Fear Itself

After twelve days of war between Israel and Iran, it's time to rethink the role of fear in our national life.

As I sat in my Jerusalem synagogue this past Shabbat morning, listening to the week’s Torah portion in a hall that was emptier than usual due to wartime restrictions, I found myself reflecting on the power of fear.

The reading from the book of Numbers recounts the expedition dispatched by Moses to survey Canaan ahead of the Israelites’ entry into the land. Leaders from all twelve tribes spend forty days going around the land before returning with a massive cluster of grapes and some very bad news.

“The people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large,” they say, addressing the nation. “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”

Then they go even further.

“The land we explored devours those living in it,” they caution picturesquely. “All the people we saw there are of great size. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

The people start to panic.

“If only we had died in Egypt!” they cry, “Or in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?”

Joshua and Caleb, the representatives of Ephraim and Judah, try to reassure the people and convince them that they can indeed conquer the land. They exhort the nation not to be afraid.

“The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good,” they exclaim. “If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them.”

Unconvinced, the people threaten to stone them to death. At this point, God, fed up with the people’s contempt and lack of faith, tells Moses he is going to destroy them and start from scratch.

The story doesn’t end well.

While Moses manages to convince God not to destroy the nation, the ten scouts who whipped the crowd into a frenzy are struck down by a plague; only Joshua and Caleb survive. God decrees that anyone over the age of twenty will not live to enter the land.

Ultimately (spoiler alert), forty years pass and a new generation of Israelites — led by the very same Joshua — enters the land and does indeed manage to conquer it, establishing the first Jewish commonwealth in the nation’s ancestral homeland.

Fear can be a powerful emotion. It can be a strong motivator, but more often than not, its effect is paralytic.

For years, the specter of direct military conflict between Israel and Iran has loomed over the national conversation in Israel. The result of any such a confrontation, we were told by countless experts, would be nothing short of catastrophic.

One such expert predicted “widespread destruction and thousands of casualties,” as Iran’s formidable missile arsenal would be supplemented by that of its Lebanese subsidiary, Hezbollah. Israel’s air defenses, we were told, would be overwhelmed by 150,000 rockets “that can reach every corner of the country.” “Hamas, too, may well join the fight,” he cautioned, “in addition to a third front with Syria, from where Iranian proxies will attack Israel.”

His words were echoed by many others who drew an ominous picture of thousands of missiles and rockets pummeling Israel every day, flattening Israeli cities, destroying airports and other key infrastructure, killing thousands, and wounding many more. Israel’s economy would be — to borrow that same expert’s wording — “shattered.”

Moreover, he warned, Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear program would be ineffective.

“Israel does not have the aerial capability to attack Iran more than once, nor can it destroy all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, as they are scattered around the country and several are built a hundred or more feet underground,” he said. “It will require several days and multiple attacks, which Israel does not have the capability to conduct.”

These dire predictions were supplemented by dark Iranian threats. “There will be nothing left of the Zionist regime” if it attacks Iran, the late Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, thundered in April 2024. This past February, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Ebrahim Jabbari threatened that Iran’s next missile attack would be “on a scale sufficient to destroy Israel and raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground.”

The result has been years of hand-wringing and anxious glances eastward, where Iranian leaders proudly displayed missiles with ever-longer ranges as crowds chanted “Death to Israel.”

All the while, we now know, Israel’s military planners and intelligence operatives were busy putting the pieces in place for the confrontation that was sure to come. We caught glimpses from time to time: reports of a mysterious explosion at a distant nuclear facility, a strange computer worm that caused centrifuges to destroy one another, a key figure in the regime’s nuclear program blown to bits on a Tehran street. We heard rumors about air force jets training in distant lands and saw new air defense systems rolled out and tested against projectiles from near and far.

But nothing could have prepared us for the confluence of diligent intelligence gathering, meticulous planning, precise execution, patient persuasion, and unthinkable circumstance that brought us where we are today.

