Category Archives: Current Events

One has to give credit to PM Netanyahu for snatching a stalemate from the jaws of potential victory and spinning it as an historic triumph. His rhetorical gifts certainly exceed his strategic vision. But the turning point in the recent conflict – and a sure indication that nothing would change, nothing gained, and dangers would still loom ahead – happened at a very early stage when the Prime Minister fired the Deputy Defense Minister, Dani Danon, for vocally opposing Netanyahu’s acceptance of the first cease fire proposal – even before the IDF had uncovered the tunnels of terror. (Imagine if Hamas had accepted that cease fire, enabling them to carry out their planned Rosh Hashana massacres.)

For that prescience, Danon was fired, which also served as a warning shot across the bow of Avigdor Lieberman and Naphtali Bennett, both consistent critics of the PM’s handling of the war. With the hostilities on temporary hiatus (it is expected that Israel will relax its border controls and allow Hamas to import deadlier missiles and cement and steel to rebuild its tunnels; it’s only fair), Netanyahu ably wrapped himself in the mantle of unity the other night. That is also a neat trick, lauding the unity of the nation during this crisis and subtly implying that unity means following his lead and dissent is an example of disunity. People do fall for that line, but how many do will go a long way to determining Netanyahu’s political future, not just nationally but even in the Likud party itself.

His approach reminds me of the Pruzansky Plan for Jewish Unity, suggested many years ago, which, succinctly summarized, proposed that “everyone should agree with me.” Then there will be unity. It was never implemented, to my chagrin, because it turned out that several million other people had the exact same idea. But the overt criticism of the Cabinet dissenters was more election-positioning than a genuine concern about the united front during battle, especially since Lieberman and Bennett gave Netanyahu cover on the right flank by demanding harsher action against the enemy, usually a staple of wartime.

But when the enemy fires 70 rockets on your civilians on the first day of battle and 184 rockets on the last day of battle, it is a stretch to claim that it has suffered some grievous defeat. In essence, nothing changed, except for the 70 Jews killed and the hundreds more wounded. The enemy is unbowed, unbroken and in some sense even more brazen, farcically so, but nonetheless. It was on the ropes during the second week of the war when a conscious decision was made not to win, with “win” meaning surrender. It certainly was doable under the normal processes of warfare, in which the enemy is the enemy, and is not coddled, fed, nurtured and sustained by the very people they are trying to murder.

At one time this was obvious. Rashi comments on this week’s Torah portion (Devarim 20:1) that there is an enemy in war, and that enemy should be perceived as an enemy, with all that entails. “Have no mercy on them, because they will have no mercy on you.” Or, as George Patton put it, “May G-d have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t.” Something has changed, in which victory itself has become anathema to modern man – especially citizens of democracies – as if victory over an enemy is repugnant, immoral and undesirable. There is more that will be said about this at another time, but the question before us is: what inhibited Israel from actually inflicting a death blow on a ruthless enemy of inferior resources and infinite malevolence? Why does Israel constantly hold back, and even worse, actually send provisions – food, fuel, electricity, water – to sustain an enemy population that wants to destroy it and that voted overwhelmingly for the thugs who govern them and rejoice in the death of Jews? Why not do, for once, what is necessary to win?

Many will point to the customary inhibitors – Obama or the American left, the Europeans, the UN, the Arab street, etc. There is some merit to that but it is ultimately unsatisfactory and self-defeating. The enemy is strengthened, and wars and terror are fomented, when the Arabs realize that Israel will pull its punches, not fight to win, and will flinch from actually changing the dynamic of the conflict. (For example, laying siege to Gaza – and sticking to it until surrender, regardless of world pressure – could have resulted in that very surrender, benefitting especially the Gazans and the Middle East. The siege is an ancient tactic, and the enemy could have controlled the escape from the siege – surrender. But Israel feared doing what is normal, and it will claim it is because of the “world.”) Is that true? Maybe on some level. But I believe there is another factor at work that serves to weaken Israel in every conflict and in its conduct of war and statecraft.

Israel is hampered by its self-definition – by the “values” that it claims renders it unique. In general, those values are noble, but in wartime they are completely misplaced, and often comical when applied.

