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Thoughts on parashat Shelach 5785
Thursday, June 12, late afternoon. Rivkah and I are in Seattle, sitting at the restaurant nearby Pike Place Market. I looked at my phone and read the breaking news about the Israeli military campaign against the Iranian Islamic regime and their genocidal nuclear program. The news surprised me a bit – I didn’t expect it to happen so soon – but at the same time filled me with great hope. We were in the middle of our road-trip vacation, traveling across several states. And since this news broke out I have been spontaneously approached by at least 6 or 7 individuals, non-Jewish Americans, who expressed a complete support or full-blown admiration of the actions of the State of Israel and its military. Are you an Israeli? – asked a woman in the elevator in one of the hotels in Reno – no, I’m just Jewish – but she continued: I am amazed with what the Israelis are doing right now, for themselves and the entire world, and with their courage! I am amazed too – I responded – it looks like yet another materialization of the David and Goliath story from the Book of Kings.
Frankly, I have been waiting for this moment since 2011. It was then when I got deeply immersed in studying the Middle Eastern geopolitics and realized that the core problem of the entire region is the Iranian genocidal Islamo-Nazi regime and their nuclear program. And that there is no other solution to that problem than counterrevolution regime change or war. Or both.
Yes, war is awful. It’s the antithesis of civilization. But sometimes, paradoxically, it’s the only way to keep civilization alive and on track. I don’t have to bring a lot of historical examples here, just one is enough: the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany.
The Iranian genocidal regime has been chanting death to Israel and death to America since 1979 – the year I was born. But, as we know, this murderous regime is not only our enemy: it’s the enemy of women, it’s the enemy of their own, Iranian people (around 80% of Iranians wish for its ultimate collapse) LGBTQ people, all other than Islamic religious communities and basically the entire civilized world. Its defeat has the capacity to bring peace and blessing to the entire region and freedom to all the groups of people I just mentioned. It will certainly reshape the entire cultural, civilizational and geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.
The landscape that again, thanks to the state of Israel, has been already remarkably reshaped since October 7, 2023. Two of our most deadly enemies – Hamas and Hezbollah – are decimated, almost completely neutralized and their leaders are gone. That is what our People and the State of Israel accomplished before June 13. But what they have accomplished since then is even more staggering: the genocidal Islamo-Nazi regime of Teheran is decimated too and it’s fair to say that they are on their knees before us. Yes, the regime still inflicts a lot of damage to us, resulting in deaths of two dozens of our people and hundreds of wounded. We all mourn our dead and pray for the wounded. But the damage Israel has done to our enemy is incomparable – our forces managed to destroy the Iranian anti-aircraft defense system, which resulted in our complete air superiority, to neutralize more than a half of the enemy ballistic missile launchers and inflict substantial harm to their nuclear program. But what is equally important – the Iranian, genocidal regime has been decapitated and – according to many political commentators – is about to collapse.
But that’s not the end of the story and it cannot be the end of it. The work that is being done by the Israeli military has to be finished in line with the principle expressed numerous times in the Torah – on which I elaborated a few weeks ago – namely, the idea of defeating the enemy – the Iranian regime and their nuclear program – completely. This is how, by the way, we should now understand all these seemingly genocidal and therefore unsettling, for many, Biblical stories of “what God has commanded the Israelites to do with their enemies”.
The mission has to be completed because if it’s not we may likely end up in a situation that would be much worse than before June 13. The Iranian, genocidal nuclear program must be destroyed completely, without possibility of recovering it. The genocidal Islamo-Nazi regime of Mullahs can’t survive or recover from it either. If either of them remains in place, everything that our people in our homeland have done so far will go to waste, including the casualties and all the sacrifices our nation has suffered as a result of launching this operation and generally, due to this entire conflict.
This is the one time, historical opportunity, very similar to the one we read in our parasha, in the story of 12 spies sent to the promised land on reconnaissance to conquer it. As we know, 10 of them were struck by fear, which led to the complete collapse of the conquest plan and resulted in a severe Divine punishment – 40 “additional” years in the desert…
Therefore, the one time opportunity we experience now cannot be squandered either. The actions of our Israeli leadership – and our actions as well! – cannot be sabotaged by fear or compromise. If they are, we may all pay an enormous price for it, similar or worse than the 40 additional years the Israelites had to spend wandering in the desert.
We are at a historic time in the Middle East right now. Never in our lifetimes have we been closer to a complete revolutionary fervor that gives promise of normality, peace and blessing for the entire Middle East and never have we been in more danger of seeing the entire region blow up. Our complete victory over the Islamic regime will wipe out one of the darkest, existential threats to our People, not only in Israel but in the entire world. Our victory will likely also bring liberation and longed-for freedom for the Persian people, oppressed and tortured by a hateful cast of religious fanatics for almost 5 decades. Our victory will be also the victory of the entire civilized world, and this whole world should be grateful for what our people and the State of Israel is doing right now. Let us then pray for the complete victory of the state of Israel, a victory that may result in long-lasting peace and blessing not only for the region but for the other parts of the world as well.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Mirski
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