Tag Archives: Politics

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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We the People

Posted on January 8, 2025 | 1 comment

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Israelis do not usually agree on much but there is consensus on two related issues. Most Israelis feel there is a need for a commission of inquiry to investigate the catastrophic Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath, and most Israelis feel that such a commission of inquiry will not be objective, impartial, or fair. Hence the stalemate – and both points have substantial merit.

Obviously, the systemic breakdowns that allowed the invasion, massacre, torture, and hostage-taking to occur – an epic failure – need to be scrutinized if only to preclude a future recurrence. Yet, there is no foreseeable circumstance in which an objective tribunal can be formed because there is no element of military, political, and judicial apparatus that is untainted, and no establishment organ that has clean hands in this disaster. Any investigation will necessarily seek to deflect blame from the sponsors of the investigation, point fingers at the “other,” and exploit the conclusions for crass electoral purposes. The blameworthy are being asked to investigate themselves, a pattern familiar to Israel and occurring now in the purported investigation by the military prosecutor’s office of the military prosecutor’s office and its alleged fabrication of evidence in the Sde Teiman fiasco.

Who is guiltless in the wake of the Hamas massacre? Certainly not the military leadership who failed to anticipate the invasion or respond to the initial encroachments effectively. Israel’s vaunted intelligence – whose craftiness and ingenuity have been astonishing in the last year – failed miserably in the weeks before October 7. Repeated reports by the reconnaissance scouts of unusual Hamas activity as late as the morning of October 7 were studiously ignored. Vital intelligence was not passed up the chain of command, and definitely not to the political decision-makers, another recurring phenomenon in Israel. The military’s embrace of a small, smart army relying on technology was an abject failure. The few generals and commanders who vocally objected to the complacency and indifference were edged aside, reassigned, or dismissed. Groupthink prevailed and the echo chamber was deafening. Accountability will not be readily forthcoming, a disservice to our dedicated soldiers whose bravery and professionalism will inspire generations to come.

Led by the military’s analysts, the political class assumed that Hamas was deterred and would not dare to attack. The politicians, including the Prime Minister (but notably excluding some of the leading Religious Zionist leaders), were guilty of abetting Hamas, allowing unrestricted funding, building, plotting, and finally execution of Hamas’ nefarious plans. The politicians failed in one of the most basic calculations in military strategy – fighting a definite war today with X casualties versus fighting a potential war in the near future with 5X casualties. The “quiet for quiet” gambit was an abysmal failure. They all guessed wrong and for more than a decade, letting Hamas fester and its capabilities metastasize, with devastating consequences to life, health, families, and not least to the Israeli psyche.

Few objected to the Hamas buildup, with prominent exceptions, among others, Betzalel Smotrich and Michael ben Ari, with the latter even being banned from political life. Almost every political party left, right, and center, has a role in this debacle, including the Haredi parties whose repudiation of military service for their constituents leaves them without a coherent or credible voice on security-related matters. Of course, Binyamin Netanyahu shares this guilt as well – but so does almost every other conceivable candidate for prime minister for the next decade. The conceptziya devoured an entire generation of Israeli generals and politicians, even as they try to avoid the day of reckoning.

The mainstream media are also culpable, for unquestioningly parroting the establishment views, and especially for their relentless and obsessive hatred of PM Netanyahu as the gravest threat to the Israeli polity. As it turned out, they were wrong: the gravest threat to the Israeli polity was located in Gaza, and Lebanon, and Syria, and Iran, and in the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. The media also misconstrued the temporary calm in Gaza as something permanent and irrevocable and favored short-term solutions to Israel’s military challenges so as to better focus on their most important agenda item: getting rid of Netanyahu.

The legal and judicial establishment – particularly those nominally charged with appointing a commission of inquiry – is also guilty. They are guilty of micromanaging the IDF’s response to everything, guilty of favoring the lives of terrorists and enemy civilians over the well-being of our own soldiers, guilty of tying the army’s hands, and guilty of persecuting the Prime Minister over legal and literal nonsense. The Attorney General has assumed dictatorial powers, with the entire land of Israel her fiefdom. The military advocates allowed the enemy to approach the Gaza border unmolested, continue to hamstring the soldiers and are also anti-Netanyahu activists. Is there any chance their culpability will be exposed? Not as long as the judges play a role – or actually participate – in any investigation. And the Kaplan protesters redefined democracy – now construed as “rule by the self-appointed elites” – and desperately, illegally, and occasionally violently protect the hegemony of the legal and judicial establishment in defiance of all democratic norms.

