Tag Archives: gaza

Virtue-Signaling Hypocrites

Posted on June 16, 2025 | 1 comment

      

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Thursday, June 12 – The decision by five nations – United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand – to sanction Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is both outrageous and shameful. It would seem that they were sacrificial lambs, offered up by these nations to placate the Jew-haters in their midst because these countries are not yet ready to recognize a Palestinian state. Something had to be done to keep their ravenous, Jew-hating wolves at bay, and the sanctions regime was chosen. It should be met by a muscular Israeli response, notwithstanding the lack of practical effect but especially considering the baseless accusations against government ministers.

In short, the ministers were accused of “inciting violence” against Arabs but zero evidence was marshalled in order to sustain that indictment. Instead, the inciteful statements included their unequivocal opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state and their energetic support for Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria. Notwithstanding that these are two policies now widely favored by the Israeli public (85% of whom are opposed to a Palestinian state), how does that translate into “inciting violence” against Arabs?

In the delusional world of the European and Oceanic diplomats, building Jewish homes in Judea (of all places) and opposing the formal creation of a terror state, somehow incites violence, presumably of Arabs against Israelis. This conclusion is in keeping with the soft bigotry of low expectations with which the Western world treats the Palestinians, who apparently cannot help but shoot and kill a Jewish woman in childbirth because they do not like where she lives. If these countries actually believe that Smotrich or Ben-Gvir incited Jews to attack Arabs, they should adduce that evidence forthwith.

Other statements that agitated these diplomats were Smotrich’s assertion that the Palestinians are not a nation, and that both have declaimed that Gazans should be relocated to another country. That latter suggestion was termed “monstrous” by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, presumably implicating President Trump as well, as that “monstrous” idea was his. But it is hard to contend that Palestinians are a nation, as they lack any history before the 20th century and exist only as a counterforce against Israel.

This, indeed, was prophesied in the Bible. The Torah teaches that at the end of days, in our last futile rebellion against G-d, “they will provoke Me with a non-god…and I will provoke them with a non-people” (Devarim 32:21). Golda Meir famously said that “there is no Palestinian people.” To be sure, they are a contrived people, a 20TH century fabrication, which had no national life or even ambition until Jewish nationalism arose. That is why when Egypt and Jordan occupied, respectively, Gaza, Judea, and Samaria from 1948-1967, they did not create a “Palestine” country nor did any such “Palestinians” demand one. The issue only arose when Jews conquered that territory, ancient and integral to the Jewish homeland.

One can quibble as to whether they are a nation today; as recently as 1967, the UN Resolution 242 that sought a “just and lasting peace” made no mention of Palestinians or a Palestinian state. But is rejection of an Arab state carved from the land of Israel tantamount to “inciting violence”? Only in the fevered imaginations of these diplomats.

What is especially rich is their denunciations of Israel as a colonialist power. The French, who haven’t yet sanctioned Israelis but who are otherwise making mischief in the Middle East, still retain vestiges of the French Empire, with twelve territories stretching from Martinique and St. Martin in the Caribbean Sea to French Polynesia and New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean. They came into possession of these territories the old-fashioned way – military conquest – apparently still indifferent to the very modern value of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.”

The British are even more egregious, retaining control over Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos, and a dozen other territories where they should not be. They even went to war in 1982 when the Falkland Islands were conquered by Argentina, which still claims sovereignty over these lands that are right off their coast. Put another way, the UK dispatched a naval flotilla six thousand miles from their shores in order to retrieve a small piece of land they claim as theirs since the 18th century despite Argentina’s parallel claim. Yet, the British deign to preach to Israel about Jews settling in Judea or about the conduct of our war in Gaza which adjoins Israel and is relentlessly hostile and homicidal. Such assertions are obviously and unimaginably hypocritical. The British killed 649 Argentinians during that two-month conflict (or 64,900 as counted by the Gaza Ministry of Health).

