Under the title Victory = Sovereignty, the 6th Youth Sovereignty Conference was held in Gush Etzion. The next generation of leadership addressed the meaning of victory, sovereignty, and the spirit of the people.
The sixth Sovereignty Youth Conference was held at the Oz VeGaon reserve in Gush Etzion, with the participation of approximately 200 youths from all over the country. The conference, which took place under the title Victory = Sovereignty, opened with remembrance of those who fell in recent days in the campaign in the south and the heroism of the soldiers and their families.
The entire event was organized and opened by Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, heads of the Sovereignty Movement, with greetings and with the meaning of the term sovereignty for a people seeking to rule their land, an insight that began with Ben-Gurion's political philosophy. He did not suffice with setting the last furrow of the plow but demanded real political action.
“It is incumbent upon the right to take a step up to political action,” Katsover declared and noted in her remarks the role of the youth, the next generation of Israel's leadership, who have the power to influence political action already today.
Oded Harush, a journalist and researcher at “Kan 11" news channel, who was the first speaker at the conference, spoke of the importance of the spirit of the people as a factor that leads to victory. This is based on his personal experience as a combat soldier. He drew a comparison between the War of Independence, in which the people of Israel possessed inferior technology, with no air force, with few soldiers that included children, an army that had at its disposal a single stolen tank against five Arab armies which it defeated and even increased the territory of the State of Israel, and the Second Lebanon War in which the IDF, the mighty army with cutting-edge technology, faced 8,000 Hezbollah men, terrorists in flip-flops, as he characterized them, and were unable to prevail. The source of this disparity is the spirit.
Harush mentioned in his remarks the Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran conference that took place three months before the October 7th massacre, during which the internal dispute in Israel was identified as an opportunity to strike against Israel. “The enemy looks at the unity among us and reads us,” Harush declares, and notes that in notebooks found in Khan Yunis, documentation of Hamas monitoring the internal disintegration in the State of Israel was found.
The next speaker at the conference was Middle East researcher and Israel Security Prize winner Eliyahu Yosian, who opened with the story of his childhood and youth in Iran under the revolutionary regime. He also recalled the words of Iran's spiritual leader who recently stated that “Israelis don't need an enemy. Their values are their main enemy,” referring to Western values which, according to Yosian, are causing Israel to fall apart from within. “Westernization or Hellenization is the secular liberal philosophy with no Jewish nationalism, with no understanding why we are here and why we want to remain here.”
To emphasize the lack of understanding of Israel's political and military leadership of the profound emotions that drive radical Islam and movements like Hamas, Yosian presented a clip from an interview in which Naftali Bennett spoke about his conduct vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip and related that his decision was to bypass Hamas and reach the Gazans through the economy. This position is based, says Yosian, on a basic misunderstanding as the reality is “not that Hamas controls Gaza but that the Gazans think Hamas.”
“We left Gaza and sent the Gazans to the polls and they chose Hamas because they believe in Hamas. They threw Fatah members off the roofs,” he said. He mentioned surveys that indicate overwhelming support in the Gaza public for Hamas and the sweeping support of 75 per cent for Hamas’s acts of massacre in Israel, “meaning that it is not Hamas that controls the Gazans, but that they believe in Hamas.”
Yosian recommends to the Israeli leadership and public that they read the Hamas and Fatah charters and take them seriously, including the aspiration for the elimination and destruction of Israel that appears in them. “Anyone who believes that it is possible to transfer Gaza's establishments to someone else is mistaken, because they want our destruction and they say it openly and take action to achieve it at every available opportunity.”
The path to victory, Yosian explained and detailed, passes through taking control of land, Judaizing the land in a demographic impetus, and applying sovereignty in Area C and the northern Gaza Strip as a first step.
Later in the conference, a panel was held with the participation of two bereaved brothers, Yosef Yachman, brother of Ephraim HY"D from Neve Daniel who fell in battle in the northern Gaza Strip, and Hadar Rochberger, sister of Captain Shilo Rochberger HY"D from Eli who fell in battle on October 10th. The two talked about their fallen brothers, their special character, contribution to society, striving to do good, and on the other hand about the special connection with the fallen brothers, the difficult feelings, and what the fallen brothers left between them as a legacy, the aspiration for unity accompanied by respect and attention even to those who disagree with them.
Channel 14's military correspondent, Hillel Bitton Rosen, spoke with conference participants about the complex security reality in which Israel finds itself in the midst of a war of survival that has not been experienced since the War of Independence. In his remarks, he reviewed the various sectors, emphasized certain points, and described the reality that the IDF is confronting. At his request, a significant portion of these matters is not intended for public elaboration for obvious reasons.
The last speaker of the conference was Eliyahu Libman, until recently the head of the Kiryat Arba-Hebron Council, and father of Elyakim Shlomo HY"D who was murdered on October seventh and for many weeks was believed to have been abducted by Hamas terrorists.
“We are in a generation in which there is an attempt to obfuscate our connection to the Sovereign of the Universe as the Jewish people and our connection to the Land of Israel. We are in the Land not because of security or because of the Holocaust. We are here because there is a divine promise," said Libman and elaborated on the significance of the contribution of each and every one wherever they may be according to their skills and abilities to reinforce our hold on the Land of Israel based on a deep faith in the justness of our path and the fact that we are children of the Holy One blessed be He. “This is neither racism nor lording it over others, but responsibility.”
“The divine promise is that the whole entire Land of Israel is ours. Even if we are not currently in every place, our destiny is to implement this promise,” he said and added: “The fallen did not die in vain. They fell in the long campaign for the Land of Israel and from above they are working and wanting to see how we connect to the land, believe in the justness of our path, and realize sovereignty.”
The heads of the Sovereignty Movement, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, summarize the event with great satisfaction: “It is exciting, refreshing, strengthening and uplifting to see so many determined young people imbued with faith gathering on a day during their summer vacation from all over the country and choosing to engage in promoting the vision of Israeli sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel. We saw the next generation of Israel's leadership at the conference, youth who well understand the gravity of the hour, the meaning of sovereignty, and their role in the chain of Zionist activity. The next link in this chain is strong and determined and with it, so is the future and security of the State of Israel.”