At the risk of offending readers, another component of society is also responsible for this calamity – we the people. We the people who prefer an illusory calm to dealing with real threats, we the people who seek quick fixes (and encourage the politicians to do the same, even as their popularity continues to be foolishly measured in weekly polls), we the people who supported the Oslo cataclysm and the Gaza expulsion, we the people who would rather be soothed by the elegant words of false prophets of “peace now” than confront the harsh reality of the neighborhood in which we live, we the people who might again be seduced by lullabies sung to us by whoever succeeds Mahmoud Abbas, we the people whose rabid support for political parties and personalities rather than ideas and policies mimics the fervor of football fans and their favorite teams.

Who can judge, when everyone is guilty, including the judges?

Perhaps, then, we should learn a lesson from Yosef. Ramban, the venerated biblical commentator, assumed that Yaakov never found out what happened to Yosef (Commentary to Breisheet 45:27). How is that even possible – wasn’t he curious, didn’t he ask, wasn’t he told?

It seems that Yosef sent Yaakov a clue at their very first interaction: “And [Yaakov} saw the wagons that Yosef sent” (ibid), on which Rashi comments, utilizing the play on words of agalot (wagons) and eglot (heifers), “Yosef informed Yaakov of the religious subject he had been studying with his father at the time when he left him, to wit, the section of the axed heifer.”

The symbolism is dramatic. As the Torah relates (Devarim 21:1-9), a heifer has its neck broken as part of the rite accompanying the expiation of an unsolved murder – a crime for which there was only a victim but no accused, no evidence, and no witnesses. In that scenario, it is the society that assumes the guilt, not any individual or faction. This was a subtle message to Yaakov not to investigate what happened to Yosef. In essence, Yosef told Yaakov we are all guilty – you for favoring me, me for disrespecting my brothers, they for selling me. The fewer details you know, the better, because our society could not survive a fair and complete investigation. No one will walk away unscathed. The same is true today. Even if three unbiased people could be found in the entire country, the elitists will never allow an investigation whose conclusions are not preordained.

To be sure, there must be an investigation at a certain point of the October 7 devastation, if only to draw operational conclusions of what went wrong, why, and how the flawed process can be rectified. Future military and intelligence leaders must ensure that their ranks are filled with a diversity of views, especially views that challenge conventional wisdom. And there needs to be reflection on the goals we seek to achieve as a society, given our enemies across the region and our profound yearning for peace – so profound that it has often engendered the pursuit of fantasies and illusions and a headlong rush from reality. Those goals should feature the creation of a more Jewish state, a nation proud of our uniqueness and our identity, something that ironically the war has catapulted to center stage.

There will come a time when the assumption of personal and collective responsibility will be in order, without such being bogged down in politics. That time is not now. The rival committees now investigating will do little other than stoke the flames of discord by pointing the finger of guilt at their respective political adversaries. There will be an unseemly search for convenient scapegoats and a mad scramble to avoid personal responsibility. For now, it suffices to say, as Yosef implied, we are one nation, we all have much to regret, we all have much we did wrong, we all have much to be proud of – and we all have a grand and majestic destiny to which we look forward.

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Evacuate them NOW!

Posted on November 1, 2024 | Comments Off on Evacuate them NOW!

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com).

Why does the world dislike Palestinians?

This is the inescapable conclusion derived from the disparate treatment shown to Palestinian refugees as opposed to other global refugees. Just in the last few decades, the Western world has absorbed millions of refugees fleeing sundry conflicts – Iraqi refugees, Afghan refugees, Syrian refugees, Haitian refugees, not to mention the millions of illegal migrants that the United States has welcomed from South and Central America and from distressed areas on earth.

Only Palestinian refugees are treated differently. The other refugees were escorted out of war zones to safe havens as international humanitarian law requires. They were not told that they must remain in the crossfire of conflict or that the world will surge humanitarian aid to them. They were not told that Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, Bashar al-Assad, and other brutes would be held accountable for their welfare or suffer adverse consequences. In most cases, the nearest country accepted these refugees until they found sanctuary elsewhere. In the last two decades, more than thirty million global refugees have been brought to safety.