Indeed, it would be quite appropriate now for Israel to recognize the Falkland Islands as sovereign Argentinian territory (if Argentina approves). This would be a worthy gesture to Argentinian President Javier Milei, whose unabashed support for Israel is a bright star in an otherwise dark world, and especially in light of Argentina’s decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Let the British withdraw from land which they have no rational reason to possess and let them acknowledge Israel’s sovereign right to the land of Israel.

How should Israel respond? The government’s denunciation of the sanctioning of our ministers as “outrageous” is a good beginning but it should not end with words. The foreign ministers of these countries should be barred from visiting Israel and their ambassadors should be called to the Foreign Ministry for a stern lecture.

Additionally, Smotrich’s decision to disconnect the PA from the Israeli banking further exposes the PA as a house of cards ready to collapse, incapable of sustaining itself. This is a tough but crucial measure to create a new Middle East, including an Israel in which only people who want to live here and accept Israel’s sovereignty are allowed to live here. We will never have even a semblance of security until that happens.

It is also high time for the British Consulate in Jerusalem, the UK’s representation to the Palestinian Authority, to be summarily closed as an offense to Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. These consulates – there are about a dozen others – should be denied a presence in Jerusalem, and if those countries wish to have representation to the PA, it should open offices in Ramallah, the PA’s seat of government. Israel has for too long acquiesced in this affront to our sovereignty. Furthermore, Israel’s Finance Ministry and National Security Ministry should cut off all contact and relations with their counterparts in those five countries.

These would be the responses of a proud nation. For that matter, these would be the responses of even an unproud nation whose ministers are penalized for defending their nations’ interests. We need not and should not accept these indignities. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir simply reflect the will of their constituents. If opposition to a Palestinian state and Jewish settlement in the heartland of Israel is worthy of sanctions then half of Israel could effectively be sanctioned. It means that any right-wing government is worthy of sanctions. It is thus best to challenge this decision now; even as a hollow symbol it is still repugnant.

If, indeed, these sanctions are essentially meaningless, except as an insult, why did these countries rush to implement them? Well, insulting us is part of the goal, but more importantly, these countries – all governed now by leftists and all being besieged by an influx of Muslims immigrants, legal or not – are pseudo friends of Israel at best and quiet enemies at worst. Each of these countries have been victims of Muslim terror and each struggle to protect its Jewish population from the predations of these new immigrants. It is not the country as much as it is the governments of those countries. Their ideology has no place for a religious-national entity; as such Israel, the national home of the Jewish people, is in their view doubly flawed.

The perfidious quintet sanctioned Smotrich and Ben-Gvir for no valid reason – but they mean all of us. These virtue signalers are not in the least sincere. We should not allow their stunning hypocrisy to resonate with us or doubt the justice of our cause. At the end of days, the nations will thrash about and challenge the people of Israel one last time. Let this be the last gasp of secularism and its discontents before the era of redemption unfolds before us and elevates all of mankind to a more moral and peaceful world.

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The Folly of Humanitarian Aid 

Posted on May 30, 2025 | Comments Off on The Folly of Humanitarian Aid 

   (First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

We seem to be falling again into the same traps and repeating the mistakes of the past expecting a different outcome in the future. It is bad enough that any portion of this aid will be seized by Hamas, and even worse that it sustains a hostile population. Not only has there not been a single person from among these “innocent” civilians who has acted upon Israel’s offer of $5,000,000 plus free passage anywhere in the world in exchange for information leading to the liberation of even one hostage; but also, Hamas’ terrorist ranks have been steadily replenished from these same “innocent” civilians. Tens of thousands of terrorists have been killed but reportedly have been steadily replaced.

What do we gain by strengthening the enemy but the prolongation of the war? After all, breaking the will of the enemy is one traditional path to victory but we apparently eschew that at all costs out of humanitarian concerns. In truth, I cannot ever recall reading that the United States dropped pitot and pasta on Hiroshima and Nagasaki alongside the atomic bombs. Humanitarian aid to the enemy population comes after the war – not during the war – and the chimera known as “international law,” even in the hypocritical, distorted, and arbitrary manner it is misapplied to Israel, should not hamper our chances for defeating the vile enemy who attacked, massacred, raped, tortured, and kidnapped us on October 7, 2023.