So Israel’s concern for the preservation of life deters it from laying siege to the enemy – and engenders such anomalies – now so taken for granted by the “world” that Israel could never abandon these prescriptions without being accused of war crimes – as warning the enemy that an attack is coming, calling on them to leave, rushing to provide them medical care and all the provisions meant to keep them alive and fighting for another decade or ten.

There are reasons why armies – certainly not those of the bad guys, but even not those of the good guys, like the Allies in World War II – have never conducted wars in this fashion. It is because it is stupid, ineffective, and serves to prolong the hostilities thereby producing more casualties. But it feels good! These measures feel good and reinforce a sense of moral superiority, but make no sense and are wholly unrelated – and even antithetical to – the Torah’s ethic of warfare. To many people, feeling good about the conduct of war is more important than actually winning it.

There are other examples as well. Why doesn’t Israel attack cherished religious assets of the Arab population in order to deter or punish terror – such as shutting the Temple Mount or the Cave of the Patriarchs to them, or even dismantling the mosques on the Temple Mount for relocation in Iraq or Saudi Arabia? Because Israel prides itself on the freedom of religion it guarantees to all, even non-citizens, and even to its enemies in wartime.

Why didn’t Israel declare Gaza a closed military zone, banning journalists and photographers from covering the wars and sparing us the sights of the dead women and children, killed because Hamas forced them to be human shields? Because Israel prides itself on protecting freedom of the press and easy access to anywhere on the battlefield. But such generosity of spirit hampers the war effort and makes victory impossible. There is a reason why war zones are often closed to the press – Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, etc., leading to those wars falling out of the headlines and the public consciousness: it is because wars cannot be won when the hyper-sensitivity of third-parties, especially tendentious journalists, riles up public opinion. As it happens, those wars are being waged by evildoers, but the US in Iraq and Afghanistan often closed certain areas to the press, for their own protection, of course.

There is also something beyond bizarre about the need for every military action or response to require the approval of a gaggle of lawyers before being conducted – or frequently nixed by those very lawyers – but Israel prides itself on being a nation that respects laws, even the international laws of warfare that no one else honors, except occasionally by wistful mention of them after the conflict has ended successfully.

Note that none of these are Jewish values, except in the most general and undefined way. The Torah is quite explicit that wars are to be waged to win, and that Jewish life is not to be lost in the quixotic quest to spare the lives of the enemy, whether military or civilian (granted, in the current context, a distinction without a difference). These are all Western values, but in theory not practice, as few countries inhibit their militaries because of these niceties. Hence the staggering loss of civilian life in the United States’ wars in Middle East, which did not produce much hand-wringing anywhere.

For all the phony and hypocritical criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and the civilian casualties that resulted (relatively few, compared to every other similar conflict), Israel could write the manual on how to conduct urban warfare and minimize civilian casualties. No other war comes even close. But why would they want to? No army should seek to intentionally inflict casualties on innocent civilians, but nor should any army or government encumber its conduct of war and deprive itself of victory by mistaken notions of morality and by adhering to rules of war that seem to be crafted precisely for Israel, and only for Israel, and precisely to deprive it of even the possibility of victory.

That is ultimately a failure of leadership. That the double standard is obvious does not make it a measure of pride. I have yet to hear the Israeli government speak with vehemence and passion, not about the unfairness of the double standard, but against their eagerness to abide by it and about the unfairness of the mere suggestion that it should. And this plays directly into another execrable dimension of Israeli self-definition – the need to feel like victims, to mourn and lament the deaths, injuries, incessant terror and unending hatred – rather than take the war to the enemy in a way that shocks them by the wrath, might and power of Israel.

There are too many Jews that are uncomfortable with Jewish power. They would never admit it, but they prefer grieving at the funerals of soldiers and terror victims to marching in a victory parade. To be sure, I am not at all implying that this is a motivating factor for Netanyahu, Bogie Yaalon or anyone in particular. Nor is it necessarily conscious, but too many people are wedded to the status quo and will never take steps – no matter the provocation – to change it for the better, to seek even the absolute defeat of a single enemy. They are locked into defensive mode, responding, always responding, and always hesitating to take the initiative in a way that will challenge or force the revision of the aforementioned self-definitions.

