In the aftermath of the October 7th earthquake, even before the war ends and we backtrack to unravel how the Hamas surprise attack could have caught us snoozing, we already ask, “Can secular IDF intel officers really experientially know what it means to be a fundamentalist Muslim, and fully anticipate the radical actions of a mindset so completely outside their own?”
As that question hums in midair, just above the continuing October 7th ground tremors, several Israeli Middle East experts are being heard like never before. These analysts were until recently considered “alarmists” or “hate-mongers.” Today, they express the consensus of many who were left-wing, “peace-now” Israelis just a few months ago. Both happen to be Orthodox Jews.
Traumatic motivation to warn
Dr. Mordechai Kedar, an Israeli of Polish-Jewish background, was drafted in 1970, learned Arabic and rose through the ranks of IDF Intelligence – translating intel during the Yom Kippur surprise attack, and eventually retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1995. Today he is an academic and popular public analyst.
Kedar warned Israelis that “compromise [on the part of Israel] makes our enemies happy and instills in them hope that a day will come when we will all run away from this country, if they only manage to kill enough of us… All around us in the Middle East, those who are strong, those who are dangerous, those who are invincible; receive a temporary peace. Because that is what the Middle East gives to the strong and invincible. If we are strong, threatening and dangerous forever, we will receive ‘temporary peace’ forever.”
Just two weeks before that fateful Shabbat of Oct 7th, 2023, Kedar produced an autobiographical Hebrew video marking the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur surprise attack against Israel.
Kedar explains how he and other low-ranking intel soldiers with him knew at least a day ahead of the attack, that the war had for all intents and purposes already begun. They had intercepted raw, immediate indications from Syria and Egypt. But high-ranking commanders discounted the evidence and continued to operate under their mistaken concept that all the signs by Syria and Egypt were fake.
“…[We as rank and file intelligence soldiers] were working for years for this very moment [war]. We had prepared methodology and computers, and everything that was needed in order to give the correct and most precise possible advance warning; for the people of Israel to prepare and act. We did everything the way we should have… That conclusion and that discouragement are still with me to this very day – the feeling of a broken heart over how we tried to warn Israel, and the warning did not get through. From then until today this is what directs me in life, in academia, and in what I’m doing publicly…
“…our leaders did not understand the environment… They were thinking with an Israeli mindset, a modern, liberal mindset – whereas the Middle East that surrounds us works in a completely different way. That’s what I have set as a goal before myself to bring to you.”
These words Kedar recorded two weeks before the October 7th attack.
Kedar warns why fundamentalist Islam cannot resign itself to Jewish sovereignty anywhere, much less in this land that was under Islamic sovereignty for many centuries:
“In the Islamic order of things, Jews are not considered a People but rather members of a religious community that must be reduced (like their Christian counterparts) to the legally- and socially-institutionalized inferior status of ‘protected non-Muslim minorities’ (Dhimmis) under the rule of Islam, the world’s ‘only true religion.’ As such, they have no right to independent existence in any part of Palestine, not least since this country in its entirety is an Islamic trust (waqf) that cannot be detached from its rightful place in the House of Islam (Dar a-Islam)… Given Islam’s pervasive entrenchment in Palestinian society (and for that matter in all Middle Eastern societies)… the acceptance of Israel’s existence by Muslims communities, both within Israel and abroad, will only be feasible upon their realization of the Jewish state’s overwhelming strength and invincibility. Only a powerful, well organized, highly determined and militarily invincible Israel can stand a chance of surviving in its violent and merciless neighborhood.”
Kedar freely and frequently quotes the Koran in Arabic as he warns both Israelis and the West about the fundamentalist ideological foundations of the vast Islamic population, estimated at 1.5 billion worldwide:
“The situation in the world today is diametrically opposed to what Islam is willing to accept: Christian states – the USA, Europe, Russia – control the world’s economy, reign over international politics, mechanisms and organizational systems that run the world, such as the UN. This is the case despite the fact that according to Islam, the Christians are supposed to live under Islamic subjugation with limited rights. This drives some of the Muslims out of their minds, and they are ready to do anything in order to bring the world back to the ‘correct’ order as Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, phrased it in a Hadith: ‘In order that the word of Allah is supreme and the world of the heretic lowly.'”
Undercover Jew
Unlike Mordechai Kedar, whose grandparents were European Jews, Zvi Yehezkeli’s grandparents were Sephardic Jews who lived in Iraq and Kurdish areas before moving to Israel. In fact Zvi’s grandfather considered himself a Jewish Arab, and Zvi also calls himself both Jewish and Arab. He served in an elite IDF infantry unit, and then became a TV network Arab political commentator – after gaining fluency in Arabic and even living among Muslims in Hebron and Jenin.
Though he grew up a secular Israeli, today Zvi is an ultra-Orthodox Jew, married, with eight children in a settlement in Judea. His observance of Torah commandments began only well into his adult life, and he says it contributes to his ability to understand religious Muslims.
He warns: “Jihadist Islam has come to fight. The Left extends a hand to it and… then when there is a time of ‘quiet’ we start to believe everything is OK, until a terrorist arrives in [Kibbutz] Be’eri and evil knocks on our door; and it can happen anywhere if we don’t wake up.”
Yehezkeli says his biggest accomplishment is his TV documentaries. He has already produced three series in which he exposes inconvenient facets of modern Islam. The most noted and popular of those was “Under a False Identity” which warned of the increasing power and influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, and how its quiet jihad is taking over the whole Islamic community and threatening to take control of whole nations without firing a shot, while its charitable front organizations are channeling donations to terrorists. The series consists of five chapters in which Yehezkeli goes undercover, speaking only in Arabic, under the identity of a devout Muslim businessman. The first three undercover trips were carried out in France, Turkey and Germany; the last two in Virginia and Michigan, USA.
At each stop, Yehezkeli carried a hidden camera as he went into mosques and other centers of Islamic power in multiple nations to hear from the fundamentalist leadership of the Muslims living in each country, from their own lips, how they are influencing Europe and America.
In addition to warning Israel and the West, Yehezkeli also addresses viewers in Arabic. On Nov. 10, 2023 he spoke sternly to the Arab world and especially to Gazans who had celebrated the Oct 7th massacre. Some moderate Muslims actually appreciate what he is uncovering and the way he is speaking out boldly in a way they would not dare to do.
