We Don't Beat Our Chests
On being both humble and vigilant
The successes
After 11 months of pain and tragedy in Gaza, there has been some positive news from Lebanon in recent weeks. Like, really exceptionally amazing news.
On September 17 and 18, 2024, thousands of Hezbollah pagers detonated in their owners’ hands, faces, or pockets. Though the numbers are still unclear, it seems like between tens or hundreds of terrorists were eliminated, including thousands others wounded, some losing their eyes, hands, or… other body parts.
We quickly learned that the pagers had been purchased by Hezbollah from a Mossad front company, that had installed small explosive charges in each pager. This operation apparently pre-dated 10/7, and was part of a plan to neutralize Hezbollah fighters at the opportune time. It did significant damage to Hezbollah’s network across Lebanon. One can only imagine the intel gained by Israel when the pagers went off, and all those injured turned up at hospitals in Lebanon and Syria. Imagine how many Lebanese mothers suddenly learned that their sons were, in fact, terrorists who would not be giving them grandchildren.
In the days following the pager explosions, Israel has gone on the offensive in Lebanon, preemptively striking at thousands of Hezbollah rocket caches and launchers, trying to neutralize Hezbollah before they could stage a significant response against Israel.
Israeli airstrikes have been precise and extensive. They were reported to have taken out at least half of Hezbollah’s long- and short-range rocket arsenal in just a few hours. This led some in the army command to note that the IDF did more in a few hours in Lebanon to cripple Hezbollah than it did in 34 days of the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
On Friday September 27, 2024, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations. Love him or hate him, Bibi knows how to deliver at the UN. Talking to a chamber that had largely emptied out before he spoke, Bibi said that “We will continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are attained.” He added, “We won’t rest until our citizens return safely to our homes,” and focused important time on the “sacred mission” of bringing home the hostages still held in Gaza. The speech in its entirety is worth a watch.
What we did not know at the time was that just prior to Bibi’s speech, he had apparently given the green-light to a massive IDF bombardment of the Hezbollah HQ in Beirut. The target? Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah since 1992.
And now, the news seems clear: Nasrallah is dead. The IDF executed a “decapitation operation” wherein they assassinated Nasrallah and the entire senior leadership of Hezbollah. As someone online Tweeted earlier this week, the remaining active fighters in Hezbollah are the ones who were not deemed important enough two weeks ago to be given pagers.
What’s more, it appears the reason Nasrallah surfaced, making him targetable, was that he was watching Bibi’s UN speech with his pals. The last thing he saw in his life, was likely a speech by the Prime Minister of Israel.
We brace to see what comes next from Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis, and the mobs in the Western world who have now thrown in with the terrorists.
A broader war, it seems, is coming.
The advice
If you haven’t watched it yet, watch The Newsroom, starring Jeff Daniels. Well, just watch the first season and then wish the other seasons were better and the first season never ended.
In the Newsroom, Jeff Daniels plays a brilliant TV news anchor named Will McAvoy. In the very first scene of the first episode, he is participating in a panel conversation about American politics. At the end, he is asked by a college student, “What makes America the best country in the world?” He began by giving a glib non-answer, but then pushed by the moderator, he eventually explodes on the student, telling her that America isn’t the best country in the world, but,
We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn't belittle it; it didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn't scare so easy…
Classic Aaron Sorkin writing.
For more Sorkin, I also often turn on the West Wing. On that show, Josh Lyman was the White House Deputy Chief of Staff. In season five, after knocking his last few assignments out of the park, an article appeared in the newspaper touting him as the “101st Senator,” i.e. someone who can get a lot done in DC. He finds out that his then-girlfriend, Amy Gardner, fed many details to the journalist.
Not appreciating the attempts to publicly glorify his successes, he said to her,
We don’t glorify ourselves. How is the President going to feel when I’ve got better press than him? How’s every punk congressional staffer going to feel when I’m taking victory laps the week after losing a key vote?
We don’t advertise. It’s not the code.
