Tag Archives: Israel

Endless Enmity

Posted on August 8, 2025 | 2 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Why does so much of the world hate us so much?

It is a question for the ages. The most superficial and disingenuous of our detractors claim that today it is because of the war in Gaza, the (outrageously false) allegations of genocide, starvation, and torture, all of which blithely and maliciously ignores that Hamas attacked us on October 7, 2023, raped, murdered and ravaged our people and homes, holds and tortures the hostages, and still clings to its fantasy of destroying Israel and murdering every Jew in the world.

A good question to ask these detractors – including those nations like France, Britain, Spain, Canada, and others now jumping on the derailed train of Palestinian statehood – is: when Hamas avows to destroy Israel, what part of that do you not understand? This recognition of something non-existent – should we condemn Britain for shielding the Loch Ness monster? – is both farcical and cynical. It recalls Arafat’s vacuous declaration of statehood in 1988. There was a Palestinian state in Gaza, run by Hamas. They did not use the instruments of statehood to better the lives of their voters but used the billions of dollars provided them by Qatar, Turkey, and Western countries to construct a complex terror infrastructure that can murder Jews and advance Hamas’ desire to obliterate the Jewish state.

For all their sophistication, these nations today reflect the modern face of Jew hatred. They do not hold Israel to a double standard but to impossible standards, standards fabricated only for us. These standards include the unprecedented obligation to feed your enemy during wartime, the directive to conduct a war without killing enemy civilians, the utter disregard of Hamas’ use of civilians as shields including embedding their terror infrastructure within the civilian population, the rejection of the use of disproportionate force (the typical way wars are won is by the application of disproportionate force by the eventual victor), the refusal to evacuate Gazan refugees to safer habitats (as is their right under international law), the distinction made between a government and the people who elected it, and the lack of any demand that Hamas surrender, which is often the way a defeated party concedes a lost cause.

Instead, these countries, which deem themselves cultured, refined, and in the vanguard of Western civilization, create impossible standards that no sane country would follow, and then seek to reward our enemy with statehood. And if a Palestinian state would then use its newfound independence to attack Israel, I can hear the world faintly (and cynically) saying “oops.” And if G-d forbid Israel is overrun, they will say “double oops,” and veer to a one-state delusion in which Jews live under Arab rule.

That is genuine, unvarnished hatred of Jews and Israel, regardless of their empty protestations of good will and love of peace. Every time the world cries “starvation” and “genocide,” our leaders would do well not negotiating, explaining, or conceding, but just  keep reiterating “free our hostages,” “let Hamas surrender,” and “Europe, admit Gazan refugees.” We should be saying that over and over, rather than weakening our war effort and strengthening our enemies and their supporters. And if we won the war, and Hamas was utterly defeated in Gaza, the entire dialogue with these countries would change.

Still, what is the source of this relentless hatred? It is not the existence of Israel, because as the Holocaust reminds us, they also hated us when there was no Israel. They hated us when they called us “rootless cosmopolitans,” a danger to civilization, and hate us now that there is a Jewish state, and still call us a danger to civilization. What gives?

A number of reasons present.

First, the Muslim takeover of Europe. Europe as a civilization is dying, besieged by Muslim immigrants with a culture and value system that is unassimilable, condescends to Europe’s self-image as enlightened, and perceives Europe as ripe for Islamizing. Every country now supporting the creation of a Palestinian state has been victimized by mass Islamic terrorist attacks. Their leaders are scurrying to save their societies, but time and numbers are against them. A Britain where for years the most popular boy’s name is Mohammad will not for long be a supporter of Israel or benevolent to its own Jewish population. France, Germany, Spain, and other countries are not far behind.

