If you've followed me for a while, you might remember that I have had a rough time on Purim over the years because I've been caught up in unpleasant events around this time of year. So although I'm not superstitious, every year as the Purim holiday approaches, I always get a little nervous.
This year it turned out that I wasn't nervous enough.
Although we've been watching events develop over the last couple of months, which made the likelihood of this war breaking out more and more likely, there were a few things that made me go to sleep just before midnight on Friday, February 27th, thinking it was unlikely to start in the next few days. This included the news about another round of talks being scheduled on Monday, the docking of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in Haifa (why start a war when one of the carriers is in port, essentially helpless to do anything but be a target?) and the fact that the IDF Home Front Command hadn't changed the guidelines, which I always figured they'd do at least 18 hours before the balloon going up.
But maybe that was all one of the biggest fake-outs in military history. Or, maybe what has been reported is true, that intelligence picked up on the fact that a meeting was going to be held at the residence of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, involving dozens of regime big shots, and so it was decided that this was an opportunity to decapitate the regime which would be unlikely to be repeated, so it had to be taken. Attacking in the morning, in broad daylight, on Shabbat, is something that the Ayatollahs (and the rest of us) would never see coming, which is exactly why it would work.
Maybe that really is how it went down. I'm quite sure there's more to it than that, but we'll probably never know the whole story.
In any case, the next morning, I was still half asleep when I heard a large number of jets flying. Even in my sleep, I knew this was very unusual, because it was Saturday morning. Part of my half-asleep brain told me to leap out of bed, get dressed, and prepare for possible action. But another part was really enjoying being in bed, under the nice warm covers, and there was no rush. So I took a middle path, slowly waking up, opening my eyes, beginning to swing my legs over the side of the bed, and just then, the sirens wailed, and I knew, in that moment, that the war had begun.
A war against Iran, on Purim.
It's impossible to ignore the symbolism here, and my Facebook feed has been flooded with memes about it. Some of these memes are clever, while others are silly and childish, but nonetheless on point.
There certainly are many candidates for the role of "Haman" in this modern-day Purim story.
The Ayatollah Khamenei himself, who was taken down in the strike on his compound, along with many other senior regime officials, certainly fits the bill. He has been breathing fire for years, declaring over and over again that he was going to lead an effort to destroy Israel. Now he's gone, and Israel is not only still here, it's in much better shape than Iran in every possible way. If there was ever someone who got hanged on the gallows they built for someone else, it was Ayatollah Khamenei.
Tucker Carlson, who has declared this strike on the Ayatollah regime to be "disgusting and evil" for no other reason than because it benefits Israel and he has become obsessed with hatred and contempt for Israel, is another candidate for the role of Haman. No matter how absurd the lies, deceit and gaslighting that guy produces get, he seems to find ways to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible (in a bad way.) Sooner or later, he's gonna get a taste of his own medicine, and I'm sure he won't like it.
But to be fair to Tucker, he's just doing what almost everyone else is doing these days, driving up his social media profile and feeding the algorithms by being outrageous and inflammatory. If Tucker Carlson stopped caring about the truth a long time ago, and now just wants people to watch his videos, click on his links, etc. so that he can make money off it, then he's just doing what everyone else would like to do if they could.
But on the other hand, maybe he actually believes his own rhetoric. In some ways, that would be much worse, but in the end, it won't make any difference.
Even if he never gets a taste of his own medicine in this life, the way Khamenei did, someday he'll have to stand before the Throne and give an account for his life, for every word that ever came out of his mouth. I wouldn't trade places with him even if someone offered me ten times the amount of money he's making from his various revenue streams, probably including the money he's being paid by the Moslem Brotherhood fueled regime that rules in Qatar.
On that subject, I can't not comment on the astonishing tsunami of high-octane silly, stupid, ridiculous, idiotic nonsense I hear and see coming out of the so-called "experts" on international relations, geopolitics, and related topics. Almost all of them agree on what a bad idea it was to launch this war, how it's just making a bad situation worse, won't solve anything, etc. They also seem to be almost universally convinced that Iran is ten feet tall and bulletproof, can do enormous damage to Israel, America's position in the Middle East, etc.
The reasons and the reasoning they present to support these galactically absurd arguments would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that so many very serious people, who have very important decisions to make, are known to take these "experts" seriously. So, they're likely to make some very bad decisions, which will negatively affect the lives of millions of people, including me.
In any case, as I'm writing this blog on the second evening of this war against Iran, it is astonishing to see some of the things that are happening. It's similar in many ways to the 12 Day War last June, in that my family and I have had to run down to the bomb shelter several times, meeting our neighbors from upstairs. The drowsiness this has caused me to feel because the siren often comes in the middle of the night, sending a jolt of adrenaline into my system and making it hard to get back to sleep even after the all-clear signal comes, is also familiar.
But there's other things that are different, principally the fact that this time it feels like it'll be over more quickly, and this time, it'll end with the regime in Iran being utterly defeated and more than likely removed. I don't think President Trump will impose a ceasefire this time, until the regime has been defeated, not just degraded.
That'll be good, for all kinds of reasons, starting with the fact that it'll make it much easier for Israel to finish the job against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Many other issues will likely get sorted out as well, and once again that will all be to the good.
But the removal of the Ayatollah regime in Iran will also leave the way clear for Israel's other great enemy in this region, the Moslem Brotherhood, to finally come out of the shadows and become our next big problem. As I said before, the Brotherhood has already more or less taken over Qatar, and Turkey is also far down that road. Other countries in the region are also somewhat up for grabs, including Egypt, where the Brotherhood briefly took over in the wake of the Arab Spring and could do so again in the future.
One thing is for sure, my life, and the lives of the other 10 million Israelis, is unlikely to get boring again any time soon.
Happy Purim everyone!