Operation Rising Lion – what’s behind the name of Israel’s offensive against Iran?

Hebrew scholar and Jewish academic Irene Lancaster explains the biblical significance behind the name of Israel’s military offensive in Iran – Operation Rising Lion – and its connection to CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. 

On Friday June thirteenth, an auspicious date in Judaism, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion.  Friends from Israel sent Shabbat messages featuring a lion harking back to Aslan within the Narnia stories.

Later it became clear that ‘Operation Narnia‘ was actually the code-name for the elimination of the nuclear scientists working in Iran on the most effective ways of exterminating the Jewish people.

Narnia is well-known to generations of youngsters because of the book series by CS Lewis, followed by the highly regarded movies. Miracles can occur in a fantasy world – you are not quite sure what’s real and what is not. CS Lewis was influenced by Charles Williams’ earlier book, The Place of the Lion, which is an allegory about this world and the subsequent, during which amazing things can occur, but where evil exists. 

This Shabbat we’ll be reading Shelach Lecha, the famous ‘Spy’ incident from Numbers 13-15. Here the Jewish leader, Moses, sends out 10 people to research the Land of Canaan and to bring back their preliminary findings to the Children of Israel. This group of scouts is headed by Joshua and Caleb.

Tragically, the opposite members of the team see only negativity and produce back a foul report, based on their very own fears and misperceptions. Instead of a courageous, lion-like stance, eight of the ten remark that ‘we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were of their eyes.’ (Numbers 13:33). This was the basis of their sin. They felt badly about themselves after which projected that self-doubt onto others.

The Haftorah accompanying the Shelach Lecha story is taken from the Book of Joshua, Chapter 2. Because of his outstanding character traits, Joshus is chosen, 39 years later, to steer the kids of Israel into the Land, and sends two scouts (Caleb and Pinchas in Jewish teaching) to Jericho to seek out out what is happening.

They stay at an inn owned by Rahab, who agrees to assist them, thus ensuring safety for her family and herself when the kids of Israel eventually enter the Land of Canaan. This time, courage replaces fear, not least within the person of Rahab, the innkeeper.

This prepares us for the reading from Balak (Numbers 22:2 – 25:9), which takes place on July 12. Here the gentile prophet, Balaam, hired to curse the kids of Israel by Balak, the King of Moab, as a substitute produces a series of blessings.

One of those blessings comprises the prophecy that ‘Behold, the people will arise like a lion cub and elevate itself like a lion.’ This could be interpreted as meaning that the kids of Israel are trained from the outset to be watchful. Only through education honed through experience can the young lion cub morph into the mature lion who, like Narnia, knows when to act.

This is how the past week has been interpreted in Israel. When someone continually states that they aim to exterminate you and boasts that they’ve the means to achieve this, there is simply one response possible. The Jewish people don’t have any other alternative than to survive, refusing to permit themselves to be wiped off the face of the earth. 

After the attack on the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, my daughter, Esther, jogged my memory that the Hebrew date was twenty third Sivan. This is the date when, within the Book of Esther, the people of Israel are permitted by the King of Persia to fight back to avoid wasting themselves. And yesterday Psalms were recited around the globe.

In Esther (8: Sep 11) ‘… the King [of Persia] permitted the Jews of each city to arrange and defend themselves; to destroy, slay and exterminate every armed force of any people or province that threaten them …’ 

This was in stark reversal of the decree signed with the King’s seal by his vizier, Haman, the enemy of the Jewish people, which might have seen all of the Jews of Persia slaughtered by their foes in the sooner month of Adar. This is the crux of the story of Purim, when the Jewish people brought themselves from the brink of extinction to an incredible triumph.

Perhaps echoing the themes of Purim, American Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, in a message to President Trump, is reported to have paraphrased the words utilized by Mordechai to Esther earlier in that Book, when she finds herself married to the King of Persia: ‘ … who knows whether it was only for such a time as this that you just attained sovereign power!’ (Esther 4:14).

An amazing many miracles have occurred during this week, not least the incontrovertible fact that there have been no fatalities within the aftermath of the Iranian attack on Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, southern Israel, which was already coping heroically with the aftermath of October seventh 2023.

There have been many lions in history: the Lion of Judah, Richard the Lionheart, the Cowardly Lion of The Wizard of Oz. However, the important traits related to the lion is that they’re each brave and generous, open-hearted and spirited. They may perhaps be the ‘King of the Jungle’. But to be the King of the Jungle, you’ve to take other individuals with you. A monarch needs subjects. Some monarchs know this, and others think they reign supreme through divine right.

A real monarch trains from birth and is disciplined, open and clever. People aren’t born like this; they’re educated into it. That is what Mordechai told Esther and that’s what the Jewish people have known for a really very long time. And because of this Israel has called their operation ‘Rising Lion’ and associated this operation with the Narnia stories.