The suddenness of the most recent assault on the Jewish state, as well as its date, has prompted numerous comparisons to the Yom Kippur War. That conflict brough about much political and strategic reconsideration among Israelis. For Religious Zionists, still filled with the messianic hopes inspired by the Six-Day War, it also raised some serious theological questions.

A few weeks after the war ended, Rabbi Yehuda Amital (1924–2010), the head of the prestigious Har Etzion yeshiva and a leading Religious Zionist thinker, delivered a discourse to his students about the theological implications of Israel’s near-defeat, which was soon thereafter published in a Hebrew journal and has recently been rendered into English by Ramon Widmonte. A native of Romania and a Holocaust survivor, Amital fought in Israel’s War of Independence. In this essay, he urges his disciples to search for the hand of God in historic events, and to avoid an attitude of recrimination:

According to what is happening now, it is clear that we are in the stages of the redemption brought about through suffering; however, the possibility that the redemption could come in another way draws us into a halakhic obligation—a positive commandment that is a function of our present time. That is, the obligation of crying out, described by Maimonides [in his code]. . . .

This fact—that the redemption could come without suffering, but that it is coming [currently] accompanied by suffering—obligates us in the positive commandment of crying out to God, of introspection, of reflection on our deeds, and knowing that God expects us to repent. . . . What is demanded is our own repentance; not that of others.

Amital also recounts a moving story that he heard from a fellow rabbi:

[The rabbi] had to inform a certain family that their son had fallen in battle. After about half an hour, the bereaved father said, “I survived the Shoah; in it, I lost a wife and five children who did not even merit a Jewish burial. My son now merited to be born in the Land of Israel, to live in it, to learn in it, to give his life on its behalf, and to be buried with a Jewish burial. Despite everything, there is some progress.”

I would not say it is only “some progress”; indeed, I testify that in my youth, when we were caught in the thick of the Shoah, our sweetest dream was that if it was decreed upon us to [one day] be killed, that at least we should fall in a war for the Land of Israel.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.