Only Palestinian refugees are treated differently. Egypt, without repercussion, was allowed to deny safe passage for Gazan civilians through its territory. Imagine how differently our defensive war against Hamas would have been waged if these “civilians” had been extricated immediately. Instead, they were forced to remain and are still forced to remain. It is not only that Hamas has physically barred their departure, which is cruel enough but logical given their effective use as human shields against Israel. It is also that the United States, as repeatedly asserted by Antony Blinken, has made it one of its strategic goals that not a single Gazan be displaced. So, they are forced to suffer and die, some through direct execution by Hamas and others by indirect execution – compelled to serve as human shields and dramatize their suffering for the world and thus besmirching Israel’s image.

So why does the world dislike Palestinians?

One reason might be widespread recognition of the fabricated Palestinian national identity, a fiction that is roughly a century old and invented primarily to thwart Jewish nationalism. It is not a group that has a historic homeland or national identity, which was ever independent, or that can sustain an independent state, the delusions of the world notwithstanding. Palestinian nationalism, such as it exists, has attracted a disproportionate share of the world’s attention since Yasser Arafat arrived on the world scene with his holstered gun, hijackings, bombings, kidnappings, and monetary extortion. This was for the second reason the world dislikes Palestinians: it is because in whatever country they have lived, they routinely foment strife, violence, social unrest, and even civil war. Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait are among the Arab countries that have suffered severely since so-called Palestinians migrated to their countries. Gazans have no place to go because even in the Arab world they are not wanted as those countries fear the consequences of even temporarily housing these people.

Nevertheless, the world’s dislike of Palestinians pales before the world’s hatred of Israel and the Jewish national idea. Much of the world – including nations deemed our friends – desperately does not want Israel to win our current wars. We have reached somewhat of an impasse in the battles in Gaza and south Lebanon. Our enemies have been ravaged by our dedicated and intrepid soldiers and deterrence has been mostly but not completely restored. Gaza has been justly devastated – but its population mostly remains. And, sadly, it is inconceivable that it can be reformed or civilized such that Gazans will live peacefully with us. It is inevitable that these Gazans civilians will return to terror at the earliest opportunity, under the name Hamas or under some group that will bear a new name but retain its jihadist hatred of Israel and Jews. To think that Gazans will dwell in serenity even governing their own affairs is the sort of delusional thinking that has guided Israeli statecraft since Oslo.

Since victory eludes us – victory traditionally defined as permanent loss to the enemy of the territory used for its aggression – we have entered one of the worst stages of war: our soldiers are daily killed trying to retain territory that has already been conquered twice before in this war, not to mention three times before in previous wars. We are bled daily by these guerrilla attacks – explosives in buildings and on roads, and the occasional sniper – without any articulated plan that can permanently change the strategic equation. We mourn our losses – but do little to prevent future ones. These days, our enemies gain no strategic advantage by shooting their rockets, missiles, and drones at us; they just lust for Jewish blood. What can frustrate those malevolent desires?

Israel has carved out a military zone in which Gazans are not supposed to enter and that too irks the world, our enemies, and our friends, which resents any limitations on Gazans’ movements. We are living the conundrum that the world demands humanitarian aid for Gazans, while that same aid will serve little purpose other than allow them to stay, eventually rebuild, and reconstitute their terror machine.

It should be clear to all that much of Gaza has been rendered uninhabitable and will be so for years to come. Evacuation of Gazan civilians – in numbers that are relatively miniscule compared to the other global refugees evacuated in the last two decades – is the most moral approach to their future wellbeing, the stability of this region, and the security of the State of Israel. The entire terror infrastructure built by Hamas may never be fully discovered, so diabolical and so embedded in Gaza it is. Evacuation of those who might control and exploit that infrastructure, now and in the future, is the only way to preserve our security and prevent future brutal invasions of our land.

Israel erred in not demanding the evacuation of Gazan civilians at the very beginning of the war. Instead, the government caved to world demands that humanitarian aid be rushed into Gaza, which prolonged the war, on the absurd pretext uttered by the likes of Blinken and Kamala Harris that Israel’s “number one priority” in this war must be the welfare of Gazan civilians. That is palpably false, and a standard to which no nation in history has been held.

Even if were true, the true welfare of Gazan civilians necessitated their immediate evacuation from the war zone. It still does. Gazan civilians, even those of indeterminate number who do not loathe Israel and seek our demise, will never be able to break away from extreme elements in their society who preach violence, jihad, and destruction of Israel as reasonable endeavors and justifiable objective to which they should dedicate their lives and those of their children.

