Herb Keinon’s excellent article, “Sinwar’s letter and Israel’s blind spot,” opens a disturbing window into the psychology of a fanatical leader.
The handwritten document attributed to Yahya Sinwar showed that, long before October 7, he had contemplated not merely a fierce Israeli response to a Hamas invasion, but even the possibility of Israel using a nuclear weapon against Gaza.
Yet that possibility did not deter him. In Keinon’s reading, Gaza’s devastation was not an unforeseen consequence. It was a price Sinwar was prepared to pay in the hope of igniting a regional war that would ultimately destroy Israel.
That is the essence of fanaticism. It is placing an ideological objective above every ordinary calculation of human welfare, national survival and moral responsibility.
Rational leaders may take terrible risks, but they remain answerable to consequences. Fanatics treat consequences as irrelevant, or even useful, provided suffering advances the sacred cause.
A second article, published by The Times of Israel, describes a completely different political and moral world, but raises an uncomfortable question about the same psychological mechanism.
The Knesset has passed legislation temporarily preventing the arrest and prosecution of tens of thousands of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men who have evaded military service. Its practical effect is to halt most haredi enlistment for months, even as the IDF says it urgently needs thousands of additional soldiers during an ongoing multifront conflict.
The chief of staff called the proposal “inconceivable” and incompatible with the army’s needs. The legislation and the military leadership’s objections were also independently reported by the Associated Press.
Some haredi politicians did not receive the legislation with embarrassment or sober recognition of a painful national dilemma. They celebrated it. They described enforcement as “persecution” of Torah students.
One threatened unprecedented civil rebellion if the courts intervened. A total of 18 haredi MKs proudly disclosed that their own children or grandchildren might benefit, invoking the biblical Tribe of Levi.
Let me be absolutely clear. I am not comparing the haredi community to Hamas.
Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction. Haredim are our fellow Jews, neighbors, and family. Many live lives of kindness, devotion, charity, and genuine holiness.
Some serve in the IDF, emergency organizations, and other forms of national service. There is no moral equivalence between Hamas and haredi Judaism. Any suggestion that there is would be grotesque.
I am comparing something narrower: the fanaticism of leaders who elevate one ideological demand above the safety of their own people.
Sinwar was willing to expose Gaza to catastrophic destruction because destroying Israel mattered more to him than protecting Gazans.
Certain haredi political leaders, together with rabbinic leaders who insist upon blanket exemption, are willing to weaken Israel’s army, prolong the crushing burden on soldiers and reservists, and deepen social division because preserving that exemption matters more to them than the consequences for the country in which their community lives.
The scale is different. The intent is different. The moral universe is different. But the refusal to allow reality to modify doctrine is recognizably similar.
Fanaticism begins when a leader can no longer say: “Our belief is precious, but the facts have changed.”
A reminder of Torah values
Israel after October 7 is not the Israel of 20 or 40 years ago. The IDF has fought across several fronts. Reservists have lost businesses, careers, health and, in too many cases, their lives. Parents are sending sons and daughters back into danger for repeated rounds of reserve duty.
The very legislation protecting draft evaders comes while soldiers and reservists continue shouldering an extraordinary burden.
Against that background, insisting that an entire and rapidly growing sector remain outside military or meaningful national service is not the defense of Torah. It is the absolutization of a social arrangement that arose under completely different circumstances.
I write this as a rabbi who believes that Torah study is indispensable to Jewish existence. A Jewish state without Torah would be spiritually impoverished. Serious scholars should be nurtured, and exceptional students enabled to devote themselves to learning.
But the claim that every haredi young man is a member of a modern “Tribe of Levi,” exempt from defending Jewish life while others repeatedly risk theirs, is neither morally sustainable nor politically viable.
Torah cannot become a slogan used to transfer danger from one Jewish family to another. The preservation of life is a supreme Torah value. Shared responsibility is a Torah value. Refusing to stand aside while one’s neighbor is in danger is a Torah value.
A leadership that speaks endlessly of the holiness of study while ignoring the blood, exhaustion, and fear of those protecting its communities has confused the defense of an institution with the defense of Judaism.
As presented, the legislation does not offer a serious program for gradual integration, tailored military frameworks, expanded civilian service, or genuine compromise. It removes the immediate consequences of refusal. It tells one sector that the law may be suspended for its benefit while everyone else remains bound by the duties of citizenship.
That is not social peace. It is state-sponsored resentment.
Israel is due to vote on October 27. The election will involve many urgent questions: leadership, security, the economy, the conduct of the war, and the future of Israel’s democratic institutions.
But shared service cannot be dismissed as a narrow dispute between secular and religious Israelis. It is now a question of national survival.
At the ballot box, citizens should examine not merely what parties say about “unity,” but what they are prepared to do when coalition arithmetic collides with the needs of the IDF. Will they insist on a fair, realistic, and enforceable framework of service? Or will they again trade national security for parliamentary support?
Keinon’s article reminds us of the danger of assuming that every actor will ultimately be restrained by concern for his own people. Israel made that mistake with Sinwar, imagining that prosperity and deterrence would moderate Hamas.
We must not make a domestic version of the same analytical mistake by assuming that haredi leaders will eventually compromise simply because the present course endangers the country they inhabit.
They may not. Fanatics rarely do so voluntarily.
The task of a democratic state is not to demonize a community, but neither is it to surrender to its most uncompromising leaders.
Israel must make room for haredi life, Torah learning, and religious difference. It must not permit any leadership, however politically powerful or religiously revered, to make the safety of the nation negotiable.
Source:
www.jpost.com