Second, all these countries that are suddenly advocating for a Palestinian are governed by leftist parties. France, Spain, Britain, Canada (even Germany, which has a right-leaning government but whose leftist party gives it a majority in the Bundestag) are all ruled by leftist, secular, progressives. Several of those countries had right-wing, pro-Israel governments until recently. Who is not jumping on this tendentious bandwagon? Poland and Hungary (also, neither of whom admit Muslim immigrants), Greece, Italy, and other countries that are ruled by right-wing governments. Canada’s last right-wing government supported Israel, Italy’s last left-wing government was antagonistic. It is as simple as politics.

And make no mistake about it: if Kamala Harris had defeated Donald Trump, the United States would be standing alongside Europe in its effort to carve up and dismantle the Jewish state. Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, opined recently that the United States committed itself to a Palestinian state in 1947 (!), and has failed to deliver on its promise, obviously oblivious to the Arabs’ rejection of that Partition Plan including the war launched against Israel in 1948 and several times thereafter.

What is it about left-wing, secular, progressive governments that they find such fault with Israel? The answer is that Israel stands for everything they reject. They reject nationalism and they repudiate religion, and Israel is a Jewish state, indeed the Jewish nation-state. Double whammy. They reject the Bible as a source of anything, they reject truth as a fixed concept, they reject morality as an objective entity. Everything about Israel will bother them. Then, throw in their embrace of the fallacy that Israel is a white, colonialist state – Israel is actually majority non-white as these racial bean counters would see it and one cannot possibly colonize its own land – and this endless, unsatiable enmity persists and grows stronger.

If you ask, what about the dozens of Muslim countries in the world that are founded on their version of religion and nationalism, why doesn’t that bother these progressives? The answer is, see reason one.

This secular progressive ideology afflicts many leftist Israelis as well and they struggle to articulate what right we have to this land. And many of these are the same Jews who – for the first time in Jewish history – have joined the blood libel against their own people and parrot the accusations of genocide and starvation.

Third, Europe is in the last stages of purging itself of any residue of Holocaust guilt. Germany may have been the prime mover of the Holocaust but there is no European country that is not stained with the blood of six million Jews, either through acts of commission or omission. That is why Holocaust imagery is so rampant in discussing the war in Gaza. Israel is committing “genocide,” the word coined to describe the murder of Jews during the Holocaust; Israel has turned Gaza into a “concentration camp; Israel is intentionally “starving” innocent Gazans, you know, like the Nazis did to the Jews in the ghettos and concentration camps; and any attempt to relocate Gazans out of the war zone in which they live – out of the territory which has now been mostly reduced to rubble – is termed “ethnic cleansing,” you know, like the Nazis did to the Jews.

The Holocaust weighed heavily on European consciences. That burden started to lighten after the Six Day War, and when the Palestinian statehood movement was created shortly thereafter – a way of destroying Israel not through war but through “human rights, self-determination, freedom” and other fine-sounding nostrums – Holocaust guilt swiftly receded. Of course, combining those worthy values with terror and violence, they assumed, would make an unstoppable winning combination. That is where we are today – we are expected to provide every possible human right to our enemies in order to facilitate their murdering us.

Holocaust guilt is gone, and it is aided by Europe’s unquenchable thirst to see Israelis as Nazis, which not only assuages their guilt but leads many to conclude that we had it coming to us. Thus, they want to believe that Jews would wantonly starve and murder innocent people, which is why Hamas’ blood libel has gained enormous currency across the world, and so rapidly.

Fourth, and probably most importantly, we are living the biblical notion of “a people that dwells alone and is not reckoned among the nations” (Bamidbar 23:9). We are different, a nation apart. As a nation, we too are unassimilable but we do not spread mayhem and violence across the globe. This hatred of us is irrational because it is self-destructive to the haters, but it is also ultimately inexplicable. It wells up from some unknown source in order to remind us that while we are set apart in order to better mankind, to bring G-d’s truth and morality to all, we nevertheless have our own destiny. Our history has a purpose.

What bothers them most – and they could not articulate it – is that we are experiencing the realization of all the biblical prophecies. The prophets warned frequently about our impending exile and destruction because of our sins but then assured us repeatedly of our eventual return to the land of Israel and Jewish sovereignty thereon.