The glorification of victimhood has seeped into the Jewish DNA because of the centuries during which our blood was shed with impunity. But is unconscionable, immoral and fallacious, and it has to stop. We need not feel guilty over defeating our enemies, nor over the catastrophes they bring on themselves, nor over our survival, nor over our G-d-given homeland. But how we perceive ourselves today has produced a narrative that makes victory difficult, if not impossible, but is not normal.

That the Prime Minister’s popularity is plummeting, and that there is great discontent over the stalemate that ended the current conflict but which 87% of the people feel will just presage the next (and likely deadlier) one within the next two years, suggest that many Israelis are tired of the game, the lack of strategic vision and the disdain for victory that characterizes current government policy. They are looking to craft a new narrative, in which the Jewish people can access the morality of Torah in order to educate the world as to how to combat our era’s brutal, merciless foe – the non-state terror group that lacks any inhibitions and seeks only victory and the fulfillment of its murderous objectives.

When our self-definition encompasses nothing more than the Torah’s values and our willingness to embrace and actualize G-d’s eternal morality, we will be a “light onto the nations” even in the conduct of war and hasten the day of victory and redemption for all mankind.

Here in Israel, life is settling back to what passes for normal, but with everyone wondering will the cease fire hold, and for how long? But the most animated question as people reflect on the war is how do you deal with an enemy that knows no moral limits or boundaries, and considers the death of civilians and children a victory – an essential part in their war strategy? What Israel learns will benefit the world, as Hamas and its style of warfare might soon – if not thwarted here – come to a theater near you, and not the movie theater.

Mark Twain said it best: “a lie can travel halfway around the world  while the truth is putting on its shoes.” The lies of Hamas are so pervasive that one wonders whether they actually believe them. They are worse than even that infamous telephone exchange (recorded by US intelligence) during the Six Day War between Egypt’s dictator Nasser and Jordan’s King Hussein about whether they should blame the Americans for Israel’s air supremacy or the Americans and the British. Both could not accept that their air forces had been destroyed by Jews. Undoubtedly, had both taken polygraphs, both dictators would have passed; such is the power of self-deception.

Hamas has taken the art of lying to new depths, and in large part has convinced those pre-disposed to seeing only evil in Jews but has even intimidated some Jews. Let us count the ways, literally.

From the earliest days of the recent war, Hamas lamented to the world the death of its civilians, starting at 200 and then finishing at approximately 1900. All civilians. Every last one. Every Hamas spokesman – even those hiding in the luxury of Qatar – had the identical figures in real time. Even more astounding, everyone killed in Gaza was a civilian. Somehow, not one terrorist was killed.

There are several possibilities that explain this anomaly.  It is certainly possible that Hamas fighters are impervious to bullets and bombs, which bounce off them, ricochet and strike innocent civilians. Or, perhaps Israeli technology – already mind-boggling in its sophistication –  has developed weaponry in which individual shells are capable of distinguishing between terrorists and civilians, sort of a variation on the neutron bomb that killed people but left people intact, and said weapons always make a beeline for civilians.  Or, perhaps Hamas is just lying, and their lies are being repeated verbatim by tendentious journalists. I’ll vote for the latter, seeing as all the figures are production of the Gazan Department of Health which is controlled by Hamas.

Within weeks, Israel will release a list of every person – by name! – who was killed in Gaza, and it will be clear that most people killed were terrorists, and the remainder were the support system for the terrorists, including women and children, whether willingly or unwillingly.

These names are important because one picture can be worth a thousand lies. The internet is crawling with pictures – easily accessible – presented by Hamas as evidence of Israeli atrocities – but pictures “borrowed” from the massacres of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and other places. Indeed, one family had the great misfortune of being murdered by Assad last year, and apparently again by Israel in the last few weeks. Perhaps the most repugnant of these expropriated images was a picture of a dead baby purportedly killed by the evil Israelis, released by Hamas and swallowed whole by the media – when in fact it was a picture of the slaughtered Fogel baby from Itamar, murdered by Arabs five years ago. Same picture, easily found on the internet. Unless, there are homes in Gaza that have Mezuzot on the door.

