Jerusalem – Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced Tuesday that Israel had lost the Second Lebanon War because its people had distanced themselves from God.
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“In the Six Day War we fought all of the Arab armies – for every one of our soldiers they had 10,000 soldiers, for every one of our tanks they had 10,000 tanks, for every plane at least 10 planes,” he told Shas Party supporters gathered at a Tel Aviv synagogue.
“How can it be that the people of Israel go to war with all of the Arab armies, who could have beat us by simply walking? Can someone explain all these miracles and wonders?” he asked.
“But here we come to the Second Lebanon War, without Syria, without Jordan, without Libya – just 2,000 Hezbollah men. 2,000! And look at what happens. Do you know why? Because we said, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth’. What do you think? That you can succeed without help from God? Without the Torah of Israel? Without the learned of the Torah?” he commanded.
“Whoever does not believe that the people of Israel live above nature is a sinner,” he declared.
Yishai added that the desire to keep foreign workers’ children in Israel, 400 of whom the government has decided to deport, was “cruelty and not mercy”.
“The parents of the foreign children abuse them. It’s terrifying to enter southern Tel Aviv. The police fear them,” he declared.
Yishai also loudly lamented the state of secular education in Israel. “It is unbelievable what is happening in education today – crime, violence, drugs, stabbings. When you study the Torah you don’t need a police officer in school – you don’t need a metal detector to see whether a student has walked in with a knife,” he said.
“In the pure education according to the Torah there is no such thing.”
Beautiful speech.
Eli Yishai’s comments are both illogical and historically inaccurate.
1. the politaical and military leaders of 1967 did not believe in the Rebono Shel Olam any more than the political and military leaders of today.
2. Classified documents which have since been released reveal that the US assessment in 1967 was a pre-emptive strike by Israel would cause the defeat of the Arab armies without much difficulty.
3. History has proven that a small well organised guerilla force can thwart far superior armies e.g. Afgahnistan, Iraq etc.
“In the Six Day War we fought all of the Arab armies – for every one of our soldiers they had 10,000 soldiers, for every one of our tanks they had 10,000 tanks, for every plane at least 10 planes.”
That is an exaggeration. Any if he is trying to affect a secular audience, they may think that if he is exagerrating about that in a dramatic fashion, then the rest of what he has to say is also melodrama.
M’dvar sheker tirchak.
#2 if you wouldve learned shass, S’U ,mussar sforim, meforshey hatorah, you woudve understood what you say is pure kefireh in hasgacha pratis…
So now that he has pointed out all that is wrong, what does he intend to do about it?
It’s easier to be a critic than a poet.
How about those that say that the Holocaust was an Oinesh (Middh Kneged Middoh), because we don’t have the sincere love and caring for any Non-Yid.
I’ll bet, that at this coming, Tefillah Asifa in Bobov, we’re still going to exclude all non-yidden who are not well.
Are we getting HKB”H upset, instead of being M’oreir Rachmim?
Hezbollah thinks that IT lost the second Lebanon war!
When you lie about facts in the name of the Torah, you lose all credibility.
That the prime minister (Olmert) was a buffoon, the defense minister (Peretz) an idiot and the Chief of Staff Halutz (unqualified for the job) did not help either.
#4 ,
What is inaccurate about what #2 said?
Eli Yishai is a moron and a lair. All of a sudden he knows why exactly does what he does. I always thought one cannot know hashem ways?
If one looks at the two wars militarily one would see the different tactics how the wars where fought? what the secular where frummier then?
However maybe he is right, hashem punishes people who are involved in fraud many times over and over shas. Do violence and burn garbage and call other jews Nazi and also police (he says never needed) have to come to quiet it down. And of course child abuse that happens amongst the frum and the rebbies protect the molester. and I could go on. hashem is mad at the people who proclaim they are the followers of g-d but drag his name in dirt almost every day
This is tiresome drivel. When something goes wrong, it’s because people aren’t frum enough; when things go right, it’s because of the Torah scholars. Guys like this can always explain (perfectly!) everything that happens– but only after it happens. They can’t predict anything. They can only wait for things to happen, and then either claim credit for the good things (it’s because of our Torah scholars!), or assign blame for bad things (it’s because of all you kofrim!). How dull.
Back then no nation fought a war in a “political correct” way and that’s why they won , these days sadly even the USA cant win a war. Yishai is an Idiot.
Yishai joins a growing list of sephardic Israeli rabbonim and Shaas political hacks who seem determined to reinvent history by distorting daas torah to dismantle the delicate balance between the secular and religious and create conflict. The loss in the Lebanon war had nothing to do with religious observance or lack thereof. It was a political fisaco complicated by an impossible mission statement and engagement guidelines by the military. Maybe if sephardim talked less and learned more from history they wouldn’t continue to embarass themselves.
Yishai speaks in the great tradition of another Sephardic leader who also spouts “wisdom” with no substance and seems designed to be devisive.
#15 ,
Nasrallah has admitted in interviews that Israel got the best of his people. Basically, the entirety of southern Lebanon where his Shia followers live was completely destroyed.
Which crowd was he pandering to this time? By his logic, NATO/U.S. forces are “losing” the war in Afghanistan and Iraq because they are longer than major WWII battles. I want him to tell me how exactly did IDF lose in Second Lebanon War? Did Hezbullah enter and occupy an inch of Israel’s territory? Or is he disappointed that we are not occupying them for 10 years like the first war? Modern wars are counter-insurgencies with asymmetric forces. We will no longer have traditional battles where one side beats the other with clear victories and objectives.
Dear Eli Yishai, if your yeshiva had history lessons you would know that during all major Israel’s wars the IDF was mostly secular; all top and brightest generals and defense ministers were just as secular, most of IDF was not Charedi and they still won major wars. Yitzhak Rabin, Moshe Dayan, Shimon Perez, Ehud Barak, David Elazar, Ariel Sharon all major players in Israeli wars and non of them sat in a yeshiva learning no useful skills and shmoozing all day.
Yishai, maybe if you encourage your Charedim to chip in and share the burdens of the IDF, we will do better next time, but sitting in air conditioned rooms all your life, demanding that the state feed you with secular tax payer’s money and lecturing soldiers why they “lost” is beyond hutzpa–it’s disgusting and cowardly.
If I had to compare the problems between Israel’s public schools and yeshivos, I’d still favor public schools because there are choices of quality while all yeshivos in Israel are the same where kids come out knowing zero skills and are forced to be dependent on the state to feed them for life. While Israeli public school kids compete with the world in job market and higher education. Israel’s brightest minds and innovators do not come from yeshivos.
Israel did not lose the 2006 war. It failed to win, because winning would have required flattening a good portion of southern Lebanon, which would have caused a lot of civilian deaths. And besides, you can’t really “win” a war against terrorists anyway. They are like cockroaches. You can kill 100 and 1000 will take their place. Nothing will change until the Palestinians come up with their own Martin Luther King, who will demand rights but not use violence.
There have never been more kollel boys than there are today. One can easily say that our success on the battlefield is inversely proportional to the number of kollel students. The lesson is that public figures should avoid making stupid and unfounded statements, because one can easily contend the opposite. Yishai just made a fool of himself.
#19 ..as one who doesnt believe in torah min hashomayim and one who can say the torah is ‘controversial’ (yes rabbosei, this is what this ‘endarkened yid’ said in one of his posts few weeks back) its no wonder you can say you prefer public schools to yeshivas and post comments the is completly anti our way of emunah regarding yeshivas