That is what we are living through today with all the vicissitudes, the wars, the terror, the hatred, the miracles, and the rebirth. This must confound them and give them no rest because it undermines every progressive idea and shatters every secular shibboleth. It should not be surprising that Operation Rising Lion – the swift and miraculous reversal to Iran’s nuclear program designed to destroy us – was quickly followed by accusations against us of genocide and starvation and the desperate need for a Palestinian state. It does not matter which terrorist thugs lead it or what they want to do with it. Its most important feature is that it can function as a brake on the fulfillment of Jewish destiny.

We have so much to offer the world, which in fact is starving. As Amos the prophet intoned (8:11) several millennia ago, “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord G-d, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of G-d.” Western culture is decadent and Western societies are collapsing, disinclined to reproduce, unwilling to fight for its survival. And so, they hate us and attack us, and find therein some purpose, a cause, however corrupt and venal.

That will be to their everlasting shame. As for us, proud of our heritage and confident in our destiny and the divine promises to us, we should not falter or fumble, hesitate or stumble, but march enthusiastically to our destiny, reclaiming and rebuilding every part of our land, from the river to the sea, imbuing it with holiness and Torah, and awaiting the final redemptive act from Above.

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A Government with No Answers

Posted on July 31, 2025 | 3 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

After more than twenty months of on-off warfare, Hamas is a pale image of its revolting self but still calls the shots, holds our hostages, manipulates Israel and world society, and is an evil player on the world stage. The war goals seem to have transmogrified to freeing the hostages at (almost) any price and providing humanitarian aid to the enemy population whose representatives invaded our communities, raped our women, butchered our elderly, set fire to our homes, and took hundreds of innocent people hostage. The conclusion is inescapable that the government of Israel is devoid of fresh ideas, trapped in the rut of failed approaches to the strategic challenges before us.

The two original errors still remain. First, declaring the joint war objectives of defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages, both worthy goals but incompatible without a miracle; second, precipitously distinguishing between Hamas and Gazans, as if the latter bear no responsibility for the former, as absurd as in 1944 distinguishing between the Nazis and the German people.

How bewildered is our government?

  • We have no answer to the outrageous quandary of Israelis held hostage. Hamas knows our weaknesses, aided and abetted by anti-government mobs and media who demand “bring them home now,” oblivious to the reality that even if every hostage would be returned alive today, Hamas would simply take new hostages tomorrow. And why not? The tactic works, mostly because we have allowed it to work.
  • We have become even more desperate than Hamas for a deal, any deal. We are negotiating with a genocidal, suicidal death cult sworn to our destruction, and perplexed why it is not responding favorably to our generous offers. It is because we have allowed them to think that they hold all the cards. Granted Hamas does not care about our people or even their people; but knowing that, why would keep strengthening them and their supporters?
  • We have no answer to the issue of humanitarian aid. For the first time in world history, an invaded nation is being forced by the “global community” to provide food, water, and fuel to an enemy population. This is obviously not required even by the charade known as international law and it is foolish to boot. People who complain that the war has dragged on too long must know that the war is being prolonged because of this aid. We are prolonging this war; yet we keep falling into the same trap.
  • We have no answer to the Hamas strategy of hiding among civilians. We have taken so many measures to avoid incidental harm to enemy civilians that our own soldiers’ lives have been lost. That is a moral obscenity, not surprisingly endorsed without legitimacy by our legal establishment – military, civilian and judicial – whom this government for too long has allowed to usurp power from the lawfully elected officials.
  • We have no answer to the Hamas strategy of prioritizing its own survival while enabling them to kill more Jews. Every seizure of territory in Gaza comes with a price in our soldiers’ blood. Every withdrawal from that captured territory allows Hamas to plant bombs and mines. Every week, several of our soldiers are killed in this war of attrition, blown up in booby-trapped buildings or by mines planted on roads. This is all to achieve dubious objectives. If the intention is to find the hostages, that tactic is not working. If the intention is to destroy terrorist infrastructure, then that endeavor is pointless if the IDF plans to retreat from those locations in the event of a hostage deal. Each hostage deal has freed some hostages – but also invariably resulted in the deaths of as many soldiers blown up by the explosives that the deal enabled Hamas to plant. That is not a sensible or winning strategy, and yet we are begging to do it again.
  • We have no answer to the relentless anti-Israel propaganda, but for that I cannot fault the government. Facts and truth are forlorn concepts in the Western world and the exponential increase in media outlets ensures that lies will always have greater currency than truth. The media’s interest is not in reporting news but in advancing a narrative, an agenda, and it is certainly harmful that the tendentious media readily find Israeli spokesmen – usually military has-beens who despise PM Netanyahu – who eagerly besmirch Israel at every opportunity. Where the government can be faulted is in not articulating a clear, Jewish approach to these issues, which has left us meandering in the muddle of Western moral vanities, adopting Western values (many of them fabricated just recently and some just for the purpose of this war) rather than present the Torah morality as would befit a Jewish people preserved by G-d to be a “light unto the nations.”

