A newsroom colleague sent me a Facebook page this week. It is called Bulletin Network, it has about 53,000 followers, and it looks like a legitimate news site.
It posts only photographs and short captions about Israeli soldiers and police officers who were killed. Some of the posts are recycled from incidents years ago. Others are made up.
If I knew nothing about Israel, I would probably believe it. In the age of AI, pages like this are cheap to run, and there are countless others. Even harder are the stories that might be true.
Based on a new book by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, Haaretz this week reported that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed had called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about 10 days before the October 7 massacre and warned him that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was preparing a major move against Israel.
Within a day, the question had three answers: Netanyahu’s office called the report an “absolute lie.” An Emiratit neither confirmed nor denied it
The job of our newsroom is to tell readers what happened. Going into Rosh Hashanah, I have to admit that on some of the year’s biggest questions, I don’t know.
I don’t know whether that call took place. I don’t know whether Netanyahu wanted the hostages home as badly as he said; some Israelis are certain he did not, and others are just as certain he barely slept until they came back.
I don’t know whether the war with Iran that Israel and the United States launched in February was a victory. The White House declared one, but months later, Iran was still firing at ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
I am sure of one day. On October 13, 2025, the eve of Simchat Torah, the holiday on which Hamas attacked two years earlier, the last 20 living hostages came home. Hamas released them in two groups, two hours apart, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Before the second group left Gaza, Hamas put the hostages on video calls with their families and asked them to send the calls to the Israeli press. The whole country watched, nervous for people most of us had never met.
That morning, US President Donald Trump landed in Israel for his first visit of his second term. He met hostage families and spoke in the Knesset.
He then flew to Sharm el-Sheikh, where more than 20 world leaders gathered for the signing of the Gaza agreement. The day felt surreal. We at The Jerusalem Post were honored to document it as it unfolded.
I judge Trump by what he does rather than what he says, because following what he says will make you dizzy. On October 13, the deal he pushed for brought the hostages home.
That day was the exception. Most of the year was filled with fog, and fog is good for leaders who shout.
When nothing can be confirmed, people want someone who sounds sure. The leader who speaks with certainty offers relief, regardless of whether he turns out to be right, and his contempt for opponents can look like conviction.
Next to him, the leader who says a problem is complicated, or who listens before deciding, looks weak.
The fault starts with us. Politicians perform toughness because we reward it. We share the clip in which a minister flattens an interviewer, and we cheer for the communal leader who picks the loudest fight.
Israel needed a strong leader who would not have to take the Knesset, the press, or public opinion into account, 41% of Israelis told the Israel Democracy Institute in 2014. By 2021, 57% said so.
Jews abroad have their own version in the online voices and organizational figures whose followings grow with every enemy they name.
Toughness has looked like strength for a long time. In the First Book of Kings, after Solomon dies, the tribes of Israel gather at Shechem to crown his son Rehoboam and ask him to lighten his father’s heavy yoke.
Solomon’s elders tell him that if he serves the people that day and answers them kindly, they will serve him forever.
The young men he grew up with tell him to promise scorpions where his father used whips. He takes their advice, the northern tribes answer, “To your tents, O Israel,” and the kingdom splits in two for good.
In January 1952, some 15,000 people rallied in Jerusalem against Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s plan to accept reparations from West Germany, seven years after the Holocaust. Menachem Begin, leader of the opposition Herut party, addressed the crowd, and protesters marched on the Knesset and threw stones through its windows.
Ben-Gurion argued that the murderers should not become the heirs as well, and the Knesset approved negotiations in a 61-50 vote. The money paid for fuel and raw materials the young state needed.
A quarter century later, Begin, by then prime minister, handed back the Sinai for peace with Egypt, settlements included, over the fury of much of his own camp.
Neither man was gentle. Each is remembered for a decision large parts of the country hated, which they each had explained and then lived with.
The elders at Shechem advised listening, and Ben-Gurion and Begin defied a crowd, but both served the people’s interest rather than the leader’s image.
I think leadership is all of it: making the wise decision when it is unpopular, listening to the people you lead, understanding that most problems worth solving are complicated, and leaving people stronger than you found them.
I can’t hand readers a verdict on 5786. Some of the answers may never come. What I can offer is the rule I use for Trump, applied to everyone: Watch what they do.
The Rosh Hashanah prayers are built around kingship. On Saturday and Sunday, Jews will crown one King and ask to be judged, and the remembrance section of the Musaf (additional) service says the record of every creature comes before God, each person’s deeds and his reckoning.
The verdict on this year is not ours to deliver, but what we reward is up to us. The leader who admits what he doesn’t know and makes the hard call away from the cameras should count for more than the one who shouts best.
Before we share the next clip, or the next post from a page we have never heard of, we can ask what the person in it has done.
