The lies we tell ourselves
The repeated lies told by our government are getting us in trouble
In the past, Nasrallah characterized Israeli society as made up of spider webs (by now he has abandoned this metaphor.) At the time, he was referring to what he viewed as the Israeli home front’s lacking endurance. Yet Nasrallah was wrong: Israel has the endurance of steel. A persecuted people that returned to its homeland does not bend easily.
However, the thing that gets us in trouble is the spider web of lies we tell ourselves, under the leadership of our government.
The first lie was promoted shortly after Hizbullah attacked Israel and abducted (and apparently killed) IDF soldiers Goldwasser and Regev in sovereign Israeli territory. This provocation required an offensive Israeli response against the group. However, in order to provide public opinion with a false and needless excuse, the government decided to present “returning the boys home” as the main objective of the war.
This was a utopian and delusional objective, meant to cover up the uncertainty of decision-makers and silence the doubts they were facing. In terms of international law, Hizbullah declared war on Israel, and Israel had full right to fight back and completely defeat Hizbullah. Yet the government preferred to rely on lies. This hurt the government and it hurt us.
The war ended without achieving the goal of “bringing back the boys,” yet the government continued to feed lies to the public, thereby eroding its own credibility. Any reasonable person realized that Nasrallah’s minimal demand for freeing our captives would be the release of terrorist-murderer Samir Kuntar.
With this information, we could have finalized a swap a year ago. Yet at the time we still had a commission of inquiry into the war working in Jerusalem, and the government preferred to shroud the negotiations in a big cloud of secrecy. Months were wasted, again because of the lies we told ourselves, among other things about Ron Arad. Is there even one Israeli adult out there who does not know what really happened to Arad?
‘Speak the truth to one another’
The imbroglio of deceptions and self-deceptions has worsened recently. We raised the willingness to proceed with a swap common between enemies to the level of moral prominence, a sort of model behavior that reflects the fact we are the chosen people; a community that shows solidarity in a way no other country on earth does.
Yet those familiar with the long history of swaps involving prisoners, captives, and bodies know that the image we created in order to lay the emotional groundwork for the deal is baseless. Those who say that we, Israelis, are different than all other peoples as we are “one family,” “one tribe,” etc., should objectively look at the celebrations being prepared ahead of Smair Kuntar’s return to Lebanon.
We lied to ourselves when we said: “We will not capitulate and we will not reward terrorism” – after all, we knew that we will reward it. We lied to ourselves when we said: “We won’t trade murderers for bodies” – after all, we knew we will.
The rescue operation of the hostages in Entebbe was indeed a unique historical act that attested to Israel’s determination to save Jews in trouble. Yet the swap deal between Olmert and Nasrallah has no moral or Jewish or Israeli uniqueness. This is a common process of tactical bargaining; a give-and-take business.
Hizbullah started the Second Lebanon War and was soundly defeated. Despite this, Israel conducts itself as if it was defeated. Our geopolitical situation both in the north and south has dramatically worsened under the Olmert government. Hizbullah greatly boosted its political influence in Lebanon, while the Hamas regime in Gaza was granted Israeli recognition.
These two developments, which in the long run may or may not turn zealots into statesmen, completely contradict the government’s declared objectives. As it turns out, toppling the Hamas regime was another bogus decision by our government.
“'These are the things which you should do: speak the truth to one another” (Zechariah 8:16.) It appears many members of the Israeli government have not read this book.