Our approach has become a macabre and bloody failure. We keep repeating the same mistakes hoping something different will happen. We keep negotiating hostage deals because that is what we do, unthinkingly, reflexively, knowing they jeopardize our soldiers today and our very existence tomorrow. We keep blowing things up, assuming that Hamas will rebuild but hoping it takes them just a little longer. We are not doing what it takes to win this war and deter the next. Why is Hamas recalcitrant in the most recent negotiations? Perhaps it is following Napoleon’s advice: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

It must be underscored that even with this government’s failures, spanning the spectrum of the Israeli political scene reveals that any other conceivable government would be far worse and its strategic posture even more distant from reality and our current needs. What must change?

  • We must rule out hostage deals in exchange for anything other than unconditional surrender. They are literally killing us – our soldiers, now, every week – and our citizens in the future. Hamas will never make any deal that leads to its disintegration and so we are foolish to expect it. Releasing their murderers cheapens our lives, emboldens them, and ensures that terror will continue and increase. We must stop validating their tactic of hostage-taking. Otherwise, we will wake up one day after all these hostages are freed to learn that G-d forbid a busload of children has been taken captive or a summer camp was overrun. At present, we are inviting that eventuality.
  • Additionally, we must begin executing convicted terrorists – those who murdered and those who attempt to murder. Now. And within weeks of their attack, not decades. That too will disincentivize hostage-taking. The security services have long argued against the death penalty on the grounds that it will lead the terrorists to mistreat our captives. In retrospect, does any argument sound more farcical today?
  • We must articulate for the world a Jewish morality of war. Sieges are moral, as they encourage surrender. We have no obligation to nourish the enemy in wartime. If the world really cares about innocent Gaza civilians, such as they might exist, they should be evacuating them from this war zone to their own countries. Again, by providing nourishment and fuel to our enemies in wartime (and not even insisting on third-party verification that our hostages are being fed!), we are prolonging the war, killing our soldiers, and further endangering our hostages.
  • We need our own DOGE in Israel – a Department of Gaza Evacuation. To the extent that it does not already exist is an abject failure on the part of this government. A government that continues to surrender territory – that forces its soldiers to fight and die again and again for the same turf – is too cavalier with its soldiers’ lives. Yes, we should announce that Gaza will be evacuated, that Israel is claiming this territory (our ancient biblical patrimony, in any event), and will soon resettle it. This cannot hurt our public relations, which is already largely moribund and irrelevant to anyone outside our echo chamber. We should have already – literally – moved our border fences two kilometers inside Gaza and announced to the world that the invader has lost this land permanently. Let the nations of the world – all of them founded on conquest – object. And let those nations so concerned with the fate of Gaza civilians – I mean you, France, Turkey, and Spain – take them.
  • We must not allow our fate to be decided by unelected judges and functionaries, like the Government’s Legal Advisor, herself morally compromised. She does not like the government’s new head of the GSS? She now wants the appointment delayed for another sixty days? Who is she? And why does any self-respecting government honor her wishes? The will of the people is reflected in their elected representatives, not a self-appointed legal oligarchy that deigns to rule its “inferiors.” Yes, General David Zini should be sworn in tomorrow and assume the position, and if the Legal Advisor objects, inform her that her objections are duly noted, but when the Government wants her advice, it will ask for it. Only a hapless government continues to abide her and the rogue court that underwrites her.
  • We must make our goal of “absolute victory” not a political slogan or a rhetorical device but a reality. It is no secret that generals weaned on Oslo, the Gaza Expulsion, and the need to make peace with our enemies whatever the cost – and not entirely convinced of the  justice of our cause or possession of our land – will not be able to devise a plan for victory but only for negotiations, cease fires, and kicking the can down the road. With such generals, we will not prevail.
  • We must cease listening to our enemies – and even some of our friends – as to how best to win the war. As the Prussian military thinker Karl von Clausewitz put it, “Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.” 

