The days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are traditionally a time of repentance and introspection, during which many Jews ask forgiveness from their fellows for any wrongs committed over the previous year. Ruthie Blum, well-known champion of her adopted country, confesses some sins of her own:

I am sorry for attacking the political system. Though this year its flaws became particularly noticeable—with the power of small parties to topple and paralyze the government, and the onset of the current coalition stalemate—it has served the country well. Contrary to assertions from both sides of the spectrum, each for its own reasons, Israel is and remains a flourishing democracy, warts and all. In fact, part of the problem with the system is that it gives a voice and a place in parliament to all sectors. The battle over budgets and the insistence on a say in statecraft is always passionate and often ugly, but this is an indication of success, not failure.

I am sorry, as well, for not standing up forcefully enough to my friends, whether native-born or immigrants, who bemoan their plight and berate Israeli society for being crass, unfeeling, incompetent, and violent. . . . Though it is true that much of the public could stand a lesson or two in the value of good manners, and civil servants might benefit from a course in dealing with customers bogged down in daunting bureaucracy, Israelis tend to be generous of spirit.

[T]he same clerk who grumbles at having to do his or her job would stop to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to someone who fainted in front of him or her. I take on the obligation, then, to underscore all that is good about the country whenever someone stresses its evils in my presence.

I hope to keep the above promises in the year to come, and to live up to an admonition by Isaiah—verse 5:20—which is not recited on Yom Kippur but should be remembered and applied by all of us every single day of each calendar year: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that change darkness into light, and light into darkness.”

In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu torpedoed a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like when it brings up the IDF’s strategy of conducting raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—it offers them in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden administration. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.