While we continue to eye our mobile phones warily, reflexively awaiting the next missile alert, we also find ourselves breathing a collective sigh of relief: the direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran that raged for twelve days seems to be over.

And, it must be said, we are in vastly better shape than pretty much anyone had predicted.

Of the thousands of projectiles we had been warned would rain down on Israel every day, approximately 525 were fired at Israel throughout the conflict and about 30 hit built-up areas — 94% of the missiles Iran managed to fire either were intercepted or exploded harmlessly. Of roughly 1,000 explosive drones dispatched by Iran, only about 100 managed to penetrate Israel’s borders and none hit their intended targets. The number of casualties, including four killed when an Iranian missile hit an apartment building in Be’er Sheva Monday morning, stands at 29 — a terrible number, reflecting more than two dozen shattered lives and concentric circles of grief, but orders of magnitude fewer than the massive death toll many had feared.

The destruction, though terrible to behold and certainly devastating to those who lost their homes and businesses, was largely localized; Israel’s cities remain intact and videos of people running and strolling leisurely along the Tel Aviv beachfront during the war have gone viral. The economy, though hobbled by various restrictions, largely continued to chug along throughout; Israeli stocks hit record highs last week. Ben-Gurion Airport has already reopened and foreign airlines are lining up to resume their service to Israel.

There are countless reasons why Israelis weathered the war so successfully, including the utter decimation of Iran’s terrorist proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, over the past twenty months; the disruption of the Iranian military’s chain of command by the elimination of much of its top brass in the war’s opening volley; the methodical destruction of Iranian missiles and launchers on the ground, often moments before they were to have been activated; the remarkable success of Israel’s multilayered air defense systems; the participation of the United States and other allies in efforts to intercept incoming threats; the construction of both residential and local bomb shelters throughout much — though not all — of the country in recent decades; and the public’s careful observance of wartime safety directives.

While the hostilities ended with a tense ceasefire and lingering questions over whether further action will be required in the future, that Israel managed to minimize the war’s impact on its civilian population while decisively achieving its military objectives and exacting a heavy toll from the Iranian regime makes the contrast with the terrifying prewar assessments all the more striking.

It also begs a pressing question:

What more could we achieve if we weren’t held back by fear?

The prospect of military confrontation with Iran has been one of the most anxiety-inducing issues on our national agenda, but it is far from the only one. The challenges facing us are manifold, metaphorical giants in the form of big questions about the character of our country and the future of our people: How can we build a strong and prosperous society that is, at once, manifestly Jewish and robustly democratic; a country that treats all its citizens as equals and to which all contribute equally; a nation at peace with its neighbors and protected against any threat; a state that is part of the family of nations and distinctive in its national identity.

All too often, we find ourselves kicking the can down the road, afraid of what it would mean to pick it up, peer within, and deal with whatever we find.

But the experience of the past two weeks suggests that it need not be so. The dangers may be real, but that does not mean they cannot be overcome. Perhaps, as FDR put it in his first inaugural address, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

To be sure, none of our successes during the Twelve-Day War would have been possible without the brilliance and bravery of the men and women tasked with keeping us safe, without the fortitude and forbearance of our citizenry, without the succor and support of our Jewish family and our non-Jewish allies, and without the determined decision-making of our leaders.

But these assets have not been expended; in fact, they may be far more plentiful than we realize. They can — and must — be applied to our other national challenges, as well.

To borrow the biblical scouts’ language, we are not grasshoppers. We punch well above our weight in virtually every field of human endeavor. It is time for us to stand tall and confront the challenges facing our people proudly, boldly — and without fear.

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As my modest contribution to the war effort, I spent much of the past two weeks doing interviews with international news networks about why Israel felt it had to hit Iran’s nuclear program now and why Israelis were supportive of the war, despite its costs. I invite you to check out a couple of the appearances here and here. Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem. — A.M.