Identifying and Correcting Our Mistakes Is a Moral Obligation

A friend of mine lent me some books by Israeli historian Uri Millstein. Millstein is now an octogenarian. He has spent his life in critical engagement with the history of his country. He relies mostly on interviews with people who were present as actors or as observers of the events he writes about, and by now, over the course of 50-odd years, he has recorded many thousands of interviews. Educated to the Ph.D. level at Israel’s prestigious Hebrew University, he served in Israel’s defense forces and fought in three wars. He was the official historian of Israel’s paratroops for 15 years and taught military history at the IDF’s Command and Staff College.

Millstein lost his positions as historian and professor due to his rigorous adherence to objective method when his research brought him to be increasingly critical of the official line of the military and political ruling circles. His own position fits in with no party. He is decidedly not a member of Israel’s Left, for his first and still-prime target is the myths that Israel’s Left constructed.

Millstein makes a persuasive case that they did so to enshrine themselves as the responsible, democratic leaders whose bravery and coolness under fire led Israel to victory in its struggle for independence — and simultaneously to portray Israel’s Right as dangerous, cowardly insurrectionists guilty of war crimes which exacerbated Arab hostility and is largely to blame for the lack of peace.

Millstein carefully and painstakingly assembled the data to be gleaned from extensive interviewing to recover the stories that were filtered out of the mythical history that was constructed, as he sees it, to cement the exclusive state power of the Left.

Millstein has held himself aloof from politics, though that has not saved him from the politicians who are deeply invested in the myths he targets from portraying him as a mere political propagandist. Such is the way of politics, as we have found to our sorrow in the Age of Wokeness, in which DEI commissariats commandeered American academia with astonishing swiftness and thoroughness and saw to it that their ideology acted as the prime and superordinate truth in every subject and every (former) discipline.

Millstein remains sharply critical of the military establishment, seeing its politicization of history as a paralyzing sin. This main sin is, unsurprisingly, perhaps the chief sin of humankind in biblical teaching: an unwillingness to correct the mistakes that we humans inevitably make, and instead, to mythologize a divine kind of perfection around ourselves that shields it from criticism, no matter how constructive or necessary.

Here is an example of Millstein’s biting critique:

The myth of security, so deeply rooted in Israel’s culture, has led Israelis to believe in the superlative competence of their security forces, so that they ignore and suppress mistakes and deficiencies and portray failures as successes. As a result, the IDF does not learn its lessons, with increasing harm to its effectiveness.

Israel’s Left lost its monopoly on power at the end of 70s, with the advent of Menachem Begin. Nonetheless, the myths remain deeply embedded and play out in Israeli politics. The upper ranks of the military were in many ways comparable to the Milley military here in the U.S.; all too eager to embrace the myth that compromise would have to be made with Hamas and their like, who will never, ever, make peace until Jews accept the subjugation as third-class citizens that was their lot in the Middle East for centuries under the Islamic imperium.

Military analysts and historians such as Victor Davis Hanson have noted the strategic failures of the IDF. The IDF has been tactically brilliant, yet the end game has eluded it entirely, as it has in every war since 1967. The ground war in Gaza was tactically successful under the most daunting conditions. The IDF serially took over each tactical objective. Yet they moved on and did not hold ground, and the areas they took were reinfiltrated by Hamas.

Now Netanyahu is announcing a significant strategic change: land will be taken away from Gaza permanently if hostages are not released and Hamas departs. This is a significant change and offers the promise of a better result than the return to status quo ante that has been how every battle with Hamas has ended since Gaza became theirs. Only with a critical mindset that sees the failures and corrects them is it possible to escape the trap that mythologizing builds. It looks like that kind of correction may be what is happening.

But Let Us Not Spare Ourselves Critical Review

There is a lesson here for America as well. As tempting as it is to build our own myth as the ones who saved America from its Woke nightmare, we must not pretend our own missteps do not need correction. And the only ones who do not misstep are angels, for whom our constitutional republic was not designed, as Madison taught us.

The national defense team, as we found out this week, kicked the ball into our own goal. Thanks to God, and perhaps in some measure to the patriotism of the editor of The Atlantic, it had no ill effect on the outcome — the Houthis got the full brunt of what was planned for them, and none of our military were hurt or our planes or ships damaged.

Let us not develop a culture of mythmaking in place of the culture that pervades successful enterprises on all levels. America rejected Woke mythmaking not because it was woke but because it got in the way of the rule of merit. Selfless methodology puts success of every sort, whether material or spiritual, before the pleasant but enervating myths we are so tempted to spin about ourselves.

True, we aspire to great things, and those goals we must keep alive. But we cannot pretend that merely to express them and think them is to achieve them. We must work together by accepting the power of coordinated minds that only critical method allows to achieve. When we accept this method, our shortcomings are forgivable. As our deepest awareness tells us, nurtured by religion through the ages: only when we stop pretending to be perfect can we begin to achieve our most worthy goals.

READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin:

Amazon Prime Takes on the Story of David

Moses Argued With God

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