I’m not afraid of Hamas. I’m not afraid of Iran. I’m not afraid of the IDF going back into battle.
I’m afraid of us.
As I write these words, the government has just approved a renewed large-scale IDF operation in the Gaza Strip. Fifty-nine hostages are still there. Dozens of families are clinging to life and hope by a thread. We are preparing to send our sons and daughters back to the battlefield. They are not afraid. They never were.
But I am.
Not because we are not strong enough. Not because we are not equipped.
Division wins the war for the enemy
But because this time, unlike the days that followed October 7, we are not as unified – not even close. The clarity that once led a people from trauma to unity has been replaced by shouting matches, fatigue, blame, and confusion.Some believe we’ve already lost this war. Others believe we haven’t yet begun to fight it. Many have simply stopped believing anyone at the top has a plan. The one thing we seem to agree on is that we’re angry – and it’s mostly at each other.
And that is the most dangerous battlefield of all.
We’ve been here before. Before the attacks of October 7, we were screaming at each other in the streets, blocking roads, and shutting down the airport. Religious and secular, Right and Left, army and yeshiva. We were a nation splintered into factions, while our enemies watched and waited.
As the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks wrote, “Time and again, unable to resolve their own conflicts civilly and graciously, Jews slandered their opponents to the civil authorities, with results that were disastrous to the Jewish community as a whole.”
They were watching on October 6.
And they attacked on October 7.
We know how that story began. But what if it’s starting again?
This week, I watched with horror as members of bereaved families were shouted down by other citizens on live TV. I watched people accuse hostage families of undermining the war effort. I saw protesters call each other traitors, criminals, and extremists. I heard the tone shift on every front. Anger is back. But it’s no longer just against Hamas.
It’s turned inward.
That, too, is part of the war.
Our Sages warned: “Evil speech kills three people – the one who says it, the one who accepts it, and the one about whom it is said.” What we say to each other right now – on TV panels, on WhatsApp, in traffic – matters. It shapes the spiritual armor of our society. When words turn to weapons, no one emerges unscathed.
In his writings on the biblical affliction of tzara’at, Rabbi Sacks taught that it wasn’t a disease but a mirror. A sign of moral failure, usually caused by lashon hara, evil speech. “For we truly are disfigured,” he wrote, “when we use words to condemn, not communicate; to close rather than open minds; when we use language as a weapon and wield it brutally.”
I fear we are disfiguring ourselves again.
Not physically – but spiritually.
The fatigue is real, the pain is real, and the doubts, fears, and costs are real. But if we let them fracture us, we are sending soldiers into battle without the backing of people who truly believe in one another.
And they deserve better than that.
They deserve a home front that fights for unity with the same tenacity that they fight for our borders.
“Language,” Rabbi Sacks once wrote, “is the bridge across our solitudes.” If that bridge collapses, the best-equipped army in the world will be walking into Gaza on spiritual quicksand.
So, yes, the IDF may be entering Gaza again. But unless we send our unity with them, we are sending them alone. And that is a moral failure we cannot afford – not now, not ever.
“Words have consequences,” Rabbi Sacks continued. “Diminishing their opponents, the self-proclaimed defenders of the faith diminished themselves and their faith... Language is God’s greatest gift to humankind, and it must be guarded if it is to heal, not harm.”
Evil speech “kills three people,” but sometimes, it does something worse. It silences the truth. It numbs the heart. It distracts a nation from the enemy at the gate – and sometimes, from the hostage in the tunnel.
We can win this war.
But only if we remember who we are – and speak like it.