The Myth of the All-Knowing Government

“If the government started the war, that means it has a plan. That means it knows what it is doing. We just do not know everything.”

No.

The fact that we do not know everything does not mean that everything at the top has been calculated to the end.
It means only one thing: decisions are made by human beings.
And human beings, including ministers and prime ministers, make mistakes. All the time.

Israel has been through this before.

We withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000.
It was presented as a step that would bring greater security.
In practice, within a few years we got another war and a northern problem that never really ended.

We carried out the unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005.
That too was justified in the name of security.
In practice, we got a permanent center of terror, culminating on October 7.

For decades we lived according to the logic of the Oslo Accords, which were presented as the path to settlement.
And today we ourselves are dismantling that structure step by step, because reality did not justify the promises of those who built it.

These examples show that the authorities cannot be treated as infallible simply because they are the authorities.

The most dangerous position a citizen in a democracy can take sounds like this:
“They are up there. They know better.”

No, they do not always know better.
Sometimes they are wrong.
And the price of their mistakes is measured not in reputation, but in blood.

Supporting the country does not mean blindly believing the government.
You can support the state and still keep your critical thinking.