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The Jews in Vienna: A Troubled History, and a Warning for Today (PART ONE)
The Jewish community of Vienna has a fascinating but tragic history. It’s a city where Jews were powerful financiers, advisors, Nobel prize winners, and world-renowned psychologists. Yet, in this same city, the Jews were expelled three times, their homes and synagogues destroyed, and even in the best of times, they lived in an environment of open antisemitism. It is no coincidence that Hitler was an Austrian who lived in Vienna for years, and that many of his ideas came from that period.
Although a Jewish presence existed in Vienna as early as the 10th century, the first recorded Jews arrived in Vienna in the late 12th century. The first Jew, known as Shlom (Solomon), was a mint master and financial adviser to Duke Leopold V and his presence was documented by 1194. In a cruel pattern that would repeat itself in Vienna’s history, in 1196, Shlom and 15 other Jews were murdered by Christians from the Third Crusade.
In 1238, Emperor Frederick II granted Vienna’s Jews a Charter of Privileges, identifying Jews as “chamber serfs” — meaning that the legal status of Jews was that they “belonged” to the Roman-German emperor. Six years later, Duke Frederick II issued the “Charter of the Jews,” spelled out terms for their protection and money-lending guidelines.
During the Black Death epidemic in 1348-9, Vienna was one of the few cities that did not blame the Jews for causing the plague. Consequently, it became a haven for Jewish refugees, which will be seen again in Vienna’s history. During the 14th century, Jews comprised about five percent of the city’s population.
During this period, Vienna’s community was led by world-famous rabbinical leaders. Rabbi Yitzchak of Vienna (circa 1200-1270) was a student of the Tosafists of France and Germany. He brought a high-level Talmud study to Vienna, the standard hallmark of a learned Jewish community. He is renowned for his tome, Ohr Zarua, a work of Halacha (Jewish law) quoted by scholars since he published it.
His son, Rabbi Chaim Ohr Zarua, also served as a rabbi in Vienna. He adapted his father’s classic Ohr Zarua to make it more accessible, including only the decisions without the complete justification.
Rabbi Meir ben Baruch Halevi (1320-1390) served as the Rabbi of Vienna for the last 30 years of his life, and instituted a requirement that a Talmudic student could not officiate as a rabbi unless he had ordination from a properly ordained rabbi. This practice requiring rabbis to have ordination was accepted by Ashkenazi communities in the succeeding generations, and it continues to this day.
Rabbi Yisrael Isserlin (1370 to l440) is considered the last great rabbi of medieval Austria. He authored the classic work Terumas ha-Deshen and a super-commentary on Rashi’s Torah commentary.
Toward the end of the 14th century, antisemitism began to rise among the burghers, likely due to jealousy of their Jewish neighbors. In 1406, during a large fire that destroyed the synagogue, the burghers used the opportunity to attack Jewish homes.
The persecution soon became far worse. On May 23, 1420, Duke Albert V issued the Vienna Decree, ordering all Jews of means imprisoned and their possessions confiscated. Jews who were impoverished before the Vienna Decree were forcibly expelled to Hungary. The imprisoned Jews were tortured, and attempts were made to forcibly convert them to Christianity. Children were separated from their parents and given to monasteries for conversion. After the Pope spoke out against the forced baptisms, the duke responded by having the remaining Jews — 210 men and women — burned at the stake on March 12, 1421. Even the synagogue was not spared; its stones were used to build a new faculty building for the University of Vienna.
The Jewish community of Vienna was utterly destroyed, and Jews were forbidden to live in Vienna.
The leading Ashkenazi sage, Rabbi Yaakov Moelin (1365-1427), known as the Maharil, who lived in Mainz, Germany, at the time, recorded the horrific events and sharply referred to Austria as “the land of blood.”
In 1451, a few Jews were permitted to return to Vienna and were given special protection from the Hapsburg Emperors. By 1512, there were 12 Jewish families in Vienna. A small number of Jews continued to live in Vienna during the 16th century, although they lived with the constant threat of expulsion hanging over them.
In 1624, Emperor Ferdinand II limited the Jews of Vienna to a ghetto on the present-day Leopoldstadt quarter site, consisting of 15 dwelling houses. Their numbers steadily increased; by 1670, 136 dwellings housed 500 families. When Jews of Ukraine faced the infamous Chmielnicki Massacres in 1648-49 known as Tach v’Tat, some chose to escape to the safety of Vienna.