We are bereft of answers because we are making the mistake of fighting a war with too much kindness – the antithesis of the Torah’s ethic of war. It is not a sign of moral sensitivity that we worry ourselves with the fate of the enemy civilians but a clear indication of moral confusion. Our ongoing national surrender to hostage-taking must stop. If we continue along the current path, we will neither win the war nor free the hostages. And that will be more devastating than the matter of who the prime minister is and for how long.

To be sure, there is a clear but not a smooth path to victory. Much of the world simply does not want us to win and they couch their hatred in the moral bromides they direct our way. In the short term, we will pay a diplomatic and likely an economic price for victory. Worse, all of our hostages may not be returned alive. We should prepare for it – or at least willfully choose the path of false promises, magical illusions, and wishful thinking that were hallmarks of the Oslo Accords and the Gaza Expulsion, fatal errors from which many in our midst still do not recoil in shame. But victory is its own reward, much of the world will slowly awaken to the improved strategic posture of this defeat of radical Islam, and any discomfort should be short-lived. And always remember that Donald Trump loves winners, no matter how the victory is achieved, and has contempt for non-winners, the stalemate crowd.

What Thomas Jefferson said about slavery in 1820 is true about Hamas today: “We havethe wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.” If Hamas remains in Gaza, it will rebuild its terror infrastructure on the global dime, and quickly, and even more deadly – having bloodied Israel and survived. But even a Hamas defeated in Gaza will not disappear. It will continue its genocidal ambitions elsewhere and probably make foreign Jews its primary target in the short term. That is the price we pay for Jew hatred and we must always be vigilant.

What a victory will accomplish is deterrence. Our enemies will recalibrate the high cost of murdering Jews, and most will desist. Others will realize that they have nothing to gain as our foe and much to gain as our friend, and the region will be transformed. A victory will enable us to rebuild our society from within and heal the fractures that now beset our people, redefine our national purpose, and strengthen our national will. This government should not squander this opportunity.

Our government desires victory but has no plan for victory. It is now spinning its wheels, endangering our soldiers, and focused on feeding our enemies. Those mistakes can be rectified with an announcement and implementation of a dramatic change in policy – a policy centered on Israeli interests, the wellbeing of our citizens and soldiers, and faith in our destiny.

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Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize

Posted on July 24, 2025 | 1 comment

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

When Prime Minister Netanyahu presented President Trump with the letter Netanyahu sent to the Nobel Peace Prize committee recommending Trump for the 2025 award, the President was genuinely surprised and touched. It was a gracious act on Netanyahu’s part, reflecting Israel’s appreciation for the role the United States played in degrading Iran’s nuclear program as well as playing to Trump’s ego. It was simultaneously sincere and sycophantic. It also might be dangerous for Israel.

