In a normal year, I hang an Israeli flag out of a window at the end of Holocaust Remembrance Day, ahead of Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars and Independence Day the following week. This is not a normal year. This is more than 565 days after October 7, 2023.
My blue-and-white flag has been waving in the wind for more than 18 months. The seasons have changed, but not the message of the flag: “Am Yisrael Chai!” “The People of Israel lives!”
During the Passover vacation earlier this month, the beaches, parks, and nature reserves, both North and South, were packed with visitors who were returning to a holiday spirit after a year-and-a-half of displacement and destruction.
Disappointed vacationers found that some of the colorful fields of buttercups, an annual attraction, were closed – not due to the security situation, but because they were filled to capacity. Beaches around the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) also maxed out.
The strange new hit were tours along the border with Syria, including sites previously inaccessible to Israelis. These opened up because, well, it hasn’t been a normal year, but it hasn’t been all bad.
Five years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic got me thinking about the Butterfly Effect – the concept associated with American meteorologist and chaos theorist Edward N. Lorenz used to explain the way that a small incident in one place can set off a chain of events that may have a momentous impact on the other side of the globe weeks later.
I have had many more reasons to recall the phenomenon since then: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine; the election and decline of Joe Biden; and the return of Donald Trump as US president, among them.
Trump is not the delicate, butterfly type. When he flaps his wings, it sends shockwaves around the globe. The results, when the dust settles, are mixed. “Disruption” is seen in the technological world as something positive. In that light, add the meteoric rise of AI and the renewed space race to the list of Butterfly Effect changes, which start with a ripple effect and can end in a tsunami.
The Hamas-led, Iranian-backed invasion and mega-atrocity on October 7, 2023, when 1,200 were murdered and 251 abducted to Gaza, was an event that has changed the world, not just Israel.
Like the Russian invasion, the Hamas attack showed that existing global mechanisms for preventing conflict do not work. Defense and security are no longer theoretical buzzwords for Russia’s neighbors and NATO countries, or for countries like Taiwan, under the threat of Chinese expansionism; or for those under the shadow of a nearly nuclear Iran. While the world was largely looking elsewhere, China’s ally North Korea last month tested a new weapons system ahead of a visit by Russia’s security chief.
The ISIS-style October 7 mega-assault demonstrated the extent to which the United Nations and its many bodies are utter failures. It made a mockery of international law, which blamed the victims and turned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant into war criminals condemned in the Hague. The double standards discriminating against Israel reached new levels of absurdity.
The rocket fire and acts of piracy by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have had a far reach, occasionally sending millions of Israelis into rocket shelters but also affecting neighboring Sunni states, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf states, and impacting international shipping. The economic Butterfly Effect is also worth studying.
One of the results of the Hamas-led attack, or the Israeli response to it, has been the surge in antisemitism around the globe. Attacks on Jews and mass rallies supporting the Palestinian aggressors and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state have followed previous assaults on Israel, but the speed and viciousness of the spread of antisemitic incidents in places like Canada and Australia was a nasty shock.
One upshot has been the rise in previously disinterested Jews now exploring their Jewish identity and the surge in interest by Jews in making aliyah – emigrating to Israel. Antisemites are unwittingly contributing to the Zionist cause.
Israel’s response to October 7 set off its own Butterfly Effect and is rewriting the Middle Eastern map. The sudden popularity of the tours along the Syrian border, for example, is the result of the very different security situation this year compared to last year.
October 7 was a major intelligence failure
There is no doubt that the October 7 attack was the result of a major intelligence failure; the “conceptzia” (the governing assumption) that quiet, if not peace, can be bought; and the weakness and splits in Israeli society caused by the proposed judicial reform and the reaction, including the calls by some reservists not to serve. (The return of such calls under various guises isn’t just depressing; they’re dangerous.)
But Israel has fought back. In combat in Gaza, it demonstrated that tanks, artillery, and infantry boots on the ground are not consigned to military history books. Israel carried out daring raids on Houthi ports thousands of kilometers away. It seriously dented Iranian air defense capabilities. And it has improved its own defense and warning systems against incoming projectiles. The laser-based Iron Beam system is not light years away, but around the corner.
And there was the stuff of spy movies last September when Israel carried out an extraordinary feat of intelligence, planning, and implementation in the “Pagers Attack,” followed by the exploding walkie-talkies that incapacitated thousands of Hezbollah terrorists in one fell swoop.
This was followed two weeks later by the elimination of Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah and his deputy. And in Gaza, October 7-mastermind Yahya Sinwar finally got his chance to discover the truth about jihadists’ celestial virgins.
These events did more than help restore Israeli self-confidence and deterrence. That particular explosive Butterfly Effect can be credited as being part of the chain of events that led to the Turkish-backed toppling of the repressive Assad regime in Syria. Time will tell where the new regime of Ahmed al-Sharaa is headed and what it may mean for the aspirations of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, particularly regarding the Kurds and other minorities he despises.
Meanwhile, Lebanon appears to be trying to tackle the now-weakened Hezbollah, which no longer enjoys Syrian or Iranian support. After two years, Lebanon finally managed to appoint a president and prime minister, Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam, respectively. While neither are friends of Israel, they want to return a measure of Lebanese independence, free from the dictates of Syria and Iran via Hezbollah.
Indeed, for all its talk, Tehran has lost its grip. The crescent of power so painstakingly constructed from the Islamic Republic to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza has been shattered. The terrorist octopus head still works but many of its tentacles have been cut off. The effects of US-Iran talks on the nuclear issue remain to be seen. Virtual butterflies are fluttering with great speed, and the world is changing at a fast pace.
There’s another reason butterflies have been on my mind. Two years ago, in honor of Israel’s 75th anniversary, the Israeli Lepidopterists Society, together with environmental organizations, announced that the Common Blue Butterfly would be a national symbol.
The announcement came the same week as a massive rocket barrage from Gaza, leading me to write: “Palestinian rockets do not come out of the blue. Unlike Common Blue Butterflies, they should not be treated as one of nature’s wonders but as acts of war.” Sadly, my warning was not taken to heart.
Ahead of Passover this year, the Hebrew Language Academy announced it was changing the name of the Jerusalem Fritillary butterfly (Melitaea ornata) to Ariel Fritillary, to commemorate four-year-old Ariel Bibas who was kidnapped and murdered in Gaza along with his nine-month-old brother, Kfir, and their mother, Shiri.
Ariel loved butterflies and this specific butterfly was chosen to honor him not just for its orange wings, reminiscent of the striking red hair that came to symbolize the Bibas boys, but because Ariel is one of Jerusalem’s 70 names.
The decision was poignant and powerful. There are still 24 live hostages suffering hell in Gaza and 35 bodies awaiting a decent burial. Hopefully, the Butterfly Effect that will lead to their return has already been set in motion. Butterflies shouldn’t be seen only as the harbingers of chaos but as symbols of beauty and freedom.