For a time, the community of Vienna resumed its respected position in the Jewish world and the rabbis of the renewed community were once again world-famous leaders. Among them were Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman Heller, known as the Tosfos Yom Tov (1579-1654), and Rabbi Shabsai Sheftel Horowitz (1590-1660), the author of Vavei Amudim, who was renowned for his expertise in both Halacha and Kabbalah.
Renewed Hatred
The second expulsion of Jews from Vienna took place in the middle of the 17th century.
Bishop Kollonitsch, a conniving and influential antisemite, served as the Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Leopold I (1658-1705). At his urging, Emperor Leopold decreed to expel the Jews of Vienna, despite the tremendously negative financial impact this would have on his kingdom, because the Jews were his financiers and advisors.
The influential Jews of the community did their utmost to stop or limit the expulsion. They tried giving the emperor the enormous sum of 100,000 florins but were refused. They asked Queen Christina of Sweden to intervene, but although she did, her words were ignored. On March 1, 1670, Emperor Leopold ordered all the Jews to leave Vienna and all of Austria. The deadline was August 1, and the last Jews of Vienna were exiled in the month of Av. The Great Synagogue was converted into a Catholic church, and the Jewish area was renamed Leopoldstadt in honor of Emperor Leopold I’s success in removing the Jews from Vienna. (And that name remains to this day.) As an aside, Bishop Kollonitsch continues to be revered by Viennese citizens, and a giant statue of him stands in front of the town hall in Vienna.
The Court Jews of Vienna
Within a short time, the expulsion began to negatively impact Vienna’s economy.
The first Jew allowed back into Vienna to reside was Samuel Oppenheimer, who was officially permitted to reside in the city in 1676. Those accompanying him became the nucleus of the very small, not-legally recognized community. They were not permitted to have a synagogue, and all services had to be held in private homes.
Oppenheimer provided needed supplies for the Austrian army, including uniforms, food, horses for the cavalry, and even supplies for the hospital. Yet, despite all he accomplished on behalf of Austria, he still suffered from antisemitism. Bishop Kollonitsch accused Oppenheimer of trying to murder Samson Wertheimer, and Oppenheimer was jailed. Only after paying an enormous sum was he released, and his claim of innocence was accepted. Oppenheimer supported many Jewish scholars and built synagogues and yeshivas in various communities. He also redeemed Jews taken captive in Turkish wars. After he died in 1703, his son Emmanuel appealed to have the debts owed to his father repaid by Austria. In response, rather than pay Emmanuel the six million florins they owed, the state claimed that Emmanuel needed to pay them four million florins. This wealthy family was left penniless.
Along with Oppenheimer, a very limited number of Jews were permitted to return to Vienna. In all, 10 wealthy families — mostly known as Court Jews — resided in Vienna. They initially paid 300,000 florins for this privilege, and an additional tax of 10,000 florins each year.
Despite the antisemitism and lack of civil rights, the Viennese Court Jews’ influence increased. As a result, Vienna became a center for Jewish diplomacy and philanthropy for Jews throughout the empire.
Sephardic Jews and Diego D’Aguilar
In 1718, due to peace treaties with the Ottoman Empire, Turkish citizens were granted permission to travel to and temporarily reside in Austria. Ironically, although Austrian Jews could not reside live in Austria, Turkish Jews could. The Sephardic Jews from Turkey formed a legally recognized community in Vienna. (With typical Jewish ingenuity, there were Austrian Jews who traveled to Turkey, obtained Turkish citizenship and passports, and returned to reside legally in Austria.)
During the reign of Maria Theresa, a Jew from Lisbon retained a particularly powerful position in the Empire. Diego D’Aguilar was born to a Converso family in Spain and was forcibly taken from his parents as a child and raised to become a Catholic Priest. After he was ordained, his mother managed to obtain an audience with him and emotionally reminded him of his Jewish roots. His sister had been caught practicing Judaism, and his mother hoped he might be able to stop her being burnt at the stake.
Although he was unable to save his sister, this meeting reawakened in him a desire to return to the Judaism he barely knew, and he and his mother escaped to Vienna. In Vienna, D’Aguliar became a full-fledged observant Jew and was financially successful due to his reorganization of the tobacco industry. Ironically, he became a favorite of the antisemitic Empress Maria Theresa. He raised tremendous amounts of money for government loans and rebuilt the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna. He remained loyal to the Jewish community and was able to prevent the expulsion of Jews from Moravia and Prague in 1744.
