Good Bad Leaders
On social media, I often find myself in a position where I write in favor of many of Netanyahu's and Trump's policies, while at the same time expressing deep disgust for their conduct and personalities. Gadi Eisenkot's recent TV interview highlighted this situation for me, but from the opposite perspective. Eisenkot is a good and respected person, but his view that we can focus on returning the captives and maybe go to war afterward is disconnected from reality. The moment you enter a scenario where you succumb to Yahya Sinwar's wishes, you are heading towards a defeat whose cost in blood and pain will dwarf the horror of the captives' situation.
In essence, the situation can be summarized like this: we live in times when good people lead bad policies, and conversely, bad people might lead good policies. Why? I attribute this to the rise of secularism and humanism and the collapse of nationalism and religiosity. Every good person wants to excel in adhering to their worldview. A Jewish religious person wants to fulfill every last decree of the Shulchan Aruch, while a secular person wants to properly recycle plastic and paper. However, apart from environmental issues, the contemporary secular worldview emphasizes humanism, the unique and equal value of every individual. A good secular person is supposed to excel in humanism.
But humanism is a perspective that does not provide good incentives. When you sanctify the individual, your enemy can use it against you, as Sinwar does, exploiting the lives of the captives with his diabolical cunning. When you sanctify life as it is, the enemy can even use his children against you. You care about keeping them alive because humanism values the lives of children as they are, even those of another nation, while for Sinwar, their lives' importance is null compared to the importance of Jihad.
I have no doubt that Joe Biden is a much better person than Donald Trump, but Biden strives to be good also in terms of the humanist religious values he believes in, and thus, he is unable to halt the massive influx of millions from the third world into the United States. This is one of the most dramatic invasions in history, and Biden is simply powerless against it. How could he be cruel to miserable migrants, separate families, or remove children? This is contrary to the values of his religious beliefs. Similarly, he hesitates to go to war, which always involves the mass death of innocent people, and even the war in Gaza evokes ambivalent feelings in him.
In Christianity, there has always been a great humanist aspect, taken from the life and teachings of Jesus, but it also managed in recent generations to provide a sensible alternative to humanism by sanctifying traditional and conservative values. Somehow, religion is a fossil in which old hierarchical worldviews have solidified, and adherence to religion connects a person to ways of existence that allow surviving the continuous struggle that life entails.
In Israel, if you observe someone exhibiting commendable qualities, such as engaging in charity or even donating a kidney, yet who strongly opposes a hostage release deal, it's likely that they wear a kippah. It's possible that for the founding fathers of the state, who made very hard decisions, and in general were able to suffer the immense blood cost of the struggle for independence, Zionism was a substitute for religion. But its power weakened over the generations among the secular, and it was replaced by humanism. Humanism is enchanting, but it is not the true religion. A person steeped in the religion of humanism will in most cases be a bad leader.