There are four situations that render the provision of aid plausible.

  1. Surrender.

This is the traditional way that a defeated party ends the war, when it concludes that it has had enough, can suffer no more, and seeks a way out of the conflict. Countries that go to war surely plan how they are going to provide for their citizens while the battles rage. Hamas’ plan, obviously, was to plan not at all but cynically appeal to the world’s sympathy (and bias against the Jewish state) so that Israel, in wartime, should have to sustain its enemy’s population – i.e., the enemy population that voted Hamas into power a little less than twenty years ago.

If we do not insist on surrender, we are literally following the enemy’s game plan and ensuring its survival to maraud another day. There is no starvation in Gaza, period, although there are shortages and undoubted hardship. They want food, water, and electricity? Surrender. And if they don’t, then obviously failure to surrender has grave consequences, as defeated aggressors throughout history have learned to their detriment.

  • Release our hostages!

If Hamas wants its population fed, it can release all of our hostages, at one time, in one place, in exchange not for murderers already imprisoned, or the rapists, sadists, kidnappers, savages, and pillagers of October 7, but in exchange for food. If it does not want its population to be fed, that really is their problem, not our problem. We need not exhibit more compassion for the enemy population than their leaders show for them.

We are a naturally compassionate people, but it is easier to deal with the severe consequences if we, accurately, deem Hamas like the Nazis, and the people of Gaza as Nazis and future Nazis. They are raised to hate Israel and murder Jews. The deaths of people who dedicate their lives to these propositions should not disturb any normal and decent person. And if there are truly innocent people – who despise Hamas, love Israel, or would like nothing more than to leave Gaza permanently – they should be fast-tracked to leave.

  • Leave

We should not be feeding our enemy but we should be aggressively pursuing the Trump plan of evacuating the Gazans to safer habitations. For some reason, we are not. I would love to hear the Prime Minister, instead of repeatedly threatening to win the war but always hesitating, talk directly to the nations of the world – Arab, Asian, European, and American – and state unequivocally: “If you are sincerely concerned about the welfare of the citizens of Gaza, you would not be insisting that we do what you have never done – nourish your enemies in wartime. What you would do is rush to offer asylum to as many as one million Gazans anxious to leave. You would be sending large ships and planes – we will facilitate their departure – to accommodate these people for whom you express such deep concern. We can evacuate 30,000 a day. Within one month, the situation in Gaza would be permanently transformed for the good, the people would be fed and resettled, and the war would end.”

The more aid we provide, the less likely it is that they will leave. Don’t we realize that? The sooner they leave, the sooner the war will end – because it will only end when they taste defeat, which in their terms is exile and loss of land.

  • Feed our hostages first!

It is obscene that we are providing food and water to an enemy that is, by all accounts, starving and abusing the hostages. It is immoral. It is foolish. It is disgraceful. Consequently, we should insist that the hostages be verifiably fed first. It does not matter if the Red Cross provides the food, although since that tendentious and pretentious entity cannot be trusted, they will have to be accompanied by a third party of our choice. But I don’t care if it is the Red Cross, or the Blue Cross, or if Steve Witkoff himself delivers food to our hostages, but not one morsel or drop should be given to Gazans until our hostages are treated like human beings.

We seem to ignore the fact that they are being held against international law, which has not once been marshaled to demand their release. Apparently, international law only carries weight when it can be used against Jews, and never when it can be used to help Jews. Why do we play along with this charade?

We must stop validating our enemy’s tactic (more than fifty years old) of kidnapping Jews, killing them, and/or holding them in abusive conditions until our foes achieve their nefarious objectives. We are playing right into their hands. And those who call for an end to the war in exchange for the release of all hostages and full withdrawal of Israel from Gaza seem not to realize that Hamas will survive, prosper, threaten us forever, but worse – they will one day, soon thereafter, Heaven forbid, kidnap five children at a bus stop, or take a school class captive, and then demand even more, and more, until our demise becomes sensible to us. Releasing our hostages by paying the enemy’s price, again and again, only ensures that we will suffer more kidnappings, more hostages, more torture, and more national anguish. What rational entity would pursue such folly?

