The era of the fabulists is upon us, those who possess an astonishing ability to assert alternate realities and spin fictional tales of accomplishment and conquest. It is hard to decipher what is happening around us. Is the ceasefire real? The Straits of Hormuz are still not fully navigable despite President Trump’s assertion that it is the condition precedent for a cease fire. Can a cease fire last?
Iran’s claims of victory recall - and how appropriate for this time of year? - the 3300 year old Merneptah Stele, in which Egypt’s Pharaoh, humiliated by the pain inflicted upon him by the G-d of Israel whose people were liberated from Egyptian bondage, recorded for posterity that “Israel is laid waste-its seed is no more." Actually, it was Merneptah whose seed was no more.
It seems clear that everyone is lying.
Trump’s words generally bear a purely incidental relationship to reality. Iran was able to call his bluff because the more outlandish his threats, the less likely he is to carry them out. His increasingly bellicose texts revealed frustration that the Iranians were not bowing to his bullying. But the American interest in this war - certainly legitimate but never identical to Israel’s interests - peaked with the low-risk bombing of multiple Iranian facilities that surely has hampered Iran’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, although not ended it.
Iran, the evil, Jew-hating tyranny - an embarrassment to Islam - is devastated perhaps for years to come, despite its claims of victory. Its economy is shot, its proxies are scrambling to survive, it has antagonized its neighbors in the Persian Gulf, its weapons production facilities have been wrecked, and its reputation is in tatters. Despite the trillions of dollars it spent over many decades producing its deadly weapons, Iran can neither protect nor feed its own people. It survives on bluster and ruthlessness, its leaders hiding underground even as their henchmen continue to murder their own citizens.
Israel’s leaders paint the rosiest scenario and avow that the war will continue until all objectives are achieved. Indeed, despite the hatred-fueled denunciations of PM Netanyahu by Israel's opposition parties, much has been achieved. The threats of Hamas and Hezbollah have not been neutralized but they have been severely diminished, which is not to say that they cannot be reconstituted. Yair Lapid’s wild assertions that Israel’s strategic position in the world is “catastrophic" is classic fabulism. Even by the standards of election year rhetoric, it is beyond hallucinatory. But our enemies do persist and will not disappear anytime soon.
Two dangers loom.
The first danger is the world’s (including the US) temptation to declare the Hamas and Hezbollah problems solved, Gaza to be rehabilitated even with Hamas present, Lebanon rebuilt with Hezbollah still active, and Israel to withdraw precipitously from Gaza and south Lebanon. One can already hear voices - across the world and on Israel’s delusional left - declaring that “now is the time to create a Palestinian state." We would do well to adopt the Trump mantra of this week that “to the victor go the spoils" as well as to recall the follies of the past: “land for peace" cost us land conquered through the loss of Jewish lives and brought us not peace but a recurrence of aggression from the same places we surrendered.
The fabulists will try to tell us that “this time it will be different." We should reject that as a non-starter, even at the risk of offending Witkoff, Kushner, and Qatar, as we should also reject a maintenance of the status quo. The lands we conquered should be settled with Jews. Our maps should be adjusted to reflect the new reality, otherwise we will just be repeating the same mistakes of the past.
Nations that allow their territory to be used as launching pads for attacks on Israel should lose that land in perpetuity. That is effective deterrence. No more, “sorry, we won’t do it again, at least not right away." This will be Netanyahu’s real test, one that no amount of spin will allow him to dissemble and explain away. It is also the smart political move - in Israel, if not in DC or Paris.
The other danger is the US and the world community allowing Iran to retain effective control over the Straits of Hormuz, which seems in part to have happened already. The infusion of cash will buoy the Iranian economy and allow the Iranians to continue to sow trouble across the globe. The problem is that combatting this is not a primary interest of the US or Israel. Neither country uses Gulf oil. Sure, diminished access to the Straits will affect the world’s oil supply and ravage many economies if adjustments are not made. For example, the global price of oil is fixed and uniform and supply shortages in one place affect the price of oil everywhere. But why should that be, any more than there should be a fixed price for bananas or computer chips across the globe?
