In his most difficult moments – and who hasn’t had such moments since the outbreak of the war in Israel – Israel’s outgoing ambassador to Washington Mike Herzog drew strength from the Mekoros HaKedoshim, Yisrael Hayom reported. In the most alarming hours, he would turn to Perek 83 in Tehillim: “G-d, do not be silent to You, do not be quiet and do not be still, O G-d… They said, ‘Come, and let us annihilate them from the nation, and the name of Israel shall no longer be remembered.'” He knew the second source from his father’s house, or to be precise, from his grandfather. In the spring of 1941, the Nazi army stood at the gates of Eretz Yisrael and there was real fear over the continued existence of the Jewish yishuv. Then-Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Halevi Herzog, Mike’s grandfather, expressed his famous stance that “there won’t be a third Churban.” Eighty-one years later, when Israel found itself in an “existential situation,” the grandson returned to his grandfather’s words. In an extensive interview with Yisrael Hayom, Herzog revealed many disturbing details about the Biden administration’s stance toward Israel since October 7. For example, when Iran directly attacked Israel for the first time, Herzog said that the Biden administration ordered Israel not to retaliate. “We responded that it doesn’t work like that in the Middle East, and that for us, it’s an existential situation,” Herzog said. But the problems began way before then, from the beginning of the war in Gaza. Although Biden initially expressed ardent support for Israel and even visited Israel after the war broke out, “as time went by, the pressures increased and we entered a more complex discourse about the management of the war, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, and the collateral damage,” Herzog said. “This led to a situation where every decision-making process was accompanied by a complex and charged discussion with them and we were forced to intervene and mediate between the governments daily.” “There were difficult moments and there were times when they went crazy. More than once, they really attacked me and said, ‘You’re crazy, you’ve lost your minds, how could you do something that would lead to escalation? You will drag us into war because you didn’t think it through, and then you will ask us to come and rescue you.’ There were tough arguments about things Israel did that, in their eyes, were a step too far.” “We had to contain it so they wouldn’t blow up. We explained that we didn’t want to put them in a position where they would say ‘no,’ and we would still go ahead and do it. I told them, ‘Therefore, it is better not to say.’ I also asked them, ‘What would you have said if I had updated you in advance? Would you have agreed or not?’ Or, ‘How would you have reacted if someone had done this or that to you?’ Now look, if all this had developed into a regional escalation that they were afraid of – fine, but it didn’t happen. Therefore, we got through the crisis. In the end, they understood that Israel’s achievements against Iran and Hezbollah served their interests.” Herzog added that despite the Biden administration’s constant warnings of restraint, when Israel ignored them and […]