Dishonorable mention must be made of the staged photography, of stills and videos taken of “victims” – complete with wailing women – with just two minutes later those same “victims” (official cameras turned off) getting up and walking away unscathed. The hospitals themselves are part of this charade, no real surprise because most Gaza hospitals serve as Hamas headquarters or arms depots as well. That is not to say that no one was killed – obviously not – but that both the numbers and the circumstances are clearly not what has been portrayed. And Israel committed to truth, frequently answered that it is “investigating” a variety of brazen accusations, but those investigations usually ended (and exonerated Israel) long after the world’s attention span had drifted elsewhere.

Much of the staging has taken place in the so-called UN schools. The working theory that Hamas deceives the naive UN workers and squirreled away weapons and fighters in the UNRWA establishments is implausible. The UN is part of problem.  UNWRA is part of the problem. Its Gaza offices are staffed by Hamas members or Arab sympathizes (a more pleasant term than Jew-haters). Israel plays along, as it has for decades, because the UN – essentially a worthless, even counterproductive organization – provides Israel some of the international legitimacy it craves. But it has always been a thorn in Israel’s side, ever regretful of the only decision that warranted its creation – the establishment of a Jewish state in 1947 (after which it did everything possible to render stillborn). These “schools” are offensive staging areas and weapons storage facilities, and not by accident but by design, and in cooperation with the UN officials who doth protest too much. The “schools” serve as propaganda weapons and helped propagate the lies of the enemy.

Add to the lies the fact that two of the schools hit – where apparently no weapons were stored – were hit by Hamas rockets that went awry, all captured on film from Israeli drones. No matter. Hamas accuses first, and the union of the gullible and the malevolent buy it immediately.

The language used by the Arab propagandists also reeks of duplicity. Officials delight in calling Israelis “Nazis,” and terming Israeli actions in self-defense “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing.” Hmmm. The Talmud (Masechet Kiddushin 70b) states that “kal haposel b’moomo posel,” loosely translated as “he who besmirches others does so with his own blemish.” The only entity thinking, dreaming and planning for genocide is Hamas and its Arab henchmen, and genocide intended for the Jews, in Israel and across the world. The only entities that harbor Nazi-like ambitions are Hamas, and others – Iran, Al Qaeda, ISIS and the other crazies that inhabit the Muslim world and are threatening the rest of civilization.

Sadly, the lies are a way of life. Muslims adhere to a religious doctrine known as Taqiyya (or Kitman) which permits lying in order to further the conduct of a noble goal like victory over the infidel. Do note the irony: Judaism permits lying in order to foster peace (Masechet Bava Metzia 87a), Islam in order to advance the cause of jihad and war.

Even more sadly, many across the world are eager to accept the lies to assuage guilt over the Holocaust, to promote Jew hatred, to weaken Israel, to strengthen Islam, and to prevent an Israeli victory. Long before Twain noted the difficulty in combating lies, King David did as well, in Psalm 120: “Lord, save me from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. What can be given to you, what can be added, to lying lips?…Too long have I dwelled with those who hate peace.”

The Israeli government has done a remarkable job in countering the lies – point by point, picture by picture – the only problems being that exposure of the truth lags somewhat behind the propagation of the lies, and that the world market for truth is somewhat limited.

But there are certain aspects of Hamas’ conduct of war that transcend the obvious but unprosecuted commission of war crimes and enter the realm of the grotesque, monstrous, and ghastly. IDF soldiers were disproportionately killed by Hamas members wearing IDF uniforms emerging from tunnels. Children were used to lure IDF soldiers to their deaths – the children as well – in booby-trapped buildings. (Naturally, Israel would be blamed for the deaths of those children, as they would be for the murder of dozens of Arabs deemed collaborators and killed by Hamas.) More than 160 children were killed in the last few years while being forced to build the Hamas tunnels designed to murder Jews. At one point, Hamas placed a fake “UNRWA School” sign in front of a building, again to lure IDF soldiers into complacency. Several times, ghoulish Hamas soldiers grabbed the body parts of IDF casualties and ran off with them. This is even sicker than just the coerced use of human shields to create a bevy of martyrs.

