to do with gaining political strength - they clearly believe that it’s their actions which innately accomplish results. And they also believe that it’s the decisions and actions of their political opponents which innately cause harm to them.

See the following posts for further discussion:

• The Soldiers Are Really Doing Stuff

• Torah vs. Daas Torah, Again

• Prepare Your Horses

• How to Make Money - in which we see that Chazal were of the view that it’s material effort (along with prayer) which is responsible for bringing results.

And thank you to everyone who put in material, physical effort to fight our enemies, leading to the return of our hostages. Your spiritual merit is unimaginable.