The eighth of the Ten Utterances we will read on Shavuot is “you shall not steal,” which the Sages interpreted as “you shall not kidnap,” a capital crime (Sanhedrin 86a). When we normalize a capital crime – literally nourishing it instead of punishing it harshly – we bring disaster on ourselves, and the uncivilized part of our world is strengthened and emboldened.

There are Israelis who hate our government so much they would rather lose the war and endanger our survival than clear a path to victory. There are others who, under the trauma of the last eighteen months, see no way out other than to surrender and declare victory, and pray that the next traumatic event never happens or just does not affect them. And there are still others – many in our government – who persist in negotiating with an enemy sworn to our destruction and indulging in the same failed policies and approaches of the past. We deserve better – new approaches that do not involve the release of those who murder us and laugh about it, or those who blow up our buses, shoot our vehicles, and stab our pedestrians knowing full well that they will get away with it from our side, and be paid handsomely by those who dispatched them.

We can also say “no” to Trump, Witkoff, and others who just want an end to war, some diplomatic achievement, and a signing ceremony, regardless of the day after costs and consequences. (It was actually amusing this week, to hear Steve Witkoff say he is providing a new “term sheet” to Hamas; “term sheet” is, of course, a real estate term, wholly inapplicable to high stakes diplomacy involving life and death, survival of a nation, and the ignominy and revulsion due to terrorists and their supporters. Talk about being in over your head.) If anything, Trump has repeatedly told Israel to “finish the job.” But we are bookended in our politics by a government afraid of victory and a fanatical left that welcomes defeat if only that will finally topple the government.

Of course, our “no” should be mitigated with these four choices: surrender, release our hostages, leave, and/or feed our hostages first. If not, then let the promised gates of hell open on our tormentors. It is impossible to conceive of more worthy targets.

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Needed: Vision and Leadership

Posted on February 24, 2025 | 2 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)


Life in Israel is an emotional roller coaster. Not long ago I wrote that, aside from the hostages and their immediate families, we should feel not joy but relief at their liberation, and be mindful of the price paid in the lives of our soldiers who pressured Hamas to this point, as well as the lives of our soldiers lost capturing the terrorists who are now being freed. Our emotions range from relief to rage. Nevertheless, those enraged at the sight of coffins of Jewish victims now being returned alongside the jubilation seen in the Arab world at the release of their murderers should internalize that this is what “at any price” look like. What did we expect? This is their plan.

As if to add to our degradation, Hamas is so unbowed and undeterred that it has resumed blowing up our buses. Of course, only fools would release thousands of Arab Nazi genocidal terrorists from prison and not expect a resumption of terror. How did we lose our way? How did defeat take the place of victory – and so suddenly?

Abba Eban famously said that Arabs “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” That is no longer true. Arabs exploit every opportunity they get – to weaken us, terrorize us, murder us, and demoralize us. They know how to manipulate our society, they know that we will pay any price to liberate the hostages, and they know that this winning strategy can and will be repeatedly employed in the future to achieve whatever aims they want. We have rendered ourselves incapable of victory. For all the blather about learning from and not repeating the mistakes of the past, that is precisely what Netanyahu seems to be doing.

Do you know who “never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity”? We Israelis, who time and again, especially recently, have been given opportunities to deal decisive blows to our enemies, and do not.

Hamas was on the brink of destruction and we saved them. In truth, the war was lost when Israel began providing humanitarian aid to our enemies and adopted the fiction that Gazans are innocent civilians, not an integral part of the Hamas terror network. The war was lost when we began (again) the lopsided terrorist for hostages deals in November 2023, validating that strategy.  The war was lost when Hamas was so on the verge of extinction in January 2023 that it was willing to barter hostages for cans of oil until Netanyahu succumbed to more Biden pressure and provided fuel in exchange for literally nothing. The war was lost when Netanyahu first rejected the notion of freedom for our hostages “at any price,” and then began paying that price.

