Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer
Rabbi Prof. Dov FischerCourtesy

There is no substitute for experience, and no wisdom like the wisdom that comes with age.

By G-d’s miracles, I still am around into my 70’s even though I was on the cusp of kerplunk two years ago when I received a last-minute lung transplant by G-d’s grace. So, although I haven’t “seen it all,” I have seen plenty, and I have made up for the rest of what I missed by studying all areas of ancient, medieval, and contemporary Jewish history — under Arab Muslims, Christian Europeans, and Americans — intensely the past half century. After earning my graduate degree in Jewish history, I never stopped studying and learning it. Moreover, I was politically active, demonstrating in the streets for Soviet Jewry and Israel 50 years ago, doing much more than just demonstrating, and I have never let up.

That is the context and basis on which I write here. I have attended this play and seen this movie.

In a sane world, a ceasefire with Hezbollah that sees them moved north of the Litani River, with the South Lebanon Army (SLA) and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) providing a buffer between the Litani and Israel’s northern border to keep them from returning — all without giving them any prisoners Israel is holding — is an amazingly wonderful thing. The 60,000 Jewish residents of the north, displaced from their homes for a year, may return safely. Hezbollah no longer is a threat. All military effort now may focus southward on further eradicating Hamas from and in Gaza, and finishing business with Iran.

But this is not a sane world. I am 71 with someone else’s lung, so do not know how long I will be around to see the predictions below fulfilled. But I know this: The Hezbollah Muslim Arabs — or whatever terror nickname they next will call themselves after “Hamas,” “Fatah,” “Force 17,” “Black September,” “Hezbollah,” “ISIS,” “Islamic Jihad” — will break any “ceasefire” deal they sign and will try to infiltrate back to Israel’s borders. The SLA will not stop them. UNIFIL will not stop them. Partly because SLA and UNIFIL are incapable of stopping them. Partly because their sympathies are with them. Partly because Hezbollah will kill any SLA or UNIFIL soldier who tries standing up to them. Partly because Hezbollah will bribe them with money and with semi-enslaved young females.

Hezbollah will be back. They will use the interim period to get more and better weapons, more precise, and dig more tunnels. They will find hundreds and thousands of new recruits, reared from childhood to hate and murder Jews, who have not yet had their hips and male reproductive organs, or hands and eyes, blown off by pagers and walkie-talkies, and they will get new Nasrallahs and new spokesmen to replace those blown up and caved in. No one will stop Hezbollah from crossing the Litani again. And it will not make a whit of difference whether the “peace agreemet” guarantees Israel the right to go back in and bomb them all over again when they do. (“When,” not “if.”)

How many times have you watched “The Sound of Music”? “The Wizard of Oz”? “Exodus”? “Snow White”? “The Godfather”? How many times have you seen “Fiddler on the Roof”? You reach a point where you can recite every word in the entire movie or play along with the actors. Sounds crazy, no? To life, to life — L’chaim! Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. I don’t remember growing older; when did they? A blessing on your head, Mazel Tov, Mazel Tov. It was a horse; it was a mule . . . Horse! Mule! Horse! Mule! Tradition!

How many more times must we watch this same movie? They will promise to stop teaching their children to hate Jews and to want to murder Jews. Just as they promised Rabin in 1993 at Oslo. They will promise to cease their fire as they do every four years in Gaza. They will promise to honor ceasefire borders. There will be “rock-solid” guarantees from the SLA and UNIFIL. There will be “iron-clad” guarantees from America. France and England will applaud. And then, in a few years, we will be back to Square One, rerunning the movie all over again. Arab Muslims breaking their ceasefire promises: Tradition, Tradition!

No matter how much you hope at the theater that there will be a happier result each time you see “Fiddler,” sadly it always ends the same: Tevye still will never be a rich man, Lazer Wolf will never get Tzeitel, Chava will never snap out of it and marry a Jew, and the Anatevka pogrom will never be called off. It always will end the same way. Or good stuff: Maria will leave the nunnery and marry the captain. The witch will melt. The Corleones will come out on top, but Sonny will get killed at the toll booth. And so with Hezbollah. They always will be back, fortified with better weapons, more tunnels, better strategies learned from the last round’s mistakes. Tradition, Tradition!

