The beginning of this week was noted 100 days of warfare, denoted by, among other things, 100 minutes reduced from work time. Also the various columns in the press summed up in the media and also the lighting of one hundred thousand candles near the Kosel!
If we make an intermediate summation of a war which has not yet been officially labeled, the most obvious thing is the colossal intelligence deficiency. Obviously, the debacle before the war slowly exposes many of the insufficiencies, indicating that quite a few red lights were illuminated before the eyes of the decision-makers, and equally there were deafening alarms.
Everything was open and clear before their very eyes, with Hamas not even making any attempts to hide their intentions. And still, the blindness was absolute. All of the erudite explanations do not answer the question of how it was at all possible for top military staff, experienced and well-trained as they may be, to experience such a crushing downfall in the moment of truth. They simply ignored the facts before their very eyes and their ears, enabling hordes of armed murderers to seize control over settlements and remain in control of some of them for three long days.
There is no normal explanation except for a heavenly, spiritual one, something beyond the scope of human beings. The boast of 'my strength and the might of my hand' blinded the eyes. This was the underpinning of the "conception" which collapsed with a mighty rumble.
The intelligence failure was not only evident at the beginning of the war but also, even primarily, during its course.
Everyone knew about the Gaza tunnels. But even the chief intelligence experts failed to read the map, literally. They were amazed to discover how all of Gaza is networked with hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, with thousands of shafts in every corner. They were surprised to see the houses in Gaza, fully stocked with inconceivable amounts of weaponry of all kinds, shells, rockets, arms, all of which had been smuggled in under the very eyes of the intelligence corps. These included state-of-the-art arms. The numerous collaborators in Gaza failed to report about the tunnel project and the massive buildup of weaponry which was at the full deployment of Hamas on the day that the full scale war broke out.
The biggest failure is that for over three months, the army has failed to reach the more than a hundred hostages held by Hamas. Involved are not one or two captives which can be hidden for years, as was the case with Gilad Shalit, but over a hundred prisoners stashed away somewhere in the tunnels, whose whereabouts is still a secret.
Every so often, the public is informed that they have located sites where hostages had been held. But Hamas manages to shuttle the captives from place to place, from one tunnel to the next. No exact location has yet been found for them.
Also still hidden is the location of the four top Hamas leaders. The quartet, still running the show, waiting for the moment that Israeli defense capitulates, when it will take over the entire Gaza Strip as before.
One hundred days of a bitter war; hundreds of fatalities, thousands of wounded, and still a long road ahead.
The feeling of power boasted by the government top echelons for years was shattered upon the rock of harsh reality. The Israeli public discovered that in the moment of truth, there was no one to talk to. The army was dumbstruck and paralyzed for hours to the point that private citizens, as well as volunteer armed soldiers stood alone for hours against the thousands of slaughterers who surprisedly discovered that they could do whatever they chose, with no hindrance from any side.
The public also found out that 'the strongest army in the Middle East' was unable to wage war for more than a few days without the help of an emergency American airlift of equipment and arms. Enormous sums invested in the defense budget perhaps afford the future security of the staff pensioners, but the real national defense finds no expression here. The weapon stockpiles were emptied within days, with the army facing only one single front, believed to have been the easiest one.
In the nightmares of the army chiefs there possibly appear scenarios which were not far from reality, especially if Hizbullah were to join the fray full swing, forcing Israel to fight on two fronts. In such a scenario, the story would be altogether different, sevenfold more difficult.
Hashem performed for us an open miracle by inserting into the heads of Hamas to go this all alone, not even including the fiend in Beirut. It was a miracle within a miracle to have the American president, who understood very quickly, perhaps even sooner than Israel itself, that if Hizbullah were to attack from the North, it was very doubtful that Israel could stand against it. America unequivocally declared that Israel's surrounding enemies should not take advantage of the situation by joining the war. The warning sufficed with one word: DON'T, which was enough to scare them off and not embroil the entire area in a full scale war.
One must be truly blind to deny the constant Divine Providence accompanying us at every turn. Even in the midst of the terrible tragedy, the heavy losses, the difficult situation whose end is not in sight, we discern the mercies of the Creator towards us.
We have few expectations from the government top brass, who, most probably at the first chance, will resort to speech about 'our might', 'our army', 'our power', together with the other mottoes of heresy such as 'we will take our future in our hands.'
They, more than any others, should know how many miracles accompany us to this very moment, and how much more Heavenly assistance we need so that this war will end so that we will be able to resume a normal life of routine, together with all the thousands of Jews exiled from their homes who constituted a safety belt precisely on the Israeli side of the fence.