To be sure, it is extremely unlikely that Trump will be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize even if he convinced the world’s rogue nations to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. The Nobel Prize Committee skews heavily to the left, where Trump is anathematized and even his accomplishments are dismissed. More importantly, the Nobel Peace Prize, despite its luster, has often been a poor indicator of true peace and occasionally downright farcical.

Look no further than the 1994 Peace Prize awarded to Yasser Arafat, Yitzchak Rabin, and Shimon Peres for the Oslo Accords. Arafat remained an unrepentant terrorist still plotting Israel’s destruction until his final days. The Oslo Accords themselves – despite their best but foolhardy intentions – led inexorably to Israel’s strategic decline in the 1990’s and 2000’s, the fracture of its society into warring camps, an unprecedented wave of terror that claimed thousands of Israeli dead and wounded and Israel’s surrender of the Gaza Strip, and ultimately to the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023. That Peace Prize mocks itself and its recipients.

In 1973, Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Prime Minister Le Duc Tho were honored with that year’s Peace Prize for negotiating the Vietnamese cease fire that enabled US troops to withdraw from that conflict. Le Duc Tho had the decency to decline the award, perhaps knowing that within eighteen months North Vietnam would breach the cease fire, assault and conquer South Vietnam, and end the war on its own terms.

At best, the Nobel Peace Prize is aspirational. It suggests fantasies and good intentions but little else. Witness the 1997 award to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. American troops in Iraq, and Israeli forces in Gaza, certainly wish the campaign had been more successful; alas, it failed to convince the evildoers who still use mines as weapons of war.

Similarly, the 2005 award to the International Atomic Energy and its head, Mohammed ElBaradei, “for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes” failed to anticipate how little they did to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, certainly compared to the dramatic strikes of Israel and the United States. And perhaps the most risible award, in retrospect, was the 1929 Peace Prize bestowed upon Frank Kellogg who as US Secretary of State negotiated the “Kellogg-Briand Pact” that outlawed all wars between nations. Among the signatories were Germany and Japan. Neither the pact nor the prize averted one of the deadliest and bloodiest centuries in world history.

Undoubtedly, Trump craves the award, but Israel must be wary of succumbing to his entreaties or pressure in order to give him that chance. Trump is attempting to negotiate a series of cease fires across the world, all of which solve nothing. The cease fire with the Houthis of Yemen has not stopped them from firing missiles at Israel or pirating Western commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The proposed cease fire in Ukraine rewards Russian aggression, kicks the can down the road for another few years – and even so is still rejected by Russia. Trump declared a “cease fire” between Iran and Israel, and yet Iran is already rebuilding its air defenses and most probably its nuclear capabilities.

An imposed cease fire in Gaza – something that Trump has said for the better part of three months is imminent – will make it more difficult for Israel to achieve its goals of defeating Hamas, freeing the hostages, and preventing the reconstruction of an irredentist Gaza. As currently contemplated, the latest plan literally rewards terror, validates kidnapping civilians as a successful and unstoppable tactic, forces Israel to withdraw from territory already captured multiple times at a high cost in the blood of our soldiers, will exact an higher price if Israel has to fight over the same territory yet again, and prolongs the war through the provision of supplies to the enemy and its population in wartime. It will almost guarantee that Hamas remains in power, declares victory, rebuilds its power base and terror infrastructure, and plots its next massacre of Jews.

Additionally, expanding the Abraham Accords to countries with an avowed hostility to Israel – and to the United States – serves neither country’s interests. It will invariably lead to the US providing aid to its own adversaries and constraining Israel’s options in order to maintain the illusion of harmony. Accords between nations must be based on mutual respect and shared interests, if not shared values. To think this includes Syria requires a willful suspension of disbelief and unlimited naïveté.

