If a foreigner had stumbled upon Israel in the past week, he would have had the impression that a war was imminent.
After all, not a day went by without flashy headlines in the newspapers provided by the politicians, who were momentarily freed from the election campaign and perhaps actually continued it, but alongside them were also senior members of the security establishment.
These are also the ones who talked a lot about the worsening of the security situation, the increasing threat from the north and east, and of course how difficult the next war will be for the Israeli home.
Thus, for example, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who went all the way to Broadway Boulevard, the capital of the American entertainment industry, to warn of Iran's progress toward nuclear power.
Gantz warned that Iran could reach within a few weeks an amount of uranium that would be enough to make three nuclear bombs.
On this occasion, the Minister of Defense also revealed a trope and, in fact, tropes of Israel's secret activity in Syria, when he told his listeners that Iran uses Syrian facilities to produce precision missiles and other means of warfare for Hezbollah.
These facilities have been repeatedly attacked in recent weeks, and the regime in Damascus has accused Israel of being responsible for the attacks.
These statements could be justified by the need to warn the world about Iran, and perhaps by the desire to deter the enemy and show him how permeable it is to Israel's operational and intelligence capabilities.
Alternatively, it would be possible to understand the flow of this warning if its purpose was to inform the public in Israel of the security situation, thereby opening a real and in-depth public debate on questions of the military and security.
But it is clear to everyone that this was not the goal, because Gantz went all the way to New York to speak at a conference whose entire purpose was fundraising and public relations, and it goes without saying that there was nothing new in his words that had not already been said before.
But it has been said that often it is not the words that are said that are important - but the melody, that is, the manner and also the place where they were said.
It must be assumed that the organizers of the event where Gantz spoke were actually satisfied, because the guest from Israel provided them with some juicy headlines in the newspapers, and probably covered the cost of the plane ticket and the hotel.
But it is appropriate to ask what the purpose of these statements is and how much value they have, and especially if their harm does not exceed their benefit;
After all, along with exposing intelligence capabilities to the enemy, one is surely wondering where Israel got the information that Gantz revealed, these statements are meant to create an atmosphere of war and panic and fear in the public, without any justification.
Gantz is not the only one.
Senior security officials also competed last week to see who would grab the headlines about the Hezbollah threat, the number of missiles it possesses and the damage these could cause to the Israeli home front.
Israel's crushing response to this threat has also been widely discussed, and we can only hope that if, God forbid, things come to this, we will discover that the promises to strike at Hezbollah actually have both political will and operational capability, which we have not seen so much in the past rounds of confrontation with Hezbollah and with Hamas.
In this case, too, the only visible reason for the abundance of these statements was the existence of a conference or one or another public relations event, which replaced the real discussion that should be held on these issues in private rooms.
Our senior commanders have forgotten the adage that every police officer grew up on: stop chattering on the net, so that it can be used for the purpose of transmitting instructions and orders, and not talking and arguing.
Statements, and certainly noisy statements, do not contribute to security.
They threaten the public, often unnecessarily and without benefit, and rarely make an impression on the enemy.
In any case, it would be good to add a discussion about the here and now to the statements about the threats beyond the horizon, for which we should of course prepare, about the precarious security situation in Judea and Samaria, about the loss of personal security within Israel, about the competence of the land army to fulfill its missions, and much more.
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