But why worry, right? Won’t Israel have the right, under the sworn terms of the agreement, to strike back if the ceasefire is breached? Of course she will — just like all the other agreements. Right? Can you still hear the husky voice of Ariel Sharon saying in 2005 that we will just go back into Gaza if they start up. Or the cowardly lyin’ voice of Barak in 2000 at Lebanon. Remember how the whole world would stand by Israel’s right to re-take Gaza and re-populate Gush Katif if the Arabs break the deal? Remember how Arafat pledged to Rabin in 1993 to stop educating the children to hate and murder? Remember? It’s in the agreement!

Yes, the Hezbollah Arabs will behave themselves the next four years while Trump is in the White House — may G-d protect him — with his cabinet on guard. But we must not trust in the sons of man, in flesh and blood who do not bring salvation. Even those Americans who are honorable and stand by their promises eventually will pass. A new Biden will arise. A new Clinton. A new Bush the Elder. A new Jimmy Carter. A new Ford. A new Eisenhower. A new Truman. All of them mortal enemies masquerading as friends of Israel, imposing their restrictions on Israel’s right to defend her people because “sometimes friends have to be honest with their friends and tell them what is in their own best interest.”

Yes, Trump will — probably — let Israel go back in. But no one else necessarily will. And — for the record — I am quite persuaded, amid all the Trump Joy, that J.D. Vance, his heir in waiting, has absolutely no kinship or warm, fuzzy feeling about Israel. I have read Vance’s book, his writings, and have listened to him carefully. He is a good, honest fellow who is an isolationist and will not be in the Huckabee-Pompeo-Rubio-Cruz-Cotton-Pence-Stefanik-Haley-Mike Johnson Zionist wing of the Republican Party. Don’t believe for a minute that Israel will have a green light to go back into Lebanon when Hezbollah returns to the border along Galilee, shooting rockets again.

Many in Israel are thinking exactly what I am writing. They know, with wisdom and truth within their guts and hearts, that they are right and not the only ones who think this way. They knew that Yair Lapid’s illegal tyrannical cession of Israel’s territory and gas fields to Lebanon/Hezbollah would not win Israel one extra day of peace. They knew more than all the famous generals who were absolute fools once in civilian clothes.

Biden and Blinken are history. They are out. Anything they threaten to embargo will be arriving in late January anyway. They are toast. (Is that what Bibi is waiting for, late January, so the IDF can go back in? And is the ceasefire a stalling tactic until Trump is inaugurated? Many Israelis think that as well)

The United Nations does not matter. Obama’s and Kerry’s Security Council Resolution 2334 said Israel has no right to the Kotel, the eastern half of Jerusalem, the rest of Judea and Gaza, and the Golan A month later, Trump was recognizing Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing sovereignty over the Golan, and the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. So if Biden, Harris, and Blinken push a bad UN resolution through now — if they dare — Trump will reverse it in two months. They have no power anymore. As Obama liked to say with condescension “Elections have consequences.”

Hezbollah must be utterly crushed, even if it means evaporating half — or more — of Beirut. Hezbollah has come this far only because Israel has evaporated their entire leadership — each and every one — plus the entire command of the Radwan Force plus the exploded chief spokesman who was not afraid of Israel’s bombs plus the 2,000 with the magic pagers that ended their fighting days and reproductive plans. Israel must continue to crush them until they (i) lay down their arms completely and return their weapons to Israel, (ii) submit themselves to Israeli military justice and, yes, war crimes trials, (iii) publicly raise a white flag of surrender and publicly sue for peace, and (iv) give back the gas fields.

Anything less, and Israel may as well start distributing popcorn and Bisli for the next viewing of the same movie.

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Watch Rav Fischer’s latest 10-minute messages: (i) “There is No Palestine” (here); (ii) “Jewish Campus Students Need to Stop Whining” (here); and (iii) “6 Divine Miracles by Which Trump Defeated Harris” (here)