With Donald Trump’s return to office, new opportunities present themselves that we are again disregarding. Trump recently said that “all the hostages must be released or else,” but Netanyahu, listening to the voices calling for hostage deals, failed to capitalize on that free hand, preferring the release of a few hostages here, some coffins there, and a plethora of freed terrorists. Trump is giving Netanyahu carte blanche to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program, which has been met so far with our silence and inaction. At this point it is more likely that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon than that Israel will demolish its capability (I do hope I am wrong).

The problem seems deeper than the recurrent accusations that Netanyahu talks tough and rarely acts. For sure, he is the finest communicator we have ever had as prime minister, and no Israeli politician has ever been unfairly vilified to the extent that he has. It is something else entirely.

All the evidence to date suggests that PM Netanyahu perceives himself (perhaps unconsciously) as a “conflict manager,” not as a “conflict solver.” He seems to recoil from solutions, preferring to nibble at the margins of a conflict rather than ending or resolving it.

Recall that Netanyahu was first elected in 1996 running against the implementation of the disastrous Oslo Accords. Yet, as soon as he was elected, he did not renounce this catastrophic agreement but implemented it, albeit more slowly, but implementing it nonetheless, even withdrawing from the holy city of Hevron. He boasted that “if they give, they get; if they don’t give, they don’t get,” but what they were “giving” was ephemeral and what they were “getting” endangered our lives. Instead of ending Oslo, he tried to manage it, and was voted out of office. Similarly, his vacillations on the calamitous Gaza expulsion – he was for it before he was against it – are part of the same pattern – management, not resolution.

Fast forward to Netanyahu’s tenure of almost 15 years and we see, unfortunately, not much has changed. The PM has been warning about Iran for decades but Iran is closer than ever to nuclear capability. His threats have been eloquent and ominous but nothing much has changed. To be sure, there have been attacks around the margins – delaying the program through the untimely deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists and detonation of some of its facilities – but these resolved nothing, The Mossad operation in 2018 that pilfered Iran’s nuclear archives was extraordinary, but long-term, accomplished what, exactly? Trump in his first term then withdrew from the Iran deal (which he had promised to do anyway) but Biden returned to it, so what was the long-term effect? Proving to the world that Iran has a nuclear program? Everyone knew that already but most nations don’t care. That is management, not resolution.

The Shalit deal was an example of conflict management, not resolution, emboldening the enemy that terror pays. The various Gaza skirmishes throughout the Netanyahu tenure – the “mowing the lawn” operations – are examples of conflict management, not resolution. Netanyahu seems to lack a killer instinct, never goes for the jugular, never strikes a deathblow against our enemies. That he is mocked today in Gaza, not feared, should be worrisome for all of us.

Hezbollah was near destruction, and most of south Lebanon was under Israeli control, until Netanyahu again decided to abandon territory won in a defensive war and again allow Hezbollah to rearm, rebuild, and return.The beeper caper was stupendous, but not a game changer. We let Hezbollah survive. It will bide its time. We will absorb its attacks without fully responding because that is what we do. That is management, not resolution.

Hamas was near destruction, and most of Gaza under Israeli control, until again Netanyahu decided to resuscitate them, and withdraw from territory saturated with Jewish blood, all to fight another day. That is management, not resolution. Our soldiers are killed, and nothing changes.

Most recently, President Trump proposed that Gazans be relocated to a place where they can live in peace (that is conflict resolution, not management), and what has been our response? To laud the proposal as bold – and then send caravans and building materials to Gaza. Why would caravans and housing materials be sent to Gaza if resolution entails resettlement? It is because we have a leader who manages conflicts but cannot end them, who repeatedly caves under pressure (Clinton, Obama, Biden, and to a lesser extent, Trump), and never accepts any responsibility for failure.

Hamas is solely to blame for kidnapping and murdering our hostages – but we should not need to be reminded of the pathological evil of our enemies. We need to know what our leaders are doing about it. The answer seems to be, again, declaring victory and pulling out, surrendering and calling it a “strategic retreat,” and kicking the can down the road. On October 7, we ran out of road, and still, spin and more spin, the old and failed ways have returned, we grieve and the enemy rejoices, nothing changes, and we are again promised that “just wait, victory is around the corner.” 