This is not human, or reflects such a nadir of humanity that any critic of Israel or supporter of Hamas should question their own morality and decency. It seems as if every Jew-hater on the planet has emerged from his cave (or university office) to bash Israel for having the temerity to live, defend its citizens and respond with measured force to every provocation. The criticism is fixed and often unserious (no one has yet to answer Israel’s pointed question: what would you do to prevent rockets from falling on your people?). Those critics simply require satisfaction of their blood lust for dead Jews. They must maintain that Jews have to die in certain numbers to justify exercising our right of self-defense. It is sick.

There are Jews who will soon tire of the world criticism and urge Israel’s leadership to improve the optics (maybe have more funerals, shut down Iron Dome for a few days to allow civilian suffering to be filmed for posterity, absorb a few blows and be a better sport towards their genocidal enemy.) The voices of those Jews should be ignored.

Fortunately, the will here is strong, and recognition of the enemy’s evil is clear.  The sense of us against them – the moral, good and decent vs. the immoral, the evil and the repugnant – is pervasive. The battle continues, as does the desire to sanctify G-d’s name through holiness, good deeds, Torah study, prayer and self-defense. May the rest of the world – “friends” and foes – share that desire, work to protect and preserve Jewish life, and never accommodate itself to such unadulterated wickedness.

And may G-d bless the holy and pure and bring salvation to His troubled world.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8bwiour-iM&feature=youtu.be

See http://www.thomaswictor.com/gaza-sniper-video-definitively-debunked/

See http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/ndtv-exclusive-how-hamas-assembles-and-fires-rockets-571033

And fifty others such videos.

There is no escaping the troubling fact that President Obama’s policy on the Gaza conflict is intended to save Hamas from the natural consequences of its evil, in effect, to allow Hamas to survive to fight another day and murder more Jews. However Jewish Democrats seek to spin this, it is an overt and stunning betrayal of Israel. It would be fair these days to ask Obama the question made famous by President George W. Bush: “Are you with us, or are you with the terrorists?”

But Israel would be foolhardy to listen to a word that Obama says, even if he again shuts down American air traffic to Israel in an attempt to intimidate and weaken Israel. And if Israel embraces a cease-fire along the terms that Obama suggests (essentially, Israel ceases firing, while the enemy is allowed the launch of an occasional missile or rocket as well as the resumption of its tunnel-building) all the casualties would have been lost in vain.

The obvious reason is that halting Operation Protective Edge now would kick the can down the road for a few years, until the enemy re-arms and is even more powerful, with even deadlier weapons. Today’s Hamas is largely equipped with unguided rockets and missiles such that most fall in uninhabited areas. That necessitates a more limited use of the Iron Dome, which, for all its astonishing success and technological genius, is an expensive system to operate. Shooting down a $500 rocket with a $50,000 missile is imperative but not very cost-effective. The next war – if there is a next war – could involve Hamas missiles that feature guidance systems that could target specific areas and overwhelm even Iron Dome. Leaders must anticipate the future, not just see the past or present.

But there is a more compelling reason for seeing this mission to its natural conclusion – a death blow to Hamas – notwithstanding the Obama/Kerry perfidy. There is a convergence of factors here that might not recur for the foreseeable future. Egypt is allied with Israel (as are the Jordanians and the Saudis) against Hamas. Egypt has been extremely aggressive in recent weeks in closing off the southern border to Gaza, depriving Hamas of one avenue for importation of its weapons, and has killed numerous terrorists without, naturally, incurring the wrath of the international community or having to deal with the canard of “civilians.” (In Gaza, apparently, only civilians are killed, or so we are led to believe. Either there are no terrorists there, or somehow all bullets either bounce off them or are miraculously drawn to “civilians” as if by magnetic pull.) Both Israel and Egypt have an interest in eradicating the Hamas threat, a situation that could easily change in the coming months or years.

Additionally, the Israeli public has achieved a remarkable level of unity in support of the current operation. Upwards of 85% of the public support the mission. But if the past is any indication of the future, that will not endure. Already the insane left (given disproportionate attention by the dominant leftist media in Israel) is protesting the war, not fully grasping that the enemy means to kill them as well or perhaps, in their delusional state, preferring death to the moral quandaries that arise in any act of self-defense. This unity itself is a product of several phenomena.