Empress Maria Theresa made D’Aguilar’s a baron in recognition of his services to Austria. Due to his influence, she also abandoned her plans to expel Jews from the Empire in 1748.
D’Aguilar left Vienna suddenly in 1749 when the Spanish government demanded his extradition. He moved to London with his wife and a large family of 14 children. Before leaving Vienna, he presented the community with beautiful silver crowns for the Torah scrolls, upon which his name was inscribed.
Despite her positive feelings towards D’Aguilar, Empress Maria Teresa remained an ardent antisemite. Aside from the 12 prominent families, no Austrian Jews were permitted to live in Vienna, and all antisemitic decrees remained in place.
Emperor Joseph II: Increased Tolerance of Jews
The slow process of removing restrictions on the Jewish community began in November 1780, when Joseph II, Maria Teresa’s successor, became Emperor and ruled the Hapsburg Lands from 1780-1790. In 1781, he discontinued the Leibmaut poll tax, which had been paid by Jews to enter certain cities since the Middle Ages. (This was a particularly degrading tax, as it was a property tax and made the statement that Jews were property and not people.)
In 1782, Emperor Joseph II proclaimed an Edict of Tolerance to make the Jews “of better use to the state,” as was stated in the prologue to the resolution. Jews no longer had to wear a yellow band, they could attend schools and universities (although they were still limited in their choice of professions), and they could live anywhere in Vienna (although they could not own property). He took steps to assimilate the Jews into society, requiring that Hebrew and Yiddish be replaced by the country’s national language in public discourse and forbade documents and textbooks to be printed in Hebrew. He also required Jews to take on last names approved by the Austrian officials.
Many Jews took advantage of the new opportunities granted them, but in the process, many also lost their Judaism. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, salons of assimilated Jewish hostesses served as meeting places for the rulers of Europe. One of the most famous hostesses was Fanny Arstein, who had a salon attended by the prominent personalities of the time, including the emperor and Mozart. In 1821, nine Jews of Vienna were knighted and raised to the nobility.
With newly acquired rights, the Jewish community hired renowned architect Josef Kornhäusel to construct the Stadttempel, the central synagogue of Vienna, which was the first legal synagogue to be opened since 1671. The magnificent synagogue was inaugurated in 1826, but in deference to the law, it was built hidden from the street view.
Despite all the “tolerance,” the Jews continued to exist as a non-community, as they were forbidden by law to establish themselves as a community, until 1867, when Jews were recognized as equal citizens.
Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA from 2007 – 2020. He is a popular speaker and has written for numerous publications. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org. A version of this article was originally published by Aish.
The post The Jews in Vienna: A Troubled History, and a Warning for Today (PART ONE) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The Dreaded Moment Is Finally Here
A drone view shows Palestinians and terrorists gathering around Red Cross vehicles on the day Hamas hands over the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, seized during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
JNS.org – The moment we had all been dreading came to pass on Feb. 20, as four coffins draped with Israeli flags traveled from the Gaza Strip to Israel in a convoy led by the Israel Defense Forces. Two of the caskets were markedly smaller, in a heartbreaking confirmation that Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the two little boys abducted to Gaza with their mother, Shiri Bibas, during the Hamas-led pogrom on Oct. 7, 2013, did not survive their ordeal.
As I was writing these words, I received a video from my youngest son, who is studying in Israel, of two rainbows etched high in the sky above Tel Aviv’s Florentin district. As I choked back tears, I wanted to believe that this spectacle—God’s tribute to these two complete innocents—was a sign of hope for the rest of us.
But then I remembered that once again, Jews are on the defensive even as we grieve for these children, whose smiling faces became emblematic of the plight of the Israeli and foreign hostages seized on that terrible day. For it is impossible to grieve peacefully without remembering the sight of posters bearing the photos of Ariel and Kfir, as well as Shiri and their father, Yarden Bibas, being violently ripped from walls and lampposts by the antisemitic Hamas cheerleaders who have poisoned our lives. It is impossible to grieve peacefully without recalling the cruel barbs about the “weaponization” of the hostages issued by insidious pundits like Mehdi Hasan, the British-born Islamist antisemite who, shockingly and inexplicably, was granted US citizenship in 2020.