Count me a skeptic. If Hamas’ goals were to murder Jews and free their terrorists from our prisons, it has already won. And it is truly inexplicable why Israel has not yet enacted the death penalty for terrorists; at the very least, it would preclude the wild scenes of euphoria among the “innocent” Arab civilians who dwell in the land of Israel.

For better or worse, Trump is a conflict solver, not a manager. His Gaza logic – “why would you keep doing the same thing over and over, when it does not work?” – is impeccable, but such logic has always evaded our leaders. Rightly or wrongly, he has tired of Zelensky who has no realistic vision of an end to his conflict, and probably justifiably so, and he will soon tire of Netanyahu as well and his indecisiveness, his irresoluteness, and his failure of leadership and vision. Trump is a problem solver and if he determines that a problem cannot be solved he will walk away. He is almost daring Netanyahu to act, boldly, without inhibitions, against Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen. Yet, as if preternaturally, Netanyahu cannot or will not act. There is always some enigmatic reason for him to remain passive and let the problems fester.

A conflict manager allows unfettered illegal Arab construction in Jerusalem – in Israel’s own capital city – as well as in Area C of Judea and Samaria. A conflict manager allows foreign consulates in Jerusalem to host events in praise of terror and view themselves as embassies and ambassadors in Palestine.  No self-respecting country would indulge such effrontery. A conflict manager talks of judicial reform and does little about it. A conflict manager wins elections not by presenting resolutions but by depicting every opponent as far worse, people who will “divide Jerusalem!” or “establish a Palestinian state!” or “expel settlers from their homes!” A conflict manager talks and talks and talks about annexing the Jordan Valley, or annexing Judea and Samaria, but does nothing about it.

A leader with vision would accept the Trump proposal for Gaza with a smothering, enthusiastic embrace. Such a leader would not be furnishing homes and allowing the Gaza ruins to be rebuilt but would maintain it as a demolition site to encourage emigration and as an eternal deterrence to our enemies. He would settle Jews in areas conquered from our enemy. He would actively work to implement the Trump plan for Gaza and then apply it to any Arab in Judea and Samaria from the river to the sea who rejects Jewish sovereignty.

If past is prologue, today’s pain and rage will dissipate, we will bind our wounds, find joy in our personal lives, and revert to supporting our political teams even if that demands a suspension of reason and a continuation of the failed policies of many decades. Our glib leaders will persist in exclaiming that “together we will win!” even if they are bereft of any plan for victory. The irony is that our most rabid enemies today are the enemies of most of the Arab countries in the Middle East, and so decisively defeating these enemies – ending that part of the conflict – will promote peace generally. And yet we do not.

Is failed leadership our inescapable reality before the coming of Messiah? Perhaps, but we need not make it more difficult on ourselves by acting irrationally and repeating awful mistakes. But for G-d’s grace, we would be utterly lost, and we thus pray for His compassionate hand that consoles us in our time of distress. May He send our leaders with strength, and integrity, leaders who rise to the challenges of this fateful moment in the history of our eternal people.

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Has Anything Changed?

Posted on January 17, 2025 | 8 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

For all the government hype, spin, and bluster since October 8, 2023, in the end, has anything changed? The current hostage deal would seem to indicate that the conceptziya is alive and well. This is not the agreement of either a victorious nation or a nation poised for victory in six weeks. Hamas is not defeated. Gaza will continue to pose a security threat to Israeli citizens, and all the hostages will likely not be released. For why would Hamas release all of them? Hamas is evil but not foolish. The hostages are Hamas’ best asset, because Hamas knows its incarceration of Israeli hostages leads our people and government to act emotionally, which is to say self-destructively and recklessly.

