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A Free Society Is Only as Strong as the Citizens Willing to Defend It

(Free Press) Bari Weiss - On Oct. 7, ordinary Israelis left their offices, closed their laptops, and abandoned their fields to pick up weapons, in many cases without waiting for instructions from the state or its army. On that black morning, and in the months since, these men and women have displayed the kind of heroism most thought belonged to the mythic past. The public intellectual and Bible scholar Micah Goodman told me in Jerusalem that the country went through a collective near-death experience. "For the first time in our lives, we had a moment where we could imagine that the whole thing was over. That the whole thing ended. You know how when individuals have a near-death experience, they're transformed. Because they learned that life should not be trivialized. As a country, we had a near-death experience, and now we're transformed because we know that Jewish sovereignty should not be taken for granted." Israel is currently fighting a second war of independence - an existential war necessary for the survival of the state, as everyone here believes. Before Oct. 7, despite the country's universal draft, many Israelis say they, too, believed that history and heroism were things that belonged to the past. Then the most serious thing imaginable was upon them. And the most serious men and women I have ever encountered emerged to confront it. The writer Haviv Rettig Gur told me in Jerusalem: "We will continue as our forefathers and foremothers did before us: to live on our sword. We will defend ourselves. We will stand united against enemies who want to destroy us. And they actually want to destroy us. This isn't World War I-style propaganda. They say it. They're actually coming for us."
2024-03-31 00:00:00
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