A close family friend recently told me about something that happened to their twelve-year-old nephew at a football match in Australia. During the match, the boy was called a “baby killer.”

I found myself unable to move on from the story. Not because antisemitism is new, and not because Jews have not faced prejudice throughout history, but because of the age of the child. He was twelve years old. A boy who had never held a weapon, made a political decision, or participated in a military operation. Yet someone looked at him and saw not a child, but an accusation.

As I reflected on the incident, I found myself thinking about the leaders in Parshat Sh’lach.

At first glance, the connection seems remote. One story takes place in the wilderness more than three thousand years ago, while the other unfolds at a football match in modern Australia. Yet both raise the same troubling question: what happens when people stop seeing reality as it is and begin seeing only the story they have already decided to believe?

Parshat Sh’lach contains one of the Torah’s greatest leadership failures. The men sent to survey the Land were not ordinary individuals. They were leaders, princes of the tribes, respected figures entrusted with helping guide the future of the nation. When they returned, they brought back evidence. The cities were fortified. The inhabitants were powerful. The military challenge was real. They even carried enormous grapes as proof of the Land’s extraordinary potential.

Much of what they reported was true.

That is precisely what makes the story so disturbing.

The Torah is not describing dishonest men. It is describing capable leaders who saw the facts accurately yet failed to understand their meaning. They interpreted reality through a lens of fear until every obstacle became proof that failure was inevitable. The facts were real, but the conclusion was false.

Joshua and Caleb saw the same giants, the same cities, and the same dangers. Yet they reached a completely different conclusion. Their advantage was not superior intelligence or access to better information. They understood something deeper: facts are not the same as truth. Facts require interpretation, and interpretation is shaped by the assumptions we bring to reality.

The Torah is therefore asking a question that is as relevant today as it was in the wilderness: how can intelligent, experienced, and respected leaders become prisoners of a false conception?

That question feels particularly relevant when reflecting on October 7.

Looking back, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that October 7 was not merely an intelligence failure. It was a failure of conception. Warning signs accumulated over time, intelligence was gathered, and indicators emerged that something dangerous was developing. Yet much of this information was interpreted through an existing framework that assumed Hamas had been........

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