The history of the Nobel Peace Prize and its recipients is a stark reminder that peace does not come through ceremonies, treaties, or awards but only through a transformation of hearts. The alternative – an absence of war – is meaningful in its own rights but is subject to the whims of new leaders.

For sure, by the standards of Nobel Peace Prize, Donald Trump deserves it for at least trying to end conflicts, even though no conflict has been ended. But Israel should not allow Trump’s interest in the award to shape its statecraft, limit its freedom of action, or make ill-considered concessions that resuscitate our most vile enemies. Otherwise, the dangers posed by the enmity of our foes will harm us long after the Nobel pomp and ceremony has receded into history. Israel’s security should not be sacrificed on the altar of good intentions or the vanity project which is the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Ceaseless Fire

Posted on June 24, 2025 | Comments Off on Ceaseless Fire

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

As Winston Churchill allegedly said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.” We are experiencing both parts of that aphorism in real time.

It is inconceivable that any Democratic president would have attacked Iran’s nuclear reactors. The allure of the diplomatic solution is that the dream never dies; it is always just one negotiation away. But credit to President Trump who thinks out of the box, has little use for “experts,” resents being endlessly strung along, and took the courageous decision to send American forces to obliterate the cornerstone of Iran’s diabolical plan to destroy the State of Israel – its nuclear weapons facilities.

Moreover, Trump had to unexpectedly return to office and also overcome the harping of his critics on the right and left, the dumbest and most tendentious of whom assert that the US attack was illegal without prior congressional authorization and an impeachable offense. That is preposterous; pursuant to American law, the President has to notify Congress within 48 hours of the deployment of American forces overseas, and that was done within six hours. Why would his critics prattle something so patently false? To get their names in the headlines, which works all the time.

Granted, it was always assumed that the United States would not attack first, and not on its own. The fact that Israel softened up – really, demolished – Iran’s air defenses rendered the attack relatively low risk, high reward. But there is always some risk involved, and Trump delayed, wanting to ensure that the US attack was politically, morally, and strategically defensible, as well as to add to the element of surprise through deflection and deception.

Obviously, high praise is due PM Netanyahu, who after decades of hesitation – he has literally been saying since the 1990’s that Iran is 6-12 months away from a nuclear bomb – finally acted. Our sages taught that “there are those who acquire their world in one moment.” The constellation of events that made this possible is breathtaking, biblical in nature. The capabilities of Iran’s proxies had to be greatly degraded or eliminated so that an attack on Iran would not result in immediate peril right on our borders. Netanyahu had to have a supportive cabinet of like-minded individuals, and not the negativity of his former officials who are now the has-beens who vilify him daily in the media. And he had to have a supportive United States to provide diplomatic cover, weaponry, and the bunker-busting bombs that could destroy underground facilities.

It was the right thing to do for both countries, and for both men, and for the world, and that they did it, acting in concert, can change history. Will it last?

There we come to the American predilection, identified by Churchill, to “try everything else” before doing the right thing. Trump’s impetuous announcement of a cease fire – no written text, no formal agreement, no discernible conditions – and callously allowing each party (to his thinking) to get in their last blows has already exacted a terribly steep price in the deaths of Israeli civilians. As I write, the deadline has passed but the missiles keep coming. What was he thinking?

The substance of Trump’s world view is a fundamental misconception of this part of the world and the nefarious actors involved. To call on Iran to “stop the hatred” miscomprehends the source of that hatred: it is religiously based, woven into the fabric of the brand of Islam embraced by the Ayatollah and Revolutionary Iran, and not readily relinquished. Trump may casually invoke “God’s blessings” on all nations and the world but – as a materialist who sees the purpose of life as making as much money as you can and enjoying it – he is essentially clueless as to the power of the religious idea, especially in distorted form. He simply cannot understand people who would rather launch deadly missiles at innocent civilians than play a round of golf or who would rather die – killing themselves and murdering Jews – than enjoy a day of frolic at a country club.