There will be pundits and experts who will say that the world will never allow the evacuation of Gazans and will demand they all stay and rebuild, come what may. They will also say that Israel should not govern that territory but consent to local governance or maybe some Arab coalition. They will say that Israel will always have the right of self-defense if attacked – but then when Israel is attacked, as we invariably will be with rockets, drones, and missiles, they will then say that it is not worth a war. In effect, we will again acquiesce to Arab aggression against us, while knowing these hostile elements remain unreconciled to our very existence. We have been down this sorry road so many times and at such a terrible cost that one wonders why we pay any attention to these pundits and experts.

If the world will not allow the evacuation of “innocent civilians” from a war zone for unclear reasons and we cannot allow them to stay for obvious reasons, then we are at an impasse. But as long as they remain, our troops and our civilian population are in danger.

The war in the Lebanon will not be won militarily until Israel fully controls the land up to the Litani River and barring a Lebanese civilian presence – at least, those unvetted – south of the Litani, and it will not be won politically until the Lebanese people rise up and expel Hezbollah and its supporters from their government and their midst. Otherwise, Lebanon is rightly responsible for every aggressive act that emanates from its territory. And if this uprising causes a civil war, so be it. It would not be the first or second civil war in Lebanon. Better that they fight for a stable polity than we should fight and die because they refuse to do so. And if they refuse to expel the jihadist murderers who dwell among them, then they should be ready to pay a steep price for that reluctance, and not just in the terror stronghold of Dahiyeh.

Similarly, the war in Gaza will not be won militarily or politically as long as a hostile population survives that will regroup as terrorists, recruit more avid participants from the youngsters in that population, and do not feel the loss of the land that is under their feet. There is no more vivid way of demonstrating their defeat than by resettling parts of Gaza.

We must retain the tiny territory of Gaza as a symbol of victory – but to retain the land and maintain the population there is to sow the seeds of the next round of conflict, endure more rockets and incursions, and come to this same crossroads after still more deaths and desolation – ours and theirs.

Could these evacuated Gazans be repatriated at some point in the future? Certainly, if and when they are purified of their hatred and amend their priorities in life accordingly.

How will the world that dislikes them but hates us respond? Probably not well at first, with all the threats of embargoes and sanctions that they use now to constrain our right of self-defense.

But we are first and foremost a moral people, and elementary morality demands that innocent civilians be extricated from a war zone. At every opportunity, we must hammer home the notion that morality demands not the provision of food and fuel in an environment that is unsustainable, but evacuation to more pleasant climes in which they can relinquish their fantasies of killing Jews and focus on raising their children and making a positive contribution to the societies that embrace them. Our diplomacy should be focused on advocating for this moral imperative – and it is vital to our survival as long as substantial elements in their society harbor the fantasy of destroying Israel. We ignore that fantasy at our peril.

Perhaps the criminal gang known as UNWRA – soon to be expelled from Israel – can embrace this goal as their final act before its future dissolution. Rather than continue to perpetuate refugee status and actively foment terror against Jews, UNRWA can provide a new life outside of this region for the hundreds of thousands of refugees under its aegis.

Evacuation of Gazans to the West will ultimately please the Arab world also, especially those who have suffered from Palestinian violence and intimidation. There is plenty of money in the Arab world to contribute to this resettlement; indeed, it will cost far less to resettle them than to rebuild Gaza. And most Gazan civilians would love nothing more than to leave.

Hatred of Israel is a powerful motivator in much of the world. A strong Israel frightens the West – including secular Europe and America – as it makes the Bible and its prophecies all too real. It is high time that we shift the narrative of morality, expose the immorality of the West who also use the Palestinians as pawns, and do what is right and proper.

We need to save ourselves from the Palestinians – but they need to be saved from themselves and their worst impulses. We can buy time until the next conflagration soon erupts or we can try to transform the strategic situation. That can only be accomplished through evacuation now, the moral approach.

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The Real World

Posted on October 15, 2024 | 3 comments

(First published in the Jerusalem Report, October 21)

Rabbi Dr. Ron Kronish makes a compelling case (Jerusalem Report, October 7) that the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael must learn to live together. He touts our shared ancestry and shared values and attributes continued strife to “deeply ingrained negative stereotypes” that need to be “overcome today through education and dialogue.” If only it were true. My heart is with the writer, though not my head.

All Jews want peace, prosperity, and freedom for all peoples. In the real world in which we reside, Islam is dominated by a relative minority of radicals for whom the existence of Israel is repugnant and unacceptable. Indeed, that fraction of Muslims might number 10% of all Muslims, which computes to one hundred million people of the roughly billion Muslims across the globe. That is not a small number and they wage war not only against Israel but also against the West. They have perpetrated terrorists acts in dozens of cities across the world, and of course delight in murdering Jews wherever we might be found.

