A striking feature of the left’s anti-government campaign has been the prominence of veterans of the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the effort. These veterans lead the campaign, plan most of its operations, are its key funders and serve as prominent foot soldiers. The question is why? What happened in that war that radicalized so many of its soldiers? How did that war affect Israeli society in the 50 years since?
To answer these questions and to understand perhaps the main foundation of the civil unrest Israel has been suffering since February, Caroline’s guest on this week’s “Caroline Glick Show” is Elisha Haas, a world-renowned professor of biophysics and the former head of Professors for a Strong Israel. In the Yom Kippur War, Haas served as a reserve company commander in a mechanized infantry brigade that fought in the Golan Heights and Syria.
He saw the shattering impact of the war firsthand on Socialist Israelis who fought with him. As his teacher told him on a furlough from the fighting, “Socialist Zionism was destroyed in the war.” For the past 50 years, the secular left elite has replaced their shattered dream of a New Jew, formed in the Land of Israel but separate and distinct from Jewish heritage and history, with antagonism towards Judaism and the Jewish state that they blame for the failure of their dream.
That antagonism had several consequences that have devastated Israel in various ways over the years. Haas and Glick trace those developments, and how they impact and inform the actions of the left, led by the veterans of the Yom Kippur War.