Most of all, it is impossible to grieve peacefully with the memory of the grotesque ceremony staged by Hamas before the coffins carrying the four bodies set off still fresh in our minds. Jaunty Arabic music blared through loudspeakers, and children posed with the guns carried by Hamas terrorists as their parents grinned and leered for the cameras.
Many hours later, an even more shocking development was reported. Ariel and Kfir were not killed in an airstrike, as falsely claimed by Hamas, but were brutally murdered in November 2023, as was the fourth hostage, 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz, according to the autopsies on the bodies undertaken in Israel. Forensic analysis also revealed that Hamas lied about Shiri being returned since the body in the coffin was not hers. The agony persists, and we continue to cry out, “Where is Shiri Bibas?”
The giant screen at the ceremony mocked Shiri and her children even in death—their images dwarfed by a vile, crude caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire, his fangs dripping with blood. Don’t be fooled by the apologists who will tell you that this representation of Netanyahu is merely trenchant criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza—a war that only erupted because of the monstrous atrocities of Oct. 7. It is better understood as a symbol of the sickness enveloping Palestinian society, which regards Jews as subhuman, and which liberally borrows from 2,000 years of anti-Jewish iconography to make that point.
The depiction of Netanyahu as a vampire is no accident, just as images of him dressed in a Nazi uniform are no accident. The Palestinians and their admirers are expert at selecting images that recycle the worst canards about Jews: that they have eagerly adopted the methods and ideology of their worst persecutors and that their collective goal is to suck out the lifeblood of non-Jews without mercy—to the point of sacrificing their own people should that turn out to be necessary, with the Bibas family on display as Exhibit “A.”
The association of Jews with blood dates back at least to the Roman era, spawning anti-Jewish “Blood Libel” riots from Norwich in England (one of the earliest examples) to Damascus in Syria (one of the more recent.) It has been embraced by both Christian and Islamic theologians, as well as by the more secular antisemites who asserted their hatred of Jews in the language of science rather than religion. In the literature and journals of the 19th and 20th centuries, the fictitious figure of the vampire emerged with unmistakable Jewish associations.
“It’s impossible to have this discussion without bringing up the blood libel, the unsubstantiated claim that Jews murdered gentile children to use their blood in rituals,” wrote Isabella Reish in a recent essay on the 1922 film Nosferatu. “Thus, European vampires of old are intrinsically linked to Jewishness.” In my view, that linkage is as true of Hamas now as it is of a Berlin salon in the dark years that ushered in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.
We cannot live with this hatred, which has seeped from the Palestinians into the wider world, especially among Muslim communities in North America, Europe and Australia—nor should we be expected to. Combating it effectively means that we must be honest about the sources of the problem.
The main source is the Palestinians themselves. All the current discussions about the reconstruction of Gaza and the possible relocation of its civilian population miss the bigger issue. If Palestinians are to live successful, productive lives, then their society must be thoroughly deradicalized, foremost by challenging the antisemitic hatred that has consumed them. The United States, in particular, must prioritize the complete transformation of the Palestinian school system, installing and supervising a curriculum that will educate Palestinian children about Jewish history and religion, about the abiding, uninterrupted Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, and about the cynical manner their own plight has been exploited by Arab leaders happy to project internal unrest onto an external, “colonialist” enemy.
The second source is harder to pin down and cannot be dealt with in a school environment. I’m talking about the fans of the Scottish soccer club Glasgow Celtic, who waved banners urging “Show Zionism the Red Card” at a match in, of all places, the German city of Munich; about the Muslim and far-left vigilantes who last week descended on one of America’s most Jewish neighborhood, Borough Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they were gratifyingly confronted by local resistance; about the cowardly arsonists burning down synagogues and Jewish day-care centers in Canada and Australia. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies need to do more than just respond to each outrage. What’s required is a comprehensive global strategy aimed at rooting out these organizations, their communications networks and their propaganda outlets. No measures, including deportation and loss of naturalized citizenship, should be off the table, and no country—looking at you two, Qatar and Iran—should escape scrutiny for fueling these fires.
For decades, our elected leaders have cynically used Holocaust commemoration and education as evidence of their commitment to fighting post-Hitler antisemitism. That hasn’t worked very well, and as the black-and-white images of the Holocaust fade into history’s depths, replaced by decontextualized social-media video bursts of Gazans fleeing Israeli bombing, it’ll work even less so. If the soul-crushing pictures of the coffins bearing the Bibas children don’t result in a fundamental strategic pivot, then perhaps nothing will.