From one perspective, sad to say, rockets on Sderot and environs for years did not properly trouble every Israeli. But now that missiles have targeted Yerushalayim, Tel Aviv and even as far as Haifa (not to mention Hezbollah’s missiles from Lebanon) it is clear that all of Israel could become Sderot, unless the dynamic is changed. Additionally, perhaps people are tired of having to fight the same battle every 2-4 years, against the same enemy but with increasingly-advanced weaponry. The sense that it can get worse – much worse – tends to focus the mind on real, not ersatz, solutions.

The soldiers of the IDF are anxious for battle, while mindful of the potential costs; morale is very high, and the sense of mission, of esprit de corps, is epic (which is why a premature conclusion will be deflating, and is also politically imprudent for Netanyahu).  And the ever-increasing number of religious soldiers in the IDF – especially among the officer corps, where they are today probably a majority – adds a different dimension to the struggle. While secular Israelis limit the scope of the conflict and see it as eminently solvable, religious Jews tend to see Jewish history from a broader perspective. We realize that the enemies of Israel weren’t created in 2005, 1967, 1948 or 1897 – but from the moment we received the Torah at Sinai (Masechet Shabbat 89a). Today’s wars are just the ancient wars in a slightly different guise, and in some sense, they are indistinguishable. All these add up to a nation that is primed for victory – for the defeat of one of its arch enemies – victory for itself and victory for the free world over the forces of Muslim terror.

The question is: what does victory look like? How can victory be assured?

Undoubtedly, if the war is left to its natural conclusion, Hamas can be vanquished as a military and a political force within weeks. It has lost tremendous support in the Arab world, and few outside the world of radical Shi’a will mourn their demise. Of course, to the extent that Hamas represents an ideology of terror, hatred and violence it will continue to exist, as ideologies can only be destroyed if the entire infrastructure that sustains it is destroyed and its propagators eliminated (e.g., Nazism). But as a fighting force, military threat or political power, Hamas is on the verge of being devastated. Its leaders are in hiding, letting their electorate bear the brunt of the fighting, and their people know it – and know also that the Hamas leadership has embezzled that Western money that they have not squandered on their evil quest to destroy Israel. Most Hamas leaders – apart from Meshaal who lives in Qatar – have not lifted their heads from their bunkers or been heard from for weeks. They are ripe for defeat, a takeover of their territory followed by being ferreted out from their bunkers and tunnels. Victory means a Hamas surrender.

And then what?

Israel’s government has embraced the notion of demilitarization of Gaza, which is great if it could be implemented, but it can’t, so it is a pipedream. Under the Oslo Accords, none of the weaponry currently in possession of the Arabs in Judea, Samaria or Gaza is legal. They were all acquired in violation of standing agreements, so an additional agreement concerning demilitarization is futile. And as is now apparent, the main preoccupation of the Gazans is smuggling, and weaponry is just another entity that is smuggled. Another approach, even worse, sees the ultimate objective as destruction of the tunnels – as if the tunnels are the problem rather than the terrorists who use the tunnels and the killers who dispatch them.

One view gaining currency in Israel is that Gaza should be re-conquered by Israel (it would be for the fourth time since 1948) and its civilian administration assumed by responsible international organizations. That assumes, of course, that there is such a thing as a “responsible international organization,” a dubious proposition especially in light of UNRWA’s treachery and Jew-hatred that has now stretched over six decades. There are too many diplomats dressed in suits whose hatred for Israel and wishes for its demise rivals that of anyone in a kaffiyeh.

Consequently, I don’t believe that would succeed. The seeds would just be sown for the next conflict, under the same or worse leadership. There is only one solution that could work, change the entire dynamic in the Middle East and usher in an era of peace and prosperity (all right, perhaps the latter not right away). That is why it won’t happen.

In short, Gaza has to be depopulated.

The reality is that, despite Israel’s best and sometimes foolish efforts, the Middle East conflict is a zero-sum game. There are not enough Muslims who openly support the existence of a Jewish state in Israel, and there are too many Muslims who actively work, conspire and plan for its demise. “Land for peace,” which never made sense except within the echo chamber of the left, has run its course. Similarly, the “two-state solution” is anything but. It is clear to all but the willfully blind that any concession made to Arabs is simply the starting point of the next war and the next round of negotiations. The Arab world is divided between those who favor negotiating Israel into non-existence and those who favor destroying it into non-existence. That is the reality, sad as it is.