It is that fundamental misconception – really, a world view to which he cannot relate – that enables Trump to release such blather as “Israel & Iran came to me, almost simultaneously, and said, “PEACE!” I knew the time was NOW. The World, and the Middle East, are the real WINNERS! Both Nations will see tremendous LOVE, PEACE, AND PROSPERITY in their futures.” None of this actually happened. A cease fire that does not deal with the underlying causes of the conflict is bound to fail, and negotiations with Iran that do not begin with one question to which the only acceptable and decent answer is “yes” – do you repudiate your fantasy of destroying Israel? – is a waste of time and will only enable Iran to rebuild and plan the next war..

Additionally, it is far premature to claim that Iran’s nuclear facilities have been “totally and completely obliterated.” No one in a position to know actually says that with any assurance. To be honest, no one really knows what was obliterated; no one knows how much enriched uranium was destroyed and how much carted off to other secret locations; no one knows what centrifuges survived and where they might be; no one even knows if there are back-up facilities at which uranium can still be enriched and weaponized. Trump’s claims are wishful thinking uttered with complete bravado. And his reference to the “Twelve Day War” (yes, I know, we are used to Six) ignores the obvious fact that Iran has been at war with Israel for decades and that war has sadly not ended.

Only regime change will end the threat. The problem is that regime change is not in our hands nor in the hands of the United States. For decades we have heard about the dissidents, the Iranian opposition, the revulsion that “most” Iranians have towards the cruel regime of the mullahs and how given the chance they would rebel against and overthrow those who seized their country. Well, they have been given the chance.

An additional problem is that Iran is a factionalized society, a conglomerate of many different ethnic groups and religions who do not all share the same vision for their society. Any successor government would ideally permanently renounce Iran’s nuclear program but that is not guaranteed. There is no clear replacement, so much has Iran suppressed its people and persecuted any dissidents. Nor is it really known what percentage of the population truly despises the regime or is willing to gamble their lives attempting to depose it. Accordingly, the worst time, then, to walk away from Iran and suddenly declare a cease fire is when the boot is on the Ayatollah’s throat, his regime is reeling, and his capacity to intimidate and govern at its lowest ebb. It makes reconstituting his tyranny more likely.

No Israeli should be surprised if a cease fire goes into effect, and we finally expect a good night’s sleep, only to have that interrupted by renewed rocket fire from the Houthis. And while Hezbollah has been neutralized, at least for the moment, the zombie-like Hamas – dead but not buried, dysfunctional but still holding our hostages and attacking our soldiers – is also extant, kept alive by our “humanitarian” aid. (Q. By the standards to which we are held, shouldn’t Iran be required to provide humanitarian aid and money to rebuild to the Israeli victims? Shouldn’t Iran be called to account by the UN, ICC, ICJ, and the rest of the alphabet for its gross violation of human rights for targeting Israeli civilians? A. Don’t hold your breath. Those sham rules only apply to Israel.) A cease fire gives us time to refresh and regroup – but it gives the enemy the same time.

It is not normal that Israel – a tiny country with a tiny but magnificent population – should have been the world’s only nuclear non-proliferators (Iraq, Syria, Iran) until this past Sunday. Perhaps being a light onto the nations includes relentless reminding them of good and evil, moral and immoral, right and wrong, and how their choices will determine their futures much more than they think. We do have what to teach the world, and many still resent us precisely for that reason.

We are left now with many unknowns, and perhaps that is how it should be. We are not truly the masters of our fate. We are the beneficiaries in miraculous ways of the Lord’s kindness that we are living through now. We have suffered terrible losses, injuries, and devastation, but nothing like what should be anticipated from the extent of the rockets and missile fire we have endured. It is as if a small number get through in order to make us realize that our human systems are not perfect and we are ultimately shielded by Divine Providence.

The events of the last two weeks have demonstrated again the resilience and strength of the people of Israel – and of the protective hand of G-d “who is Good and does good.” May that protective shield continue until we merit complete redemption.

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