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Is Religion Rational?
Moses Breaking the Tables of the Law (1659), by Rembrandt. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – When it comes to religion, how much is belief, and how much is rational? Is Judaism a rational religion? Does being religious require a leap of faith?
Perhaps other faiths do. I mean, I respect everyone’s right to choose the religion they subscribe to and want to practice, but some religions do require extraordinary leaps of faith from their followers.
Judaism, on the other hand, is based not on any incredulous leaps of faith, but on the shared firsthand experience of an entire nation.
With other faiths, the starting point is a supposed revelation reported to have been experienced by the founder of that faith. You either believe it or you don’t believe it. Your choice.
But Judaism was founded at Mount Sinai where millions of Israelites, fresh out of Egypt, experienced the Revelation at Sinai. Each and every Israelite, personally, heard the Ten Commandments from the voice of God, not Moses! And it wasn’t virtual, it was personal. They were all there, and it was an in-body experience.
That’s not faith. That is fact. Not only Moses and his disciples but the entire nation of men, women and children—a few million in all—were eyewitnesses to that revelation. And this was handed down by father to son, mother to daughter, throughout the generations wherever Jews lived. European Jews and Yemenite Jews have the very same tradition, the very same Torah. Yes, there are differences in custom and variations on a theme, but the basic traditions are identical.
How? Because they all came from the very same source—Almighty God at Mount Sinai!
This week, we read Mishpatim, a Torah portion that deals with civil and social laws that are very logical. Everyone understands and accepts that society needs a code of law and justice to be able to function.
So, if your ox gores your friend’s ox, you will be liable for damages. If you’re making a barbecue and your negligence causes the fire to spread to your neighbor’s property and it burns down his house, you will be liable. And if you’re going on vacation and deposit your pet poodle at the Lords & Ladies Poodle Parlor for safe keeping and when you come back, they tell you they lost your poodle, then they will be responsible for paying you for your poodle. And so on.
But even the logical mitzvot have much more to them than meets the eye. There are layers and layers of depth, meaning, symbolism and profound spirituality behind every single mitzvah, rational or not.
There are only a handful of chukim, statutory decrees that we were not given an explanation of and for which we must take on faith, like kashrut or shatnez, the law of not mixing wool and linen garments together.
But the truth is that every mitzvah needs faith.
Why? Because without faith, we do something only humans are capable of. Do you know what that is? Rationalization.
Everyone understands that you’re not supposed to steal. And yet, studies have shown that no less than 59% of hotel guests steal from their hotel rooms. Now, I don’t think the hotel really minds if you take the shampoo. I imagine if you asked them, they would say it’s fine.
But no hotel will let you take the towels or the robes. And no hotel will let you take the TV. I was shocked to read that some guests even took home a mattress! (Apparently, in the middle of the night, they snuck it into the elevator, went down to the basement garage and stuffed it into the trunk of their car.)
If you ask these people, they will likely give you all kinds of reasons why their actions are justified. The hotel overcharged me. It calculates shrinkage into their price, so I actually paid for it. If I wear the hotel’s towel on the beach, I am advertising for them, so they should pay me.
This is classic rationalization.
So we do need faith after all, even for logical commandments like not stealing. Otherwise, we fail. Badly.
Interestingly, the very same Torah reading of Mishpatim, with its logical, civil laws also has the famous phrase, Na’aseh V’Nishma. These were the words of the Jewish people when asked if they would accept God’s Torah. They replied Na’aseh, “we will do” and only thereafter Nishmah, “we will listen” and understand. It is the core of simple, pure, absolute faith, beyond any logic or understanding.
And this explains why the Ten Commandments, which we read last week, begin with Anochi, “I am God,” the lofty, abstract mitzvah to believe in God. To have faith.
And then the other commandments go on to tell us the most basic laws that every low life knows he should keep. Not to murder, commit adultery, steal, lie or be jealous.
How did we get from the highest, metaphysical commandment of belief to the grossest of the gross in a few short sentences?
Because without faith, a human being is capable of justifying anything.
The accursed Nazis justified the Holocaust. REAL genocide, not make-believe South African genocide. How did they justify it? By saying Jews are scum, sub-human. We are doing the world a service by eliminating them. The world will be a better place for it. Rationalization.