There will be joy at the release of the freed hostages, at least by the families of those released. I will feel relief, not joy. The joy will appear on the faces of the Arabs who have once again seen their psychopath-terrorists murder Jews and literally get away with it., They will be whooping it up, handing out sweets, and plotting their next massacre of an “unwise and foolish people” (Devarim 32:6). Indeed, I imagine this is the same feeling that Jews had after the Holocaust when the survivors were liberated – not joy but relief. How can there have been joy, knowing what they suffered in captivity, knowing how many did not survive?

Relief, not joy, but at least when the Holocaust survivors were freed, the Nazis were defeated. Here, in our case, we have empowered these Nazis to fight and murder us another day, we have even emptied our prisons of more homicidal Nazis so they should be able to resume their life’s work of murdering Jews. Imagine winning the release of survivors by granting freedom to Goebbels, Goring, Hoess and Eichmann. That is our choice, and our fate.

Today, ours is not the face of victory. Have we squandered the lives of our precious soldiers just to restore the status quo of October 6, 2023? Have we elated our enemies just because we think that now Trump and the Americans will give us a free hand to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities? Most importantly, if the war resumes after the end of the cease fire, how many our soldiers will be killed once again conquering the same swaths of Gaza, now fully booby-trapped and mined? Why would any soldier want to go back there, especially knowing how ephemeral are any gains we make and how permanent is their loss of life?

For all the talk, we will still be prolonging the war and strengthening our enemies by lavishing even more provisions on these “innocent civilians,” not one of whom embraced Israel’s offer of $5,000,000 and free passage in exchange for information leading to the return of our hostages. The war is still managed by defeatists in the General Staff and the intelligence services, who still want to mow the lawn and prepare for another battle in this endless war, despite Hamas now on the brink of defeat. Just like in the Second Lebanon War, we are still sending our soldiers – our finest youth – to be killed and maimed seizing territory on Monday that we will surrender to the enemy on Thursday. For what? For what did they die? And we wonder why Haredim refuse to serve in an army that, too often – it is painful to say – is cavalier about the lives of our soldiers, refusing to bomb from the air buildings where no civilians should be, forcing our soldiers to serve as sitting ducks for the enemy, and still refusing to cut off food, water, electricity, and internet from our enemies.

We are still being lied to by our government. As I wrote during the first week of the war, defeating Hamas and freeing all our hostages are both worthy objectives but they are incompatible absent a miracle, and yet those goals are still being trumpeted as realistic and impending. The opposition, meanwhile, is still focused on toppling Netanyahu, with victory over our foes and freedom for the hostages merely secondary considerations. The streets are still filled with protesters who contrive fears of a Netanyahu dictatorship while obviously, and vehemently, preferring an actual judicial dictatorship, notwithstanding that the former is subject to elections while the latter is not and wishes simply to perpetuate its power by any means necessary.

After all the promises of “absolute victory,” and after PM Netanyahu demonstrated resilience and resolve such as he had never exhibited before as prime minister, he reverted to form, caved under pressure, and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Certainly, we were – and are – traumatized by the invasion and massacre of October 7, but few lessons have been learned. Pressure from Biden or Trump should be meaningless if they weaken our core values and interests. That is how independent nations act: they define their interests and do everything to achieve them. True resolve causes even the most intense pressure to dissipate. Israel has never learned that lesson, which is why we have suffered consistent diplomatic defeats for more than fifty years, and time and again, we rehabilitate and strengthen our enemies.

We still fall for Hamas’ psychological mind games – dangling hostage videos, murdering some, threatening others – all to achieve their aims, which they do. We know these are their tactics – and yet we still succumb to them. (Hamas demanded the release of more than one thousand of their terrorists? Why aren’t some of them being returned in body bags, like too many of our hostages?) We are easily manipulated, our enemies know it, and so they do it repeatedly. We learned nothing from the disastrous Shalit deal – nothing. That lopsided and immoral exchange not only murdered hundreds of us in the ensuing years but also guaranteed that the enemy would try to seize more hostages again, because, why not? It works. And it will work again in the future because the release of murderers in exchange for innocent civilians incentivizes the enemy to do it again. And again. The prattle about not releasing any of the murderers from the October 7 massacre in this round only guarantees that there will be future hostage-taking to win their freedom. Has anything changed?