It is hard to see how Trump will risk American lives in order to reopen the Straits of Hormuz to oil tankers that do not benefit America. Nor should he; hence the empty bluster that led to Trump caving into a cease fire. The unspoken mystery here is where are the Gulf countries - the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, et al, countries that have literally spent hundreds of billions of dollars buying American arms? Why didn’t they bomb Iran, especially after Iran wantonly bombed them?
Despite the protestations of Jew haters in America that the US went to war for Israel, notwithstanding that the bulk of the heavy fighting and weakening of Iran was done by Israel, in retrospect it would seem that the US did the bulk of its fighting for the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Chew on that, Tucker Carlson, one of today’s leading fabulists. They should be using their own military to open the Straits!
Other fabulists have been strangely silent in recent weeks. Those are the faux moralists who are quick to condemn Israel for alleged violations of the hoax known as international law, which seems to be a set of legal principles designed to ensure that the good guys can never win a war. (When I heard the other day that the Americans had a ready set of targets fully “vetted by lawyers," I knew that a ceasefire was imminent and victory a pipedream.) I remember when Israel was condemned decades ago for using cluster bombs in Lebanon. Yet, when Iran used them extensively against us in the last few weeks, crickets. Where are the international courts and human rights activists?
Even worse, isn’t it odd that we have heard nothing in the last six weeks about the civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio? By my rough count, Iran killed only Israeli civilians, and not a single fighter. Where are these phony numbers crunchers now? I was a good student in algebra, but I do not even need a calculator to determine that is a ratio of 100% civilians, 0% combatants, the worst in all of recorded history, and yet… crickets. It is a good reminder that we should stop playing that foolish, macabre game, dismiss the algebra aficionados with the contempt and disdain they deserve, and just win wars.
The coming months present Israelis with great opportunities. A resumption of hostilities with Iran involving American forces is increasingly unlikely. It is more likely that Trump will claim that Iran has surrendered and agreed to his demands even if such has not occurred. What we can do is ensure that Iran’s proxies do not survive, and that Iran is unable to hide behind proxies in the future.
Proxy attacks on Israel should result in devastating attacks on Iran’s infrastructure. They should be held accountable for the belligerence of their agents as if they did it themselves. We are quite capable of defanging Hamas and Hezbollah - and if successful, Netanyahu will deserve all the accolades he will receive from fair-minded Israelis. If he does not succeed, well, then the last three years will be just the longest and deadliest of all the cycles of violence over which Netanyahu has presided during his long tenure, and that will be to his discredit.
Nevertheless, we should bear in mind one of the verities of Jewish history. Ultimate victory over all our foes is not ours, and true peace will await the coming of Messiah.
On the banks of the Red Sea, Moshe told our ancestors 3338 years ago (Shemot 14:13) to “stand firm and see G-d’s salvation that He will do for you today, for as you have seen Egypt today, you shall not see them, ever again." But in fact, we have seen Egypt, many times since, from biblical times to the modern era. We have even fought them repeatedly. What then does the Torah mean?
One of the more recent biblical commentators, Umberto Cassuto, explained that we would never again see Egypt as invincible and intimidating, and all-powerful, an empire so indestructible that we cowered before it and were too paralyzed even to confront them.
That, too, is an outcome of this war that - even now - affords us courage and confidence. The bogeyman of Iran - with its countdown to Israel’s destruction clock in the heart of Tehran, with its furious and revolting rhetoric of hate against Jews, with its goal of Israel’s extermination the very reason for its existence - that Iran has been humiliated and degraded, its leadership dead or discredited, struggling to remain in existence.
That is a divine blessing for which we should give thanks - and that harsh reality should confound even the greatest fabulists among them.
Rav Steven Pruzanskyת a rabbi and attorney in the United States, now resides in Israel where he teaches Torah in Modiin, serves as Senior Research Associate at the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy (JCAP.ngo), the Israel Region VP of the Coalition for Jewish Values, and is author of the two volume Chumash commentary “The Jewish Ethic of Personal Responsibility" (Gefen Publishing).