Nothing will change that. The Arabs of Judea and Samaria – and too many Israeli Arabs – harbor fantasies of Israel’s destruction, even when their own lives would suffer as a result (!). That is not changing. But start with Gaza. When Three Mile Island was contaminated by radioactivity in 1979, hundreds of thousands of people had to be evacuated for their own safety and well-being. One year earlier, several thousand people had to be resettled when the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls was discovered to be sitting on chemical wastes.

Gaza today (for decades, actually) is Five Mile Island, a toxic waste dump saturated in violence, depravity and Jew hatred. It cannot and should not be rebuilt. Arabs who dwell there will always retain animosity towards Israel and yearn to destroy it. They will sacrifice their children and grandchildren to that evil and quixotic quest. How they should be resettled is a different question than whether or to where they should be resettled (although western Iraq seems ideal – vacant desert land.)

The reality is that it is easier to change a human being’s location that it is to change his heart. So the world has a choice: it can continue to pour billions of dollars into Gazan “infrastructure,” knowing full well that the money will be used for terror. It can continue to waste the time of diplomats and politicians drafting arcane and detailed agreements that will be signed and never followed. It can continue to cajole the Arabs into verbally recognizing Israel’s right to exist, knowing full well they are not sincere and are just awaiting the most opportune time to attack Israel.

And so the world can be witness to more Arab deaths, grinding poverty, miserable lives, dysfunctional families, child suicide bombers, etc. – generation after generation sacrificed on the altar of jihadist genocidal ambitions aimed first and foremost at Israel (but then the rest of the West, of course). Or the world – led by Israel – can analyze the situation and say that something must change dramatically. It is not enough to disarm them or demilitarize them but to resettle them. As it stands now and for the foreseeable future, no combination of words, inducements, bribes, carrots or even sticks will reverse the genocidal trends that animate an entire group. The same billions that Hamas and allies will divert to terror uses can be employed in resettlement, and the entire region and world would benefit. Of course, those Gazans who want to live as civilized people and accept Israel’s sovereignty can certainly stay, with blessings, and the application of the “one strike, you’re out” rule. And they would benefit from the return of Jewish settlers who had made that desert bloom before they were summarily expelled by short-sighted Israeli leaders, some of whom still lurk in positions of power.

As long as the enemy remains on land from which it can threaten Israel, nothing will ever change.

Which route is more moral – nurturing the Arabs’ false hopes of statehood and Israel’s ultimate disappearance in a land in which they have resided less than 100 years, or resettling them in a place where they can build the society of their dreams free of the necessity of raising their children on hatred, envy and violence? It is a choice between endless death and new life.

It strikes me that the latter is more moral and even more feasible, once the shock has worn off and the blinders have been taken off. Nothing else is going to change. Jews have no other place to go and fulfill a divine commandment living in Israel; Arabs have an abundance of choices although, given the proclivity to violence, admittedly not all are savory.

Undoubtedly, normal Gazans would accept this offer of resettlement – with compensation paid, of course – but many will be intimidated by the forces of evil which they wittingly voted into power. Their hatred of Jews is that irrational and that passionate, and Hamas does love the death of its own citizens almost as much as it loves the death of Jews. That is why it must be defeated. But a concerted effort on the part of the international community, and great resolve by Israel, will demonstrate that this is the only way. As long as there is a glimmer of hope that a “Palestinian” national home is a possibility in the land of Israel, the macabre dance of death will continue.

If it succeeds, there is hope for Judea and Samaria as well.

Of course, none of this will happen in the next week, month or year, and will require a generation of new thinkers able to break away from the tired and painful paradigms of the past.

In the meantime, Hamas has to be vanquished into unconditional surrender, and not rescued by the meddlesome team of Obama/Kerry. Israel then has to resist the temptation to make new concessions to some other group of Arabs which will also just prolong the war. Due to the bravery and sacrifice of Israelis, the first objective is within reach. May their resolve remain strong, and may G-d bless their efforts!