The caution, our code
The last year has been a tragic and somber one. So, when there’s good news, we of course have reason to celebrate. But, we must not gloat. We must not beat our chests. We must not laugh. Doing so is not Jewish. It is not a part of our code.
I am not writing this to sound preachy, and I’ve probably written or re-posted several tweets over the last few weeks that toe-the-line of boastful on behalf of Israel’s successes, but I am putting this out there now because I think it is important. Humility is very much a part of our ethos as Jews - not just because it is a good virtue to have, but because we have, more often than not, been on the other side.
We know as Jews what it is like to be killed. To be beaten down. To have rockets rain down on us. To be victims of attacks. I am by no means seeking to create a moral equivalence between our side and theirs - we are the side of lightness, and they are darkness. But on 10/7, now almost a whole year ago, our security services missed something. They dropped the ball and 1200 Jewish souls were taken. Thousands of others were injured, and hundreds were taken captive. We have been down, and we know how quickly the situation can change.
Earlier this week, Jane Prinsley of Britain’s Jewish Chronicle wrote an article titled, “Why it’s not OK to laugh at those who died in the Hezbollah pager attacks.” Chiding those who revelled “in the bloodiness of it - the blown-off testicles, the fingerless hands…virtual high-fives, and memes,” Prinsley wrote that:
To celebrate in the face of death is a profound misstep; to exult in destruction is to sink to the level of those Israel is fighting. One cannot claim the moral high ground and, in the same breath, cheer the elimination of human life.
Let me be clear: the destruction of Hezbollah’s operational capacity was an enormous achievement. But even necessary military action comes at a heavy cost and to celebrate that cost is to compromise the values we claim to uphold. Even if the fallen are terrorists, even if they were plotting our destruction.
What we saw in the aftermath of this attack was a desperate need for something, anything, that could be seen as a success after almost a year of relentless bad news. People clung to the operation as a symbol of Israel's ingenuity and strength – “Don’t mess with Jews,” the victory seemed to say. “This is what happens when you do.”
And yet, in the darkness of sleepless nights, images of war haunt me. I see families burned alive in their homes, their final embrace in Kibbutz Be’eri; I see mutilated bodies at Nova festival; I see hostages paraded in Gaza, as their captors toy with them in sick cruelty. Which will they kill next?
Humility is our code. Moses was considered to be the greatest Jewish leader ever because of his humility. He was called on to lead despite being reluctant to do so, but did the most important thing in Jewish history: emancipating the Jewish nation from Egypt, from slavery.
Like all of us, I have been guilty of circulating memes online, through various Whatsapp groups and text messages, laughing at the pager attacks, and marveling at the way Israel has learned to get ahead of her enemies. It is incredible. And yes, as Prinsley noted, it is important to be able to celebrate our victories, and to be joyful when our enemies fall. We have many holidays on our calendar when we do this very thing, and I am sure that we will need another holiday on the calendar to, God willing, celebrate Hezbollah’s downfall too.
But, we do not gloat. It is not in our code. This is war, and the tide can turn at any moment. It just takes one bit of bad intel, one terrorist with a gun, or one ballistic missile that evades the Iron Dome, landing on a home in the heart of Israel.
Golda Meir one said, “We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.”
This is our code - appreciating what we have, putting our heads down and going about our business. Raising our children to be good and moral, and teaching them, and others, what is true. We must also be vigilant, and never let our guards down. There is still much darkness in this world. We must always be careful.
Today is a good day because another enemy of Israel is gone. In fact, in this week’s parsha, it says, “And the Lord your God will place all these curses upon your enemies, and on upon your adversaries, who pursued you.” (Deut. 30:7). I love it when a good prophecy comes together.
But for now, we continue to push forward, and do what we always do. It is, indeed, what we’ve always done.
Shabbat shalom, kol hakavod la’tzahal, and am Yisrael chai.
It’s the lesson of the Seder “dom, tsvardayah”… even in the rejoicing of our liberation, we take time to remember the suffering of our enemies.