It would be more plausible if many of those who disseminate the canard that “pidyon shvuyim,” the ransoming of captives, is the most important mitzvah in the Torah actually understood the concept, and perhaps even observed some of the other mitzvot in the Torah. (What the Sages meant is that “ransoming captives” is the highest form of tzedakah because it encompasses all dimensions of that mitzvah.) And as is well known to those who open a Gemara, we do not ransom hostages “for more than their value, for the betterment of the world” (Gittin 45a) because “overpaying” will ultimately bankrupt the community and encourage more hostage-taking. We do exactly what the Gemara says not to do, and obviously to our detriment.

Releasing bloodthirsty murderers is not just the “difficult price” we must pay, as the senseless and repetitive cliché uttered by numerous commentators and politicians puts it. It is not moral; it is immoral, because it has, does, and will put many others at risk. We do not endanger the entire community to save a small group. It is well meaning but also flat out stupid. And we need not speculate that this release might endanger the rest of us. It will! It always has. Terrorists leave our prisons more hardened and more hateful of Jews than they entered, and even more contemptuous of us because they know our weaknesses and how we cannot overcome them. More of us will be murdered, and still others of us will be taken hostage in the future. The only thing we don’t know are the names of the future victims.

Have we learned anything? Aryeh Deri announced that he would support “any deal.” And what if Hamas demanded that Yeshiva students must serve in the IDF? Would he pay that “difficult price”? Haredim should be embarrassed that they largely shirk army service but what is almost as embarrassing, this refusal has compromised their ability to present a true Torah view on “ransoming captives.” They lack any credibility, as they necessarily must prefer any option that does not involve the military in which they do not serve. That means you, Degel HaTorah, which has been forced to furl that flag and, in the process, muted the voice of Torah.

We are still tormented by a legal and judicial establishment that prioritizes the lives of our enemies over our own and which fetishizes the chimera known as “international law,” all progressive doctrines that favor the evildoers in any conflict and render victory impossible for those foolish enough to be guided by it. We are supposed to be the “light unto the nations.” We are the ones who should be teaching the true ethics of war to the world – not vice versa. We should be proudly and unabashedly disseminating the Torah’s ethic of war and not constraining ourselves by absurd moral notions concocted by human beings that cannot produce a better, more just world. Indeed, since the first Geneva Conventions were adopted in 1864, the world has experienced in the last 160 years unprecedented carnage and brutality. We have learned nothing from the evildoers’ exploitation of “international law,” that has effectively deprived the West of winning any war since World War II.

 We have learned nothing from the Oslo debacle, from the Gaza Expulsion catastrophe, from the half-hearted waging of the Second Lebanon War and the various eruptions in Gaza, from the “hostages for terrorists” exchanges now four decades old, and from our reluctance, even fear, of acknowledging the true character of our enemies and dealing with that reality. When the next attack comes – and it will – and we suffer again, and go to war again, we will be accompanied yet again by the same false promises, the same lofty words, the same “together we will win!” – even as we disdain any plan for real victory.

We are victims of a terrible failure of vision, and of leadership, in the government and the opposition, in the upper echelons of the military and legal establishments. This deal is a classic example of “stage one thinking,” a visceral reaction that does not consider “stage two,” the real-world consequences of that emotional decision. Watch the glee on the faces of our enemies – and the agony on ours – and determine who thinks they won, and who thinks they lost.

It is especially galling that we take pride in our humiliation. Our enemies have not been deterred. They have been emboldened, inspired, and heartened by our surrender. They do not care about life – even their own. They care about murdering Jews and destroying the State of Israel, and we – wittingly or unwittingly – are abetting them.

Sadly, nothing has really changed. As a nation, we have been repeatedly let down by our leaders. The only redeeming value of the current government is that any potential replacement would be far worse. That is our fate – and a good reason we pray daily for judges and counsellors as of old, those who can hasten the coming of Moshiach and the kingdom of G-d on earth. May Moshiach come soon and may Hashem in His mercy spare us the harshest consequences of our folly.

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