Beit Midrash
It is clear that decision makers bear personal responsibility, but we must not forget that, first of all, most decisions are made due to the public mindset and not just the whims of leaders (if Netanyahu, for example, had decided to attack Gaza on October 6th, would the public have supported him?); and secondly, criticism of the leadership is supposed to be without attribution of malicious intent. No one meant harm here for the simple reason that decision makers are part of us. I had the chance to hear a girl from one of the kibbutzim of the Gaza envelop who claimed that "we were deliberately abandoned" and that "the leadership should be worthy of this people"; only later it turned out, embarrassingly, that the girl's father was a senior commander in the area; so, who exactly "abandoned" her?
The automatic narrative that "the leadership is to blame" – which has become the dominant narrative ever since the Yom Kippur War – is a postmodern worldview that attributes ill intent to all authority (and, of course, ingratiates itself with the majority of the public, which by nature is not authoritative). Moreover, this is a perception that fosters the personal rather than the collective position; ie, that we are in the "customer" vis-à-vis the country which is supposed to please us. The Torah view is that we are not customers but partners in the state. By the way, this is the right way to criticize any economic, educational or family system. We will impartially criticize the failures of the commanding, managerial and governmental echelons, but with the recognition that we are all interested in the same thing – the good of the people of Israel; we may then find that such criticism will also be more effective.
The bad will pass,
The good will prevail,
With God's help.
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