We can wish this were not so – Dr. Kronish completely elides this very recent history – but we would be saps to base our diplomacy and statecraft upon wishful thinking. Such wishful thinking underwrote the Oslo Accords and their “sacrifices for peace,” the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the expulsion of Jews from Gaza, the tolerance of the Hamas terror infrastructure, and directly led to the atrocities of October 7 and the multifront wars Israel is now waging. We indulge the saccharine rhetoric about the “moderates” and “coexistence” at our peril; it was the exact same language that lulled Israel into the catastrophic diplomacy of the last three decades.

Certainly, there are moderates in the Arab world. The Abraham Accords spearheaded by President Trump demonstrates that. Israeli visitors to the United Arab Emirates are treated quite hospitably. And yet, all the peace treaties have not changed hearts and minds in the Muslim world. Few Israelis now venture into Egypt or Jordan, and Jordanians and Egyptians have wantonly murdered Jews. Even in Dubai, Jewish public prayer has ended. Worse, after Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, hundreds of the “innocent civilians” of Gaza rampaged, raped, marauded, and murdered even Jews who had befriended them, hired them, transported them to Israeli hospitals. Peace and co-existence are unnecessary with the moderates and impossible with the radicals.

Of all the Arab states that have made peace with Israel – a welcome development per se– it is hard to think of even one that would mourn Israel’s disappearance. Consequently, even these nations that are ostensible peace partners with Israel routinely vote against Israel in the United Nations. Yes, a cold peace is better than a hot war – but there is something much deeper that unfortunately precludes full co-existence.

That impediment is an Islamic doctrine that dictates that any land that was once Muslim remains Muslim in perpetuity, and if lost, must be recaptured, the Dar al-Islām. That Jews have returned as sovereigns in the land of Israel is especially galling. We can wish that away as well but wishing it away does not make it less true. And if 10% of Muslims subscribe to that doctrine, then “education and dialogue” is asking them to repudiate their religion, a fools’ errand indeed.

Many Israelis still delude themselves into thinking that this conflict is all about real estate and finding the right division of territory to satisfy both sides. This is an egregious error born of a secular mindset that cannot admit there are people who take religion seriously. It was baked into Israeli diplomacy, which is one reason Israel’s strategic position has so deteriorated since Oslo. We would be prudent – as befitting a “wise and discerning people” (Devarim 4:6) – not to repeat the same mistakes but to look to our traditions and Torah for our claims to the land of Israel.

It is disconcerting that, in the entire article, Dr. Kronish uses the word “violent” only in relation to what he terms “extremist settler Judaism,” apparently willing to deny the settlers of the Jewish heartland the right to defend themselves and our land. Note the irony that the way Israelis on the left regard the settlers is the same way the world regards Israelis – violent, extreme, genocidal, and other lies. But the settlers are the ones who counter the Muslim narrative with a proudly Jewish one – that this is the land that G-d granted us, from which we were exiled, and to which the Jewish prophets declared we would (and did) return. That is the grand drama of Jewish history.

Must this war end one day, as Dr. Kronish declares? We can hope for that as well, as long as hope does not transmute into naiveté. But Hamas has already infiltrated Jerusalem and dominates the Arab educational, commercial, cultural, and political institutions there. Hamas is more powerful today in Judea and Samaria than is the Palestinian Authority, itself rampant with Jew hatred. Iran shows no signs of abating its Jew hatred and prepares to develop nuclear weaponry, winked at (if not subsidized) by the current American government. And I am unaware of the pedagogical tools that will persuade those who delight in burning children alive and stealing corpses for ransom, and those who support them, of the error of their ways. Sadly, the current battles will end but the war will go on, as it has since the first Jewish casualty of Arab violence in the land of Israel 140 years ago.

When will it end? Jewish tradition in many places (see, e.g., Zohar, Parshat Vaera, end of chapter 7) states that the final war at the end of days will be between the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. Our long and bloody history with our brother Esav is essentially behind us and the climactic battle with Ishmael will be waged over the land of Israel.

This war – all wars – will end when redemption comes and all mankind recognizes the sovereignty of the Creator of the universe. Until then, we should befriend all moral people who believe in the Bible and respect the Jewish narrative. And we can hasten that day of peace not by renouncing our heritage in the futile quest of winning over moderates without power or influence anywhere, but by deepening our connection to Torah, mitzvot, and the land of Israel.

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