Without the first commandment of faith in God, there can be no adherence to any of the other commandments.
Logic gets you pretty far but not far enough. As logical as Judaism may be, we still need the foundation of faith to do what we must do and avoid that which is tempting but wrong.
May we all embrace Judaism with knowledge and reason and by understanding its philosophy, without losing that pure and simple faith that every one of us possesses.
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Israeli Security Control of Gaza Is an Existential Necessity
Orthodox Jewish men stand near a tank, ahead of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as seen from the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, Jan. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
JNS.org – Thursday was a national day of mourning, as the bodies of hostage Shiri Bibas’s children Ariel and Kfir, along with that of Oded Lipshitz, returned to Israel. Hamas also handed over a fourth coffin, falsely saying it held Shiri Bibas‘s remains, but it was subsequently determined that it contained the corpse of an unidentified non-Israeli woman.
Their dire fate, along with that of some 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, stand as an unbearable reminder of the consequences of allowing a genocidal, jihadist army to entrench itself on Israel’s border.
The sorrow that grips all Israelis, reinforced by months of war, adds up to a clear national imperative: Israel can never again allow Gaza to be a staging ground for an Iranian-backed terrorist army. Once Israel has exhausted all efforts to secure the release of its hostages, Hamas must be eliminated from the face of the Earth as a terror army. No one on Israel’s borders can be allowed to build an ability to send death squads and invasion brigades over the border in an organized manner.
Ensuring Israeli security control over Gaza is the only way to achieve this. This work cannot be outsourced to anyone; the idea that a foreign force or paid mercenaries would have the ability to deal with Hamas is absurd. Israeli security control of Gaza is not just a military necessity to prevent future Hamas barbarity, it is an existential imperative.
The ongoing professional inquiries by the IDF into the events of Oct. 7 aim to provide answers to the public, the bereaved families and affected communities about the multiple system failures of that darkest of days.
But these investigations are not just about accountability—they are about learning from history in real time. As one IDF official put it this week, Israel must “carry out the lessons learned during the war, not afterward, and prepare for future conflicts.”
The scope of the IDF’s inquiries is broad, covering four main areas: Israel’s long-term strategy regarding Gaza, intelligence failures leading up to the war, the decision-making process between Oct. 6 and 7, and the first 72 hours of defensive operations.
But even before their conclusions are published, likely in the coming days, it is possible to draw some key conclusions.
Not deterred, not a rational actor, not seeking prosperity
Before the attack, every day that Israel did not act to prevent Hamas from building its capabilities, and every day that Israel gave up on the idea of achieving security control over Gaza, was an opportunity for Hamas to develop further its murderous plans and prepare for the massacre.
The Western-oriented idea that Israel could afford to refrain from continuous security operations in Gaza, and that the IDF could stay back behind the border, was fueled by deluded concepts of Hamas being deterred, that it was a rational actor, and that it sought economic prosperity.
These delusions stem from a catastrophic inability to grasp the jihadist mindset of a fundamentalist Islamic death cult, and from the tendency that was rampant in the defense establishment and the political echelon before Oct. 7 to project Western thinking onto our enemies. This allowed Hamas the space and the time to prepare its attack. Those who wish to indefinitely delay Israeli operations to prevent Hamas from rebuilding these capabilities have returned to the pre-Oct. 7 misconceptions. The “day after” is today.
During the Oct. 7 attacks, Hamas behaved like an army intent on genocide. It seized land, executing civilians in the most brutal manner imaginable, and taking hostages to act as insurance policies for the survival of its leadership. It was only able to do these things because it controlled its own territory, giving it the ability to develop an arms industry, smuggle in weapons and develop its intentions with minimal interference.
Meanwhile, the chief of the IDF General Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, who is due to step down on March 6, has spent recent days in the United States discussing strategic and operational issues with top American military officials.
Halevi visited the Pentagon to meet with Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with staff officers, and with Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the commander of CENTCOM (responsible for the Middle East), to discuss Lebanon and Iran, and ways to strengthen U.S.-Israeli cooperation.
But Gaza trumped the other arenas. Halevi expedited his return to Israel due to the agreement to return the bodies of the hostages.
No international diplomacy or security guarantees can obviate the necessity of full Israeli freedom of operation in Gaza for the foreseeable future. Failure to recognize this would invite, once again, catastrophe, and Israel